Master Solutions Blog

With all the threats that stand to create problems for your business, it can be surprising to hear that some of your biggest security risks actually derive from your staff, and their exposure to your technology. Less surprising to hear: security issues interfere with the successful operation of your business. Here, we’ve shared a few tips to help your staff better adhere to security practices.

When reading through Microsoft’s latest Security Intelligence Report you will quickly get the notion that phishing attacks are some of the most prevalent cyberattacks. With businesses forced to use technology to support a remote workforce, this is definitely still relevant information. It, then, becomes extremely important that your business does a quality job of training your employees to spot phishing attempts before they become a problem. Let’s take you through some of the telltale signs that you have received a phishing message.

Most computer users have at least a passing familiarity with Portable Document Format files, better known as PDFs. As a tip, we’ll review how a PDF can be created, and even edited.

Most smartphone users like to get a new phone every year or two. This isn’t just because the hardware or software on newer devices are better, but because after two years, many people have dropped their devices a half dozen times and there are cracks and dings in the device. After two years most device’s batteries start to degrade. Some newer software isn’t compatible or won’t run on older devices. Whatever your reason is for getting a new smartphone, you should know that your old smartphone still has some value. For this week’s tip, we’ll outline some ways you can use your old mobile device:

Say you are looking to learn something about a concept that you don’t know much about, what do you do? You “Google” it right? So when you are using Google Docs you’d think that it would automatically know any word that you would type in. This isn’t the case. It knows a lot of words, but if it doesn’t recognize a word that you would normally use, you will need to add it to your dictionary. Today we will tell you how to do so.

There are a lot of security threats directed toward businesses today, with plenty of immoral opportunists seeking to profit at your expense. This makes it critical to secure your network and its data, which sounds like an expensive and time-consuming process. However, it doesn’t have to be, as we’ll show you by highlighting a few ways to protect your business and its assets.

It is an indisputable fact that the Google Play Store has a ridiculous number of applications for users to select from. It is also a fact that many of these applications should not be downloaded, and instead actively avoided. For this week’s tip, we’re giving a few examples of the kind of app you should steer clear of, and why.

A slow network can be an infuriating problem under any circumstances, but in the business setting, not understanding its cause can potentially be devastating to operations. For this week’s tip, we’ll examine a few of the most common causes of this slowness, and some of the best ways to resolve the issue at hand.

Efficient use of modern information technology should make business faster and more agile. No matter how you set your business up, however, a slow Internet connection can be a real drag on business. Today, we wanted to go over some scenarios you should know about when your Internet connection is holding your business back; and, solid practices that you can use to get the Internet speeds you need to move business along efficiently. 

While Windows 10 is inarguably the better choice of OS over Windows 7 (especially now that the latter has officially gone the way of the dodo), the experience is made even better with the right customizations made to the settings. Let’s go through some changes you might want to make as you’re starting off (or even later on).

Windows 10 gives you interesting options to help you manage your computing experience. One of these options is the presence of the virtual desktop. On a Windows machine, look at your taskbar, near the Start button and the search function. The next little icon, the one that almost looks like a bit of film, is the Task View button, the button that will give users the ability to create and manage virtual desktops. For this week’s tip, we’ll discuss how to use this feature.

At the time of this writing, Microsoft Word has a market share just shy of 37 percent, making it a pretty safe bet that you’ve used it at some point. As a result, you’re probably familiar with Word’s insistence of changing how certain things are formatted, which can become irritating - especially if you had it formatted how you wanted it the first time. This week, our tip will cover how you can stop Word from editorializing.

Happy New Year! As tradition dictates that we all select a resolution to improve ourselves for the coming year, why not do the same for your business and its operations? For our first tip of the year, we’re sharing how to come up with resolutions that could help you start off this year on the right footing.

You have goals for your business and most of them will require strategic investment to get off the ground. These projects can have a huge effect on your business. If they go right, your company stands to benefit, but if they go wrong, you are putting your business in jeopardy. It is important that you have a careful and capable project manager to help you implement your plans. Today, we’ll give you three variables that you have to look for when hiring a project manager. 

Statistically speaking, there’s a pretty good chance that you use Microsoft Office 365 in your business, which means you can use OneDrive, Microsoft’s contribution to cloud-based storage and collaboration. If this is how your users work productively, they are probably already familiar with how they can share these documents - but what if there are some things you don’t want freely shared around? Today, we’re going over how you can restrict OneDrive sharing capabilities.

Let’s face it - you’d be hard-pressed at this point to find someone who wasn’t fairly confident about their use of email in the office. However, the way they are currently using their email may not be the most efficient. This week, we’re focusing our tips on how to better use your email.

Do you have a smartphone? Do you feel as though your data is secure on it? Users are relying on smartphones more and more to accomplish daily tasks. This means there is a massive amount of data traffic each day transferred to and from your device, and potentially transferred into the hands of a cybercriminal. 

Patches are one of the most important aspects of your technology. As with anything, technology is constantly changing, so shouldn’t your software? Today we will discuss three tips, sharing advice on optimizing your patch management process. 

The Windows operating system has quite a few shortcuts baked in, each offering a user quicker access to the utility they are seeking out. It may sound crazy, but using these keyboard shortcuts can actually eliminate the eight days the average employee accumulates every year by just moving their hand from their keyboard to their mouse. 

Microsoft Excel has a ton of functionality, but how much of it are you actually utilizing? This week’s tip will help you take full advantage of keyboard shortcuts, so you can leverage the solution to the best of your ability.