Machine learning is all the rage nowadays, and few vendors are providing as many solutions powered by this new technology as Microsoft does. Office 365 includes “intelligent” functionality for analyzing your employees’ time and coaching them on how to use it more efficiently. What is MyAnalytics? MyAnalytics apply machine learning technology to your employees’ Office 365 data. By utilizing extremely powerful computing processes to analyze huge blocks of information, MyAnalytics can uncover trends and correlations that may be too complex for human discovery. Every day, Office 365 users create several thousand new data points across Microsoft’s productivity suite, and there’s a lot of potential to rearrange meetings, project goals, and employee tasks to increase efficiency. The most obvious improvement is with Outlook calendar. MyAnalytics tracks how much time you’re spending with each person in your office as well as the time you’re investing in specific projects. After sufficient information has been gathered, your Office 365 dashboard will begin coaching you on how to organize meetings and project goals based on your habits and past successes. How can it improve your office? Have you ever worked on a huge project that required multiple contributors? Did you all meet regularly to update each other? Users who add contacts — from both inside the company and out — and projects to MyAnalytics get reminders to stay in touch with co-workers most vital to project completion. Every metric tracked by MyAnalytics can be shared with your team to make sure everyone is on the same page. So MyAnalytics is more than just a motivational tool, because sharing these metrics allows your team to identify bottlenecks and trends to smoothen the workflow process. Response time is another key metric your employees are probably only vaguely aware of. MyAnalytics calculates average email response times — both from you and from contacts — to identify what time of day you’re best at communicating, and how you can adapt your schedule to get more work done in the same amount of time. Privacy concerns One of the greatest things about MyAnalytics is that it doesn’t introduce any new privacy concerns for business owners. All the data it uses to create customized coaching and advice is publicly available to everyone at your business — via calendar appointments, email content, and message timestamps. The only difference is that Microsoft is lending you the previously prohibitive computing power to sift through all of it. Availability This wonderful new tool comes with any Enterprise E5 plan, but can also be added on to E1 and E3 Enterprise plans for just a few dollars per month. Increasing employee productivity is never as clear cut as it is with MyAnalytics. Install a solution, follow its advice, and start brainstorming about what to do with all your extra time. We’ve got plenty of other great solutions for streamlining your business processes — call Multi IT today on 011 435 0450 to find out!

#6 Social Engineering Takes Many Forms Baiting offers the reader something in exchange for private information. This could take the form of a free music download or a glimpse at once svelte movie stars who now look like train wrecks in their bathing suits. Quizzes on Facebook may seem perfectly innocent but, in some instances, you may be submitting answers that are the same as those employed for security questions with your on-line banking and mortgage accounts. Seen any offers for free credit reports lately? Proceed with caution. Better yet, don’t proceed at all. There are a number of scams offering free credit reports that include credit charges with account numbers you don’t recognize. Then when you call to dispute the charge, you may be lured into correcting the mistake by submitting your legitimate account number, your security code or even your social security number. Phone numbers can be spoofed which catches a lot of people off guard because most of us are used to trusting numbers from known entities as the gold standard of verification. Ditto on text messages. If you sign up for newsletters, gated content offers on Facebook, and participate in social media petitions, you could be agreeing to service terms that allow them to sell your number or you may be giving your number directly to a fraudulent entity. Social engineering is not always technology-centric. Tailgating happens when an unauthorized person follows an employee into a restricted area at their company. Fraudsters commonly ask unsuspecting employees to hold doors for them, claiming they forgot their badge or they may intentionally have their hands full and expect human empathy to take them over the finish line. #7 Avoid Unauthorized Software & Devices Don’t install unauthorized programs on your work computer or plug in personal devices such as laptops, USBs, MP3 players and smartphones without permission from your manager. Even a brand-new device or USB flash drive could be infected with malware. Devices can be compromised with code waiting to launch as soon as you plug them in. It’s also a good idea to turn off/disable Bluetooth and wireless services when not in use. Don’t give hackers any windows to visit any of your networks, no matter how insignificant they may seem. If you have an unprotected home network (non-password/user ID authenticated) and you happen to have banking statements on your laptop, threat actors in your parking lot can find the information if they happen to be looking for it. People like this do the same thing in parking lots at commercial establishments with Wifi. #8 Simplify Your Digital Life Unsubscribe from email lists - ones that crowd your work email inbox as well as your Yahoo or Gmail account. Less clutter means fewer opportunities to step on the proverbial grenade. This also allows you to focus on what’s actionable. Get anything of value off your desktop and into a file sharing schema that is secure and backed up. Post with caution. You don’t want Facebook to serve as a geo-tracking device to notify criminals that the coast is clear every time you upload a shot of your foot and a drink from a recliner in St. Croix. You should exercise similar caution with LinkedIn. Be careful about posting financial details, gripes about company policy or detailed technical information about your computer network. Certain phone systems have user manuals online that explain how to reset passwords which means a nefarious third-party could take down your entire voice system or rack up tolls charges in the thousands of dollars. #9 Get A Password Manager Passwords are a twentieth-century solution to a twenty-first century problem. Unfortunately, user names and passwords – the most common digital credentials used today – are all that stands between employees and vital online services including corporate networks, social media sites, e-commerce and many others. Sharing corporate email addresses and passwords with your Yahoo, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts is a bad idea. Therefore, one of the best security practices you can implement is to use a completely different password for every service you use. Sixty-percent of Americans follow this process but an astounding 40% do not. A simple password manager can make the transition a breeze. Popular options include Blur, Sticky Password, Keeper, Password Boss, LastPass and Dashlane. You only have to remember one master password and the password manager will store all of your sites, encrypt their passwords, allow you to activate 2-factor authentication, set reminders to create new passwords, and even help you generate new ones. It also helps you stay organized because all your most important sites are conveniently housed within the password manager portal.

The battle of the web browsers has raged on for years. While the classic rivalry between Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer has long passed, we are now facing a broader field of competition. There are currently four web browsers competing for space in your hard drive, and we've drawn up this list of their advantages and disadvantages to help you choose. Google Chrome By just about any metric, Google Chrome has been the browser of choice for most internet users over the last couple years. It’s easy to use and its graphics interface has a low profile. However, if you want to customize Chrome with extensions and apps, there are more than enough options. The bottom line is: this is the best browser for users who spend a lot of time in G-Suite documents, or want the security benefits of frequent patches and updates. Apple Safari We might as well start off with the one, glaring drawback of Safari: It’s available only to Apple users. However, if you are working on a macOS or iOS device, Safari has a lot going for it. Ad blocking is built right into the browser, as well as RSS support for aggregating lots of information in one place. And because tabs can be automatically synced across all your Apple devices, we highly recommend Safari for anyone in a Mac environment. Microsoft Edge Note that Edge is a different browser than Internet Explorer. The latter still exists, but we’ve decided to skip it for various reasons. Although Edge works only on Windows 10 systems, it has two things going for it. First, Microsoft has announced a feature that will incorporate virtualization into Edge to quarantine downloads for testing before they’re opened on your computer. Second, the Windows 10 browser comes with some fantastic Office 365 integration. We highly recommend Edge for users working in a business enterprise environment. Opera We’ve saved the most controversial for last. The Opera browser isn’t one of the most popular browsers around, but it does deserve consideration. Although it requires more customization and under-the-hood-work than its competitors, its privacy settings are unmatched. With a built-in virtual private network feature and some of the most robust ad blocking on the market, Opera is a great way to take a break from cookies and targeted advertisements. Choosing a web browser may seem like such an inconsequential thing, but just think about the rate of cloud adoption. If you plan on utilizing more software-as-a-service solutions in the coming years, one tiny feature in a browser could make all the difference. Contact Multi IT today on 011 435 0450 about planning your cloud deployment over the coming years.