Office 365: What plan is the right one?

There’s a lot to like about Office 365. You have access to cloud-based productivity suites, Microsoft email servers, SharePoint, and more. But not all Office 365 license plans offer the same features and services. When looking for an Office 365 plan for your business, make sure to follow these tips.

Business or Enterprise? If you’re running a cloud-first business, you’ll have to decide between Office 365 Business and Enterprise. Both may have access to Office Online and OneDrive, but there are some notable differences between the plan.

For one, Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E5 plans have unlimited archive and mail storage space, while Business plans have a 50-GB storage limit and don’t provide archive access from the Outlook client.

When it comes to SharePoint, Business plans are short on enterprise search, Excel services, and Visio features. Additionally, unified communication solutions, Power BI, and Delve analytics are also missing from the Office 365 Business offering.

Although it may seem like Enterprise subscriptions are superior -- and in some ways they are -- Business plans are perfect for smaller companies running on a tight budget. Office 365 Business and Business Premium cost $10 and $15 per user per month respectively, while E5, the biggest Enterprise plan, costs $35 per user per month.

As a general rule, start looking for Enterprise plans when your employee headcount exceeds 50 people and users require more storage space and solutions.

E1, E3, or E5? If you do opt for Office 365 Enterprise plans, you’ll have to examine the features and choose one of three plans (E1, E3, and E5) that suits your needs.

E1 offers basic enterprise solutions such as Outlook and Word, OneNote, PowerPoint, and Excel online for only $8 per user per month. Apart from this, users also get access to SharePoint Team sites, video conferencing, and Yammer for enterprise social media.

E3 provides all E1 features and adds data loss prevention, rights management, and encryption to ensure business security and compliance. While E5 is a full enterprise-grade solution with all the aforementioned features plus analytics tools, advanced threat protection, flexible Skype for Business conferencing, and unified communication solutions.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises will usually select either E1 or E3 subscriptions and decide to add third-party applications to meet cloud security and VoIP demands. But if you have the resources and prefer a fully-managed suite of Microsoft applications, E5 plans are the way to go.

Migrating to an Office 365 platform is a big step, and if you’re still undecided about which plan to opt for, contact us today. We don’t just provide Office 365, we assess your business and find the best solution that meets your budget and objectives.

No Ransom: a place for free decryption

Although a ransomware infection might feel targeted, you’re not the only one who’s been infected. Ransomware is spreading at an alarming rate, but the further it goes, the more resources are allocated to fighting it. If your data is held hostage, always check these lists for free decryptors first.

The state of ransomware in 2017

It’s been almost 30 years since malware was first created that could encrypt locally-stored data and demand money in exchange for its safe return. Known as ransomware, this type of malware has gone through multiple periods of popularity. 2006 and 2013 saw brief spikes in infections, but they’ve never been as bad as they are now.

In 2015, the FBI estimated that ransomware attacks cost victims $24 million, but in the first three months of 2016 it had already racked up more than $209 million. At the beginning of 2017, more than 10% of all malware infections were some version of ransomware.

Zombie ransomware is easy to defeat

Not every type of infection is targeted to individual organizations. Some infections may happen as a result of self-propagating ransomware strains, while others might come from cyber attackers who are hoping targets are so scared that they pay up before doing any research on how dated the strain is.

No matter what the circumstances of your infection are, always check the following lists to see whether free decryption tools have been released to save you a world of hurt:

• Kaspersky Lab’s No Ransom list
• Avast’s free decryption tools
• Trend Micro’s Ransomware File Decryptor
• Fightransomware.com's Breaking Free list

Prevention

But even when you can get your data back for free, getting hit with malware is no walk in the park. There are essentially three basic approaches to preventing ransomware. First, train your employees about what they should and shouldn’t be opening when browsing the web and checking email.

Second, back up your data as often as possible to quarantined storage. As long as access to your backed-up data is extremely limited and not directly connected to your network, you should be able to restore everything in case of an infection.

Finally, regularly update all your software solutions (operating systems, productivity software, and antivirus). Most big-name vendors are quick to patch vulnerabilities, and you’ll prevent a large portion of infections just by staying up to date.

Whether it’s dealing with an infection or preventing one, the best option is to always seek professional advice from seasoned IT technicians. It’s possible that you could decrypt your data with the tools listed above, but most ransomware strains destroy your data after a set time limit, and you may not be able to beat the clock. If you do, you probably won’t have the expertise to discern where your security was penetrated.

Don’t waste time fighting against a never-ending stream of cyber attacks -- hand it over to us and be done with it. Call today to find out more.

5 G Suite updates and improvements in 2017

Google’s cloud platform G Suite has been getting a lot of attention from businesses recently. It’s an incredibly powerful tool that enhances collaboration, boosts productivity, and cuts IT costs. And just when you thought it couldn’t any better, Google releases monthly updates for their cloud software. To save you the trouble of looking through pages of patch notes, here are some of the most useful upgrades in 2017 so far.

Shared file storage for teams The Team Drives feature, publicly released in March, is Google’s take on team file sharing. Like many cloud platforms, users can store documents, photos, and other files in the cloud and share them with colleagues. The big difference, however, is that content ownership and file permissions are managed at the team level. This makes it easy to give access to team documents for new members and allow teams to retain important files should the original creator of the document leave the company.

Mobile management for iOS For those who access G Suite via iPhones and iPads, Google has developed Mobile Device Management services. This feature enables companies to secure personal iOS devices without intruding on an employee’s private information. When the “Basic” security option is enabled, for instance, administrators can prompt users to implement a lock screen, wipe data from compromised devices remotely, and keep track of device inventory.

Form templates G Suite’s Forms function helps you quickly create professional-looking online forms and surveys by giving you access to 100 different file templates to work with. And once you load any of them, you can simply customize the form by dragging and dropping new design elements or removing any unneeded sections.

Centralized search In February, Google launched Google Cloud Search, a tool that allows employees to search across all G Suite products such as Drive, Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Contacts, and Sites. The feature takes into account file-sharing permissions, meaning users can access only documents they’re allowed to see.

In addition to retrieving documents, Cloud Search can function as a digital phone book, displaying employee contact information and team schedules with a simple search query. And when viewing a contact’s information in the search results, G Suite gives you the option to start an email, phone call, or Hangout session.

Instant references and citations The Explore function, found at the bottom-right corner of every G Suite document, suggests relevant research material -- like journals, articles, and published papers -- for your reports or essays. A few months ago, Google further enhanced this feature by adding the ability to automatically create footnotes and bibliographies -- in any citation style -- when you use content from a recommended source.

We’ve merely scratched the surface of G Suites updates. And with more powerful upgrades set to be released in the coming months, you need to stay abreast of Google developments to make sure you don’t miss out on time-saving features. If you want to be the first to know what new improvements G Suite has to offer, contact us today.