A M Exclusive Blog

Are you having issues setting up your new HP+ printer/MFP (Models M209dwe, M234dwe, M234sdwe, 3001dwe, 4001ne, 4001dne, 4101fdne, 4101fdwe)? When you purchased your machine, you may not have realized that any HP printer models that end with an “e” are HP+ devices that have specific requirements for you to use them.

Paying a high amount each year for a fixed traditional contract may not make sense if you do not print that much, but at the same time, you don’t want to be stuck with a large, unanticipated repair bill. When your printer goes down, you need it repaired quickly so you can get your work done!

Yesterday HP released firmware to address critical threats that cover popular LaserJet printer & MFP models. The threats have CVSS scores of 7.5, 8.4, and 9.8. If these patches are not applied, you may be leaving your printers vulnerable to information disclosure, denial of service, or remote code execution.

Follow-Me Print allows users to send a print job to a central queue and then walk up to any printer and release their job. Here are some reasons to consider implementing this:

If your company has put a flexible work policy in place, you will likely find that you’ve got more space than people more often than not. You are also probably having difficulty understanding who is coming to the office and how often, which makes it hard for facilities and IT teams to ensure sufficient resources are available at the office. You’re asking yourself questions like:

Security this, password that, and they want 14 characters with two symbols?!? In the modern 21st century, crime and theft have shifted, but a lot of people are approaching the problem with logic from more than a decade ago. We can likely all agree that modern prevention is annoying. Remembering 24 different passwords, four PIN numbers, having to install updates all the time (some of which break what you use daily), this new regulation, that new requirement – it’s frustrating. It’s funny, though, how it’s not at all frustrating or inconvenient to most of us to remember the code for the door, the code for the alarm panel next to the door, the secret password to tell the alarm company when you don’t get out in time and the alarm goes off, the passcode to our phone, the front-door keypad lock at home, the garage code, the other garage code… You get the idea.

At A M Exclusive, we’re big fans of making lemonade out of lemons! While I’m sure, like us, you are yearning for more of a return to normalcy and would love to have more people in the office, the reality in the IT world is that having minimal staff allows for some unique advantages when tackling projects. Not only that, the changes to how we work are likely here to stay, so you’ll need to be prepared with the technology to facilitate a hybrid at-home/in-office culture.

As businesses around the globe continue to adapt to remote work, there has been a surge in the use of cloud collaboration apps. While it is standard practice for companies to back up their on-premises data, it is not so for data that exists only in the cloud, and many are relying solely on their cloud provider to protect them from data loss. Yet an astonishing one in three companies reports losing data stored in cloud-based applications. The single leading cause of this data loss? Human error. With more and more companies depending on Microsoft 365 and G Suite for collaboration and business operations, these risks are impossible to ignore. Here are some reasons why Microsoft 365 and Google Vault Backups are insufficient:

How Integrating Our VOIP Phone System With Microsoft Teams Made Communication Easier For Me
I hate having to hold a phone to my ear, and while not everyone feels that way, I know I’m not the only one! Since online meetings have become commonplace over the last year and a half, having to switch from the ease of using my PC headset (allowing me to type notes and easily pull up whatever I need to on the computer related to my conversation) to picking up the phone was just annoying. While I could use the app on my cell phone to make and receive calls, that required me to use a Bluetooth headset to be hands-free. However, that introduced the issue that when my headset batteries were running low (unbeknownst to me), my voice started to become choppy to those on the other line. I would also have to switch headsets between my online meetings and phone calls. Even if I tried to get a headset connected to my phone and my PC simultaneously, I still would have the battery issue.

As cybersecurity attacks become more sophisticated, organizations need to implement more policies beyond their firewall to protect themselves. The concept of “Zero Trust” was introduced back in 2010 by John Kindervag and is centered on the belief that an organization should not automatically trust anything outside or inside its perimeters.  With human error being the leading cause of cybersecurity breaches, you need to have additional protections in place in case someone accidentally lets the bad guys into your network.