You can’t blame the people at Bonstra | Haresign ARCHITECTS if they feel a little out of sorts as they work from their individual remote locations during the COVID-19 public health crisis. After all, the work they do in architectural design is all about creating physical spaces that not only set the stage for daily life, they stimulate the kind of human interactions that build community.
When Bonstra | Haresign ARCHITECTS decided to change IT support companies, they had no idea how much this decision would affect their ability to continue business operations in the coming weeks. Their first day of onboarding with XPERTECHS was on March 1st, 2020 and at that time, no one had any idea that the country would soon be submerged in a public health crisis that would force the company to send all their employees home to work.
Cybercriminals are opportunist predators and right now they are exploiting fears and concerns about COVID-19 in order to get people to click on links, open attachments, or give away confidential information in response to a message that is delivered in an email.
Unless you already had a remote workforce before the COVID-19 pandemic, the way you set up your employees to work from home may have inadvertently exposed your company to security risks. While some risks emerged because your people are not working inside your corporate perimeter anymore, other risks have always been there, but their importance has increased.
An accounting clerk gets an email from the CEO of his company. He thinks it’s a little strange, but he proceeds to follow the instructions in the email to purchase several gift cards and reply back with the gift card ID numbers. When the clerk goes to the CEO a day later to ask about getting reimbursed for the gift cards, the CEO says, “What gift cards?”
If only the clerk had looked a little closer at the email address.
What score would you give your organization if your ability to quickly get your employees set up to work from home was a test of your corporate flexibility? Was the process seamless? Clumsy? Something in between? Part of your decision in giving yourself high marks or a failing grade has to do with how you transitioned your communications.
When you’re cooking, you want to have everything you need close at hand to make your task easier. What if everything wasn’t close at hand? Let’s say your pantry was in your basement. That would mean that every time you needed a box of pasta or a can of peas, you’d have to walk downstairs to get what you need.
We couldn’t think of a better way to illustrate how Microsoft 365 and the Teams app can change the way that you communicate and collaborate, than to tell you how it’s changed the way we work here at XPERTECHS. As technology professionals, we’re pretty good at creating processes to make business operations efficient, but when our Sales team started using the Teams app, we discovered that we could take our productivity up to a whole new level.
You might have become interested in Microsoft Teams because you need a video conferencing platform now that your people are spread out working from home. Team’s real superpower, however, is in pulling people and capabilities together into a cohesive, dynamic workspace.
To our valued clients:
I know that you have probably been receiving many messages like this, but as a valued customer who uses our services every single day, I want you to know how we're committed to keeping your IT services running smoothly during these challenging times.
