Security experts are seeing a significant number of Exchange servers getting “backdoored” by malware that lets threat actors maintain update-resistant and “stealth” access to the IT infrastructure of a targeted organization. Despite its long-held reputation as a reliable on-premise workhorse for email that allows for total administrative control, many of our clients are starting to see this beloved server as legacy technology. Exchange has limitations that become more noticeable as companies migrate to the cloud, namely, modern authentication and other security features that are unavailable in Exchange environments.

There is no business strategy without a cloud strategy.

The lasting business shift to remote and hybrid work has prompted slow adopters to finally embrace the cloud. Some statistics show nearly 90% of organizations have adopted the cloud for at least some of their business applications, though it appears that for some, the decision to let go of their legacy or hosted email system remains a challenge.

The major benefits of migrating to Microsoft 365 can be broken down into three categories:

• End-user productivity
• Security and compliance
• Scalability and cost-efficiency

Growing companies need more than just email. Around 80% of Fortune 500 companies have already undertaken data migration to Microsoft 365, and start-ups to medium-sized organizations are now following this trend. Smaller organizations are implementing Microsoft’s productivity suite into their everyday operations and utilizing its set of tools to drive business productivity at a flexible, calculable cost.

… and Re-Think Productivity.

Cost reduction is frequently cited as the core driver for migration plans, however there are many arguments in favor of taking the leap to the new Microsoft 365 including an array of novel tools, product updates, and the opportunity for new workflows and routines. Yes, migration can be a complex task, but it’s one that brings many benefits:

• Upfront cost certainty 
• Preserves business agilily
• Enhances organizational communication
• Boosts employee productivity and reduces downtime
• Streamlines IT operations

And there is no need for Capex spend on hardware, software, data center space, ever. Here are some additional benefits for your in-house IT department:

• Flex user count up or down very quickly
• More times than not the mailbox size quota is substantially greater with Microsoft 365
• No need to audit MS licensing, as all licenses are included
• No need to patch or keep servers up to date
• No need to patch or update Office versions
• Users are spread out among many servers so a single server outage does not impact all users
• Guarantees compliance with industry-specific, local, and national regulations, such as HIPAA, SOC 1, 2, & 3, ISO/IEC 27001, CIS Benchmarks, CDSA, and more
• Faster onboarding with Thrive Customer portal integration

How can Thrive’s Cloud-First, NextGen Managed Services help your business? To discover more, please CONTACT US.

The post It’s Time to De-Risk with Microsoft 365 appeared first on Thrive.

The cloud eliminates the need for expensive and outdated textbooks.

College and university students, who generally need to buy new books each year for each class, spend an average of $1,200 per year on textbooks. Meanwhile, K-12 schools spend $700 per student per year—and because it’s funded through tax dollars, they’ve become a major expense to the public at large. That’s not even the worst of it; on average, textbooks tend to be nearly a decade old, teaching outdated or simply wrong information. Textbooks are often even older in low-income areas, putting these students at a distinct disadvantage.

Cloud-based textbooks can solve both problems. Digital content costs significantly less than printed material. This can save college and university students hundreds per year and help level the playing field between lower and higher-income students. Cloud-based materials can also be easily updated so students always have access to the most current learning resources.

Virtualization in cloud computing eliminates the need and cost of expensive hardware.

It used to be that every school would have a room full of on-premise servers that ran all systems and held all data. This could get expensive whenever capacity was reached and new servers had to be purchased. But with most third-party cloud providers, schools only pay for the capacity they use, much like a utility. That’s not all; in a cloud-based model, schools don’t have the expenses associated with server room cooling, electric, and maintenance, which can get very costly, especially in warm-climate states (not to mention the need to keep them cooled and operational even when not in use during the extended holiday breaks). Finally, with many schools facing overcrowding, eliminating a server room frees up valuable space!

 The cloud offers easy accessibility and mobility.

In the cloud, applications can be run on internet browsers, so schools and students don’t necessarily have to own pricey computers or laptops; an inexpensive smartphone or tablet can allow access to lesson plans, coursework, and digital textbooks. The cloud also gives teachers the ability to work from home in order to finish up their work. Rather than getting to school hours before the first bell rings and staying hours after the last bell, teachers can grade tests and homework assignments, develop course curricula, enter grades, and respond to parents from the comfort of their homes when it’s convenient for them. With the 2021 EducationWeek report revealing that over 60% of teachers are highly stressed out and describing their mental health as “not good,” this could go a long way toward helping relieve their stress, which ultimately creates a better learning environment.

Virtualized data in the cloud offers more collaboration.

The cloud offers seamless integration between schools and university departments through file-sharing across any device, so faculty no longer needs a specific medium in which to collaborate or communicate with others. For students, the power of collaboration is also key when it comes to learning and preparing for the workforce. Students can work within virtual classrooms, communicate with students far away in real-time, and combine the education of people from completely different backgrounds. And because kids frequently get sick, they won’t have to miss assignments or give up participating in classroom discussions. This may also open the door for home-schooled children to participate with other students without attending class.

The cloud eliminates costs associated with paper—while cutting the carbon footprint.

Most educators are concerned about their carbon footprint—and more and more young people are worried about the environment, too. But education is one of the worst offenders when it comes to paper usage (or more appropriately, paper waste). Edutopia did some number crunching and found that on average, a school with 100 teachers uses approximately 250,000 pieces of paper per year. Based on paper costs, that’s $25,000, and printing on that paper would be another $7,500 per year, not to mention costs of copy toner and service agreements. Through the cloud, these schools can significantly reduce their carbon footprint and put over $30,000 back into the budget each year. (It’s worth noting that eliminating individual server rooms in schools can also significantly cut back on CO2 emissions and energy consumption, also making the school greener!)

How Thrive can help

Schools, colleges, and universities can greatly benefit from virtualization in cloud computing. They can reduce costs (and when funding is constantly being cut, this is huge), promote a better learning environment for students, and create a better working environment for educators. Thrive can help K-12 schools or post-secondary institutions move to a public cloud, hybrid cloud, or virtual private cloud with ease. Contact Thrive to learn more.

The post Virtualization in Cloud Computing: Benefits to Educators and Students appeared first on Thrive.

Promote a Culture of Collaboration

Employees can get so preoccupied with their work that they might be unaware of what the rest of the office is caught up with. When teams are siloed and don’t know what is going on elsewhere in the business, it can be a problem in the long term. If you want to promote collaboration in the workplace, you should make sure that collaboration is not only expected, but also encouraged. Creating this culture of collaboration can be challenging, but it can lead to a higher degree of fulfillment, satisfaction, and engagement within your workforce.

Hold Regular Staff Meetings

If your staff see each other every so often, but not regularly, they might be more reluctant to collaborate. Regular staff meetings give your team members a chance to catch up with everyone else on what each department is doing and how they are all working together toward the same goals. If you give your team more opportunities to get engaged and involved in this way, you can facilitate better collaboration moving forward.

Implement Collaborative Technology Solutions

It is hard to encourage collaboration if your team doesn’t have the tools to make it happen in a remote or hybrid environment. Plus, depending on the size of your workforce, it might be hard to gather everyone in one place for a staff meeting. Software tools that allow for meetings and collaboration are more accessible now than they have ever been before. Video conferencing, instant messaging, file sharing, and more are all staples in the collaborative space, and any organization hoping to make it happen without them will be in for a rude awakening.

How does your business handle its collaborative efforts? You can take things up a notch by working with Thrive. We can equip your business with all of the best tools to make collaboration easy and less of a pain. To learn more about what we can do for your business, contact us.

The post 3 Things You Can Do to Boost Collaboration Effectiveness appeared first on Thrive.

This white paper is to provides a summary of what each tool in Microsoft 365 offers and how they all come together seamlessly to offer users more than just a place to store their files and communicate. Download this guide to learn how to best maximize your Microsoft 365 investment.

DOWNLOAD our white paper today!

The post Maximizing Microsoft 365 appeared first on Thrive.

The Role Technology Plays in Remote Collaboration

Nowadays, every business uses some sort of information technology to complete the basic tasks that running a business demands. Whether that be just for payroll or to manage inventory, or if you utilize IT to run your entire business, understanding the value it has to your endeavor and how to get what you need out of it is pretty important. Rolling out a comprehensive collaboration suite and integrating tools that allow for additional collaboration makes businesses more secure.

Unfortunately, the days are long past where each person on your team is satisfied doing the same thing over and over and over again. In fact, most modern workers will be glad to allow computers to do a lot of the more mundane and repetitive work. This is exceedingly evident when you have a remote workforce. Remote workers tend to want to get right down to business, which is why reeling them in to ensure they are doing the things you need them to is important. Most businesses that follow this model need to rethink how they are deploying their technology dollars and ask if they are doing the right things for their business.

What a Business Needs to Do to Get Collaborative Results from Remote Workers

There are plenty of things a business can do to help their remote workers align with their goals. Let’s go through a few of them:

• Provide equipment – Today computers are expensive and with no two people agreeing on the effectiveness of any individual collaboration tool, it can be problematic for a business to get remote workers on the same page. If you provide the equipment that a remote worker needs to do his/her job, it can standardize some things pretty quickly. Not only can you install the software you are using, you can also have an easier time managing these systems; even if they are being used far from the central office.
• Improve communication – Another great tip for the business that is dependent on remote workers is to build your communications platform with the remote worker in mind. Sure you are going to use email and the integrated tools that the system presents, but you can also enhance remote worker collaboration by using communications tools designed specifically for remote collaboration. Collaboration apps do a good job of doing so, but the most valuable is a Voice over Internet Protocol telephone system. VoIP can help you save money and give your remote teams the tools they need to communicate effectively.
• Be involved – This may have to be by proxy if you run a larger company, but it is important that remote teams understand that their managers and business leaders are committed to the program they have laid out and will do what needs to be done to reach a satisfactory outcome.

If your business relies on remote workers, oversaturating their day-to-day tasks with more minutiae isn’t going to work. Having a successful remote team dictates that you find a balance between laissez-faire leadership and micromanagement.

A Two-Step Process You Can Use to Improve Remote Team Collaboration

When we write about collaboration, we typically do so by telling you about the tools and services that are available. These tools really do make a massive difference and save a whole lot of time and effort for project managers, decision makers, and other administrators. On the other end of this strategy are remote workers; most of which work from the confines of their home. Let’s not pretend that it’s simple to get the best work out of someone who is constantly dealing with personal distractions. This is why it is essential to get your team—the people who are responsible for the success or failure of your projects or service delivery—involved in said project or service delivery strategy early.

You can do this pretty easily if you follow this two-step process:

Collaborative Vision for Product or Service Delivery

In order to get a remote team invested the way an in-house team would be, you need to communicate and allow feedback. Part of the collaborative process is getting ideas from people who actually work on a job. One of the best ways to do this is to ask your staff the following three questions:

1. How would you describe what we are trying to accomplish?
2. What are some of the problems you see with the project as it currently stands?
3. How would your approach differ from the one laid out?

By engaging the worker before the project commences, you not only give them the confidence that their opinion matters, you will get them thinking critically about the project that is being undertaken. Sure, ultimately your staff is going to have to do it the way that is best for your company, but getting the perspective of the people responsible for a successful conclusion to your project could not be more valuable.

You may want to split your team into groups and ask them to collaborate on individual adjustments they would like to make. This saves time over going through the whole process individually and will get better answers to the questions above. If you bring them back and identify the common issues presented by each group, you will have a pretty good idea of what concerns your team has. This is collaboration at its best.

Focus on the Problems

Once you have a list of group answers, you can pretty easily identify what problems your production or service delivery staff are considering. Then you can start collaborating on how to fix the would-be problems. For remote teams, you can do all of this with technology. Collaboration apps have been developed that integrate necessary software with a message board and instant messaging applications, making it a great tool for end-to-end collaboration, even if your teams are working from across the country. Integrations for these collaboration apps can include video messaging, collaborative production applications, and more.

Obviously, without technology, managing remote collaboration can get frustrating quickly. This is where Thrive comes in. We can set your business up with collaboration tools that are secure, reliable, and dynamic. If you would like to talk to one of our IT professionals about the technology behind impressive collaboration, contact Thrive today.

The post Remote Collaboration is More than a 9-to-5 Gig appeared first on Thrive.

Microsoft 365 Security Monitoring

Security monitoring and alerts are not inherently a part of Microsoft’s cloud-based collaboration suite. Things like suspicious logins or multiple login attempts, permissions changes, or changes to user settings are logged, but not analyzed. Thrive’s intelligent security software monitors these logs and flags suspicious activity for further review. Depending on the type of event and level of severity, Thrive either quickly blocks the hacking attempt or reaches out to your internal team for further action.

Thrive monitors approximately twenty crucial logs for suspicious activity. Here are some of the top areas of concern.

Suspicious Remote Logins

With a global workforce working remotely, it can be more difficult than ever to identify when a login looks suspicious. While a large number of hacking attempts originate in countries like Bulgaria, Pakistan, and Russia, true workers living in those areas still need daily access. Using geofencing and IP identification, Thrive’s intelligent monitoring software can better pinpoint and block true fraudulent login attempts.

Permissions Changes

Any user with administrative rights can grant or restrict the administrative rights of others, as well as make changes to security settings protecting your organization’s data. When any user is granted administrative permission rights, Thrive’s team is automatically notified. Unless previously notified of the change, our team of cybersecurity experts reaches out to your identified point of contact to confirm whether the change was genuine or malicious.

Changes to User Security Settings

Similar to administrative rights changes, individual user settings are monitored for changes.

A hacker who has already successfully infiltrated your system can add or remove MFA to further block the real user from regaining access and establish themselves as the true account holder. Once the real user is locked out of their account, the attacker is then free to steal as much data and cause as much damage as they can. With Thrive’s security monitoring, actions like these are automatically flagged for more serious review so the account can be quickly shut down.

Multiple Password Resets or Multiple Login Attempts

Brute force attacks are among the most common forms of infiltration, as they are extremely simple and reliable. Relying on users having weak passwords, a program goes to work guessing a user’s password until it eventually cracks it, if the password is simple enough. Oftentimes this software is ‘smart’ enough to fly under the radar and avoid flag-raising account lockouts. Guessing just the right number of times every day, however, typically goes undetected. Thrive monitors for suspiciously high numbers of unsuccessful login attempts to block hackers from ever gaining access.

Targeted Event Monitoring

If you subscribe to Microsoft’s collaboration tools, contact us to talk about expanding your security coverage and improving your cybersecurity posture today.

The post Security Monitoring Now Offered with Thrive’s Managed Microsoft 365 Services appeared first on Thrive.

Microsoft Subscription Model Updates

Microsoft is now offering three subscription models under NCE- monthly, annual, and three-year terms. The details of the three-year plans have yet to be released, but what we do have are the details of the monthly and one-year plans, as described below.

Price Increase

Subscribers to monthly plans who did not opt into a yearly plan prior to March 1st will see a several dollar per-seat price hike on their next invoices. Those who committed to  annual subscriptions prior to March 1st won’t notice any difference in their bill for the next 12 months. 

Monthly costs for the six Modern Workspace plans will change as follows:

Office 365 E1: $8 $10

Office 365 E3: $20 $23

Office 365 E5: $35 $38

Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $5 $6

Microsoft 365 Business Premium: $20 $22

Microsoft 365 E3: $32 $36

Plan and Seat Downgrades

Under the CSP model, yearly commitment users had the ability to downgrade seat plans and even reduce the number of seats they held on a month-to-month basis. Under the NCE plan, yearly or three-year committed seats are not eligible for downgrades or reductions. The ability to freely remove seats and downgrade subscriptions during the plan period is still an option available under a monthly plan, but it comes at a 20% premium.

What Do I Do Next?

If you missed the window of opportunity to lock in your current pricing, don’t panic. While there is no way to reinstate the lower pricing your organization enjoyed previous to this month’s price hike, you do have time before your plan renewal period (or before July 1st, whichever is sooner) to strategize and decide what’s best for your business. If your organization has a relatively stable number of users throughout the year, it might be best to choose a plan(s) for those seats and commit to a yearly contract through the NCE – that way, you will be protected in the event of any future increases or plan changes that happen throughout the year. If your organization has a seasonal influx of workers, it may make sense to keep a portion of your seats on a monthly plan – while the flexibility associated comes at a premium, it wouldn’t make sense to pay for those seats for an entire year when they’re only utilized for a few months. Here are the key dates to keep in mind as Microsoft moves all users to NCE plans:

March 10th: All new subscriptions must be NCE Monthly, Annual, or Three-Year Terms

June 30th: Last day to renew CSP subscriptions for a maximum of 12 months

July 1st: All renewals of existing subscriptions must be done with an NCE plan. 

Your Trusted Microsoft CSP

Thrive knows that budgets are tight, but access to Microsoft’s software and services is vital to the success of your company. Thrive’s team of experts is here to help you navigate these plan changes and price increases to choose the combination of subscriptions that works best for you. Contact us today. 

The post Navigating the March 2022 Microsoft Price Increase appeared first on Thrive.

The beginning of the pandemic forced many companies to sprint toward achieving remote working capabilities to ensure business continuity. Remote access has traditionally been viewed as a luxury to be used essentially on weekends, nights, or in the case of necessity. We are in for the long haul of remote working and collaboration, and now, more than ever, financial companies must create a competitive advantage in this paradigm shift in the workforce.

According to PwC’s US remote work survey of 50 executives and 144 employees at US financial services firms, before the pandemic, only 29% of employers had at least 60% of employees working from home once a week. Today, 69% expect at least three-fifths of their workforce to telecommute at least once a week.

The knee-jerk reaction to moving business operations off-site quickly at the beginning of the pandemic didn’t account for the possibility of a long-term solution. This caused hedge funds to leverage specific sets of application stacks that weren’t designed for remote access. Now with the initial remote workforce setup hurdles behind us, quick thinking, technology enablement, and agility previously used are still vital for financial firms to remain competitive and move forward.

The initial onset of shifting to remote work uncovered critical gaps in business operations and collaboration capabilities. So, what does a sustainable remote environment strategy that can have a positive impact look like for the financial industry? The answer is a 1-2 punch of SharePoint and Microsoft Teams in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem with an extra jab from Microsoft Power BI. This powerful combination of technology tools is already in place at many financial companies. The difference is the power of utilisation to tap into the true potential of achieving seamless and real-time collaboration with enhanced financial business processes.

Pre-pandemic businesses were accustomed to ‘prairie dogging’ – where you’d pop your head over a cubicle for banter and a mini collaboration session. However, that method of ‘getting on the same page’ has since been sophisticated and institutionalised over the past year and a half. But, we’ve only scratched the surface.

For example, financial services companies have an abundance of files nested in folders, emails, and Excel spreadsheets, which can slow down the relay of information stored. Those systems began to migrate to modern toolsets to accommodate the distributed workforce, however, now the real work is beginning, and financial firms are starting to realize the muscle of the Microsoft stack.

Data is ever-changing and financial services companies are stepping up to ensure access to tools that display and unite information discreetly. Microsoft Teams in the Microsoft 365 suite powers collaboration by serving as the window into all data with customised applications specific to your business.

Within Microsoft 365, businesses are able to view, edit, and share data in real-time with permission management to protect critical financial data. In SharePoint, employees can transform Excel files into a modern cloud workplace application by eliminating multiple inputs and increasing the speed to drive business decisions. SharePoint also relieves time and fatigue by extrapolating data and communication from countless email threads to enhance business decisions.

Teams and SharePoint are revolutionizing collaboration, task management, and approval process workflows. However, there is one critical piece of the puzzle needed to transform businesses – that is often underutilised. The game-changing component to a financial business’ IT infrastructure is tapping into Microsoft Power BI, a data analytics powerhouse that enables companies to capture, visualise, and analyse data that matters to most.

With Power BI, you can scrap the lengthy reports and access current data that is readable and understandable with eye-catching charts and graphs at your fingertips. No more waiting on figures, using data from old reports or being unable to find specific data sets. Power BI leverages its business intelligence technology to retrieve data and reports quickly using the most current data without tedious file searches and human error. The robust tool enables reports to be built on the fly and embed them in almost any place within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Connecting to live data sources like SharePoint, Salesforce, or most other third-party apps and tools, enables businesses to take action using that data, identifying issues, trends, and opportunities.

Financial businesses recognise the urgency of unleashing the full potential of the Microsoft stack and go beyond just accessing the tool. However, this digital transformation journey to modernise business processes and data isn’t an easy path. An expert partner can help identify the key features of Microsoft 365 – whether it be Teams, SharePoint, Excel, Power BI, or more -to maximize your return on investment, empower a distributed workforce, and catalyse your financial business.

It’s important to note that remote workforces aren’t the only ones to reap the benefits of embracing technology innovation to achieve superior collaboration and performance. Businesses are embracing hybrid, on-site, and remote workers or a combination of all of the above. Whether it be fully remote, hybrid, or in the office, these Microsoft tools and power apps increase efficiencies in financial businesses – no matter what your workforce looks like. This forward-thinking IT architecture is a foundation that solves common challenges in modern workplaces and is a vehicle to untapped business processes and data that drive decisions financial companies can bank on.

The post Pandemic post-mortem: The 1-2 technology punch for financial companies appeared first on Thrive.

Discussion included secure external sharing in Microsoft Office programs, the security and governance controls that should be in place in every organization, and how platforms continue to evolve and why it’s important to stay up to date with the latest features and changes.

Below, check out some highlights from this enlightening conversation.

On what’s driving transformation in collaboration:

Ryan: People are looking for efficiency. They have vendors, consultants, and external projects to complete. Sending outdated, antiquated documents back and forth over email and trying to piece the changes back together is difficult. As someone who has been diving into Microsoft Teams for years now, when I have to go back to sending items over email it’s tough.

Chip: Absolutely. I’m sure I’m not the only person who has dealt with this, but starting an email thread can sometimes morph into something completely else, or something that doesn’t have to deal with the original email. This is where Teams and collaboration can shine. With Teams, there’s built-in security that’s already there, because you know who you are collaborating with and doing so in real-time.

Ryan: Right. Email is a tough place to store data and access it. It’s fine to send a message to someone, but when it comes to working on a document or sending one, it becomes difficult to use email. We hear from clients that their vendors and their customers are asking for [collaboration tools], too. It’s not just for internal use, but it’s for external use, too.

Why data classification and protecting data matters:

Ryan: One of the things we always highly recommend is a governance plan. Governance is half about security, and half about guidance. Part of governance is about architecture, and understanding the type of data that will be shared externally, so policies can be set.

Chip: Policies and procedures are important. You can’t secure anything before knowing what you’re trying to secure and how to secure it. We do come across clients who may not have an information security plan. It doesn’t have to be perfect the very first time, but there has to be a plan on paper to start with. If there is no written information security policy, employees don’t know what they can and can’t share. Should they be on social media? Should they be able to plug a USB port into a work computer and take data home? It depends on the security policy. If there’s nothing there, then we don’t know what should and shouldn’t be protected.

On platform capabilities and what they can offer:

Ryan: I think a lot of people don’t know what the platform capabilities are and how these platforms can protect them. Simply going through settings can give you an idea but won’t give you the full picture. The first thing we always do is we start to educate ourselves on what a platform can offer, to better understand what data can and should be locked down. Education is important.

Chip: Education is important, yes. It can’t just stop, either. The platform will keep on changing.

Ryan: Exactly. Customers ask us to help them keep up with everything a platform has to offer. From a security and a sharing perspective, that is a risk, right? When things change in the platform, they need to be identified quickly. Capabilities continue to be added, and it can present more challenges along the way. We’re here to help. When a platform is set up with proper policies, it can be secured where it would pass a stress test of a security audit.

Chip: We don’t ever put something into place and leave it and walk away. It’s important to monitor, maintain, and adjust as things change.

How to avoid “shadow IT”:

Chip: There’s a whole concept of “shadow IT”, where employees are trying to do their jobs, and they want to do their job right, and they need to get data to someone. So, they might, for example, open up a personal Dropbox account and transfer data that way. The last thing anyone wants is data leaving the organization and not knowing where it’s going. Having policies and procedures in place goes a long way to eliminating shadow IT and data leaving the organization. It’s not malicious intent. It’s just an employee trying to do their job. They need to have the right tools so they can do their job effectively and not put an organization at risk.

Ryan: We can set the needs up in a way that they are supported. Generally, end users will find a way. We call it shadow IT, but essentially, they’re working around systems. So, give them a viable solution to do what they need but make it viable and secure. You’re better off that way than you are letting them try to figure it out on their own and seeing data or important information slip through the cracks.

Be sure to check out the full conversation below, and contact the Thrive team for all of your digital transformation and security needs. We are here to ensure organizations have everything they need to work successfully, whether in the office or remotely.

The post Talking Tech: Collaboration and Security appeared first on Thrive.