BlackCSI Blog

Collaboration is essential for modern business functionality, which often means that your team members will need to share files of all sizes. The trouble is that larger files have historically been a pain to share.

Fortunately, thanks to technology, there are now simple ways to share larger files with your team members. Let’s review them together.

Handling time calculations in a spreadsheet can often feel frustrating—especially when you’re just trying to add them up. Luckily, both Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets have built-in functions specifically designed for this purpose, making the process more manageable.

Here’s a quick guide to help you get started, no matter which spreadsheet program you use.

Mobile malware might not have a lot of attention on it, but it can be a significant problem for organizations that rely on smartphones. This goes double for small businesses that typically don’t have the large teams and big budgets for their mobile strategies that include devices, data and phone plans, and security controls. Today, we’ll look at mobile malware and how an organization with a limited budget can keep it from impacting its business.

Technology has empowered us to achieve more than ever, but with that progress comes increased expectations for everyone. This means greater productivity, and the pressure to perform can be relentless at times, making it crucial to find efficient ways to manage our tasks. Unfortunately, there is a natural limit to how much we can accomplish, and certain challenges can push us to that limit faster. Today, we want to explore two of the most common productivity pitfalls.

Remote work has been a mainstay in most businesses’ standard operating procedures in at least some capacity, but it opens up a nasty can of worms regarding cybersecurity. If cybersecurity is not your top priority, and you have remote or hybrid employees, we need to have a talk—and probably a hard one.

Password best practices (and common sense, if we’re being honest) tell us to always use a strong password for every account we have. This is because, unfortunately, it doesn’t take much to crack a weak one anymore. A bit of software on a standard computer can crack millions of passwords in a matter of seconds… so the more complex and randomized a password, the better and more secure it will be.

However, this can also make it a real challenge to create and then memorize sufficiently complex passwords. To help, we wanted to share a fun trick.

Businesses today need to worry about people outside their business trying to break into their network and steal their data. Unfortunately, that’s not the only direction that theft can come from. In this week’s blog, we’ll take a look at the types of technology theft you need to be aware of inside of your company and what you can do about it.

With mobile devices playing a crucial role in modern business  it’s extremely important to have a clear plan for managing them. Unfortunately, this isn’t so cut and dry. Today, we’ll explore the differences between two of the most popular mobile management strategies: Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Corporate-Owned, Personally Enabled (COPE).

Cybersecurity is the single largest problem that any business faces, particularly when the threat profile out there is so vast and varied. Today, we want to go over the many solutions your business can implement to make cybersecurity much more manageable.

Running a business is challenging, often involving tough decisions, particularly when it comes to employee retention and ensuring their productivity. In today's article, we discuss the issues that arise from high employee turnover and burnout, which can really be a problem for the modern business.

We all share a lot of data. There’s everything shared for professional purposes, of course, but there’s also all the casual things that we send back and forth—chats, requests to have people to pick up things on the way home, and (naturally) memes and pet pictures.

Most of this is sent off without a thought. However, let’s take a moment to think about it for a moment… is there an impact to all this data being sent around?

You can’t run a modern business without software. Even your most basic solopreneur business runs using software at its foundation. For businesses, this problem is increased dramatically as the amount of software fueling operations increases. Software management tools can improve the way your organization keeps tabs on its software.

Businesses deal with all types of problems, and some of them are really serious. Some situations aren’t even problems…yet. When risk is all around you, how can you know when enough is just enough? In today’s blog, we will provide you with some answers to how to flip potential problems into opportunities using technology.

Ideally, your business will last for years and years, but your information technology will simply not be able to do the same. This makes it essential to rework and update your business’ IT regularly. Let’s discuss a few warning signs that you need to pay attention to so you know when to do so.

Your computer’s CPU is one of the most sensitive, advanced pieces of technology that you probably don’t think too much about. The CPU itself is just around 4-5 centimeters in length and width, and it handles all of the data processing in your computer. Every single thing you do on a computer gets calculated through the CPU. Most modern CPUs have billions of microscopic transistors in that tiny little space. These transistors are so small that you can fit hundreds of them on a single red blood cell, or thousands of them in the width of a human hair.

So it’s inevitable that something can go wrong. Many fairly modern computers are experiencing a bug right now that could potentially and permanently damage the CPU. There’s a patch to fix it, but if the damage is already done, the patch won’t repair it.

Productivity. To business owners, it can be a mantra. You can judge the success of your organization by productivity, as it often translates directly to profits. You’ll notice a lack of productivity in your operations, and potentially even your pocketbooks, so it’s incredibly important to know whether your business is being productive or not.

Technology plays a crucial role regardless of a company’s size or growth stage. Therefore, having an IT infrastructure that can adapt to changes in business scale is essential.

Let's discuss the significance of a suitable IT infrastructure and explore best practices for tailoring it to fit your business needs.

Every time you log into an account, you have to enter a password. And we know exactly what you’re thinking: why? Good password hygiene is important, especially in high-profile environments like your business. Passwords play a crucial role in securing your network, so you should know how to build better passwords—if not for your own sake, then for your business.

We all use smartphones to make phone calls. It’s a daily occurrence, whether it’s through your data plan or Wi-Fi calling. If you don’t know what Wi-Fi calling is, we’d love to explain to you how it works and what it does to help you with your important communications.

Staying optimistic is difficult, not just in business, but in life.