Reciprocal Technologies Blog

When the pandemic hit early in 2020, many business owners didn’t understand the situation they were about to face. Many businesses didn’t have the technology in place to support remote work, and the ones that did likely had employees that weren’t prepared for the responsibilities that come with working from home. Now, as millions of people are getting vaccinated and governments are slowly lifting restrictions, the question becomes: What now?

With each day, it seems that we all have a new threat or risk to worry about. Lately, there’s been a lot said about the dangers of blue light exposure, with lots of things to buy that supposedly help fix the problems it can cause.

Wouldn’t you know it, but blue light actually can create some issues that could negatively impact your health and wellbeing. Let’s discuss it, and what you can do to address it.

Artificial intelligence is one of the most intriguing technologies that has come down the pike. For the small and medium-sized business, it may seem more like science fiction than a solution to their business’ operational problems. Today, AI is more accessible for the SMB than ever, and today, we thought we would share with you a situation where the technology—designed to help out in a bakery—is being used to diagnose cancer. 

While it seems decidedly commonplace nowadays, the Internet is undeniably a miracle of the modern age—shrinking the world in a way never seen before. Of course, this has complicated things considerably in terms of the rules that the Internet must comply with, based on regional regulations. Let’s reexamine the impact that these laws, regulations, and restrictions have had on how the Internet appears across the globe.

If your business utilizes Microsoft Word in any way, shape, or form, there’s a good chance that you aren’t using it to its full capabilities. Let’s go over just a few of the features that the software offers that can assist you in excelling (whoops… wrong Office application) in your day-to-day responsibilities, and how to put them to use.

For the past decade or so, one of the most mentioned emerging technologies is blockchain. It was hailed as the technology that would change everything, but as far as the practical uses that would facilitate that change, blockchain hasn’t seemed to have done much. Today, we thought we would take a closer look at blockchain and why it hasn’t become the world-altering technology a lot of people were expecting.

When you are looking to buy a new computer, you need to consider the options available for data storage. This is especially true if you are looking to replace a computer used by several users. The more people that use a computer the more files will likely be stored, after all. Today, however, there is another determination to be made: how fast is your storage device?

Individuals are increasingly understanding the value of their data, and that is a good thing. Unfortunately, a lot of small and medium-sized businesses are operating today without any type of data backup protecting their business’ data, and that, of course, is bad. It is important that if you don’t have a dedicated data backup and recovery strategy in place, that you work to fix that immediately. Today we’ll tell you why. 

We will never pass up the opportunity to draw attention to the importance of cybersecurity awareness, as it is a crucial element for any business to consider. One serious issue that has caused significant stress amongst businesses is phishing. Let’s consider some recent statistics to evaluate where we stand right now, specifically in terms of the prevalence of phishing attacks.

Cyberattacks have been carried out by nations for decades, but for whatever reason, our minds still build the hoodie-wearing cyberpunk sitting at a laptop in a dimly-lit room. This often isn’t the case. Today, we thought we would shine a light on state-sponsored hacking, starting with the attack carried out recently against the U.S.-based cybersecurity company FireEye.

Revenue generation is the name of the game for every business and sometimes technology is looked on as more of a hindrance to profitability than a tool to cultivate it. To turn this notion around, a business needs to make strategic investments that will return some type of benefit, whether that be the availability of alternate revenue streams, a boost in productivity, improved collaboration, and more. Today, let’s take a look at some ways that businesses can invest in their IT and improve their profitability as a result. 

Business hardware is never a small investment to make, so for a business to make the best use out of their invested funds, their hardware needs to be seriously considered. One way to do so is to use a virtualized environment, whether that environment is hosted onsite or in the cloud. Let’s consider the inherent benefits of virtualization.

Most modern businesses are using information systems to accelerate their profitability. In fact, small and medium-sized businesses are expected to spend over $650 billion in 2021. The question becomes what technologies are they spending their money on, and are they objectively the right investments to make? Today, we will unpack these questions by highlighting two investments that many businesses are pursuing.

Let’s face facts: there could easily be quite a bit on your mobile device that you don’t want someone to have access to. However, on the other side of the coin, you hardly want to appear rude and never let someone use your phone to place a call or look up some contact information… right? As it turns out, Android has a little-known feature called Android Guest Mode that many can use to share one’s device more securely.

We’re right in the middle of tax season and accountants are having to manage potential attacks on their data. Since people depend on your organization to keep their most sensitive information secure, having an effective strategy to protect that information is extremely important. As an IT service provider, we have solutions to help accountants handle this issue. Let’s take a look. 

Most businesses rely on specific software, and a lot of it. It’s used to manage, protect, and facilitate your business. Today’s software is more flexible than ever before, and while control over your business’ IT systems is always better, the ability for a business to get the tools it needs may take you in a different direction. Let’s take a look at some considerations you should make when you are looking to get software for your business. 

Laptops are pretty great. They’re powerful, yet portable computers that can be brought effectively anywhere work needs to be done. That being said, there are a few drawbacks that can irritate many users to some extent. For instance: trying to click-and-drag your cursor as you are using the trackpad. For this week’s tip, let’s go into a feature that you can use to make this process a lot simpler.

Remote work is a more popular option than ever, considering how businesses have needed to adapt, but that isn’t to say that this option hasn’t experienced some challenges. One major drawback has been the impact that the situation at hand has had on the cumulative mental health of your team. There is some cognitive dissonance associated with working together while separating—largely because the casual conversations that generally come with working together have been lost.

After 2020, it is understandable that many businesses would be seeking out a way to recoup a lot of the expenses and losses that the year’s events likely incurred upon them. This has led many to turn to their IT investments as the sacrificial lamb. While we are undeniably biased, we would argue that there are better ways to streamline your business’ expenses in terms of its IT than to simply cut them outright.

Granted, you’re probably most interested in your computer when you’re using it. However, it is very important to consider what you do when you walk away based on the list found in the Power section of the Start menu. Let’s go over what each of these options actually does.