SMART Blog

Smart Services has been providing independent agents with proactive, fast, and expert technology services since 1991.

Save Time and See Results with Managed IT

Save Time and See Results with Managed IT

Managing a business is a tedious endeavor where time is a precious commodity. Therefore, it’s the goal of every business owner to dedicate as much of their time as possible to leading profit-making initiatives, which, let’s face it, can’t happen if you’re busy troubleshooting computer and network problems.

909 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

How Much Does Stolen Data Go For? Less Than You Might Think

How Much Does Stolen Data Go For? Less Than You Might Think

How much do you think a criminal would pay for your company’s sensitive data that’s been stolen by hackers? As it turns out, your data may not be worth as much as you may think, and that’s a bad thing for you and your business.

1188 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

How Thinking Short Term About Technology Hurts Your Bottom Line

How Thinking Short Term About Technology Hurts Your Bottom Line

Those in the business sector in charge of making decisions can often break down the choices they face as follows: benefit the short term vs the long term. If you’ve got experience with decision making, then you realize that planning for the long term works out better for all parties involved, including your bottom line. This is especially the case when it comes to big decisions involving technology.

1404 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

How Should Business Owners Respond Appropriately to the Mobile Revolution?

How Should Business Owners Respond Appropriately to the Mobile Revolution?

Mobile devices have a prevalent place in the modern office. In fact, a recent study by Gartner found that 80 percent of all employees bring their personal mobile device with them to work. This Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend comes with a host of benefits, like improved productivity and employee morale, but it increases the risk of a corporate data breach if not properly managed. How should a concerned business owner respond to this trend?

1185 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

Why BDR is the Ideal Backup Solution for SMBs

Why BDR is the Ideal Backup Solution for SMBs

How does your SMB backup its data? Have you put much thought into keeping your data backup up and stored off-site? Have you even invested in data backup? If not, then you should consider your data backup options.

1366 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

Your Employees are Your Most Important Security Feature, and Biggest Risk

Your Employees are Your Most Important Security Feature, and Biggest Risk

Here’s a question: on a scale of one to ten, how confident are you that your employees are acting in the best interests of your organization’s network security? How confident are you that you’re setting a good example when it comes to handling your business’ security? Unfortunately, any confidence you have on this matter may be misplaced.

1214 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

What is Cloud Waste and How Can You Prevent It?

What is Cloud Waste and How Can You Prevent It?

Cloud computing offers businesses an economical way to obtain the software and services they need. Yet, there comes a point when having too much of a good thing becomes wasteful, no matter how affordable the service may be. If a business owner isn’t careful about how they utilize the cloud, then they can unknowingly find themselves experiencing “cloud waste.”

1243 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

Are You Frustrated with Business Technology? Managed IT Can Help

Are You Frustrated with Business Technology? Managed IT Can Help

How does your business maintain its critical technology assets? Organizations with limited budgets and workforces often resort to forsaking technology support entirely, only getting the help they need when something goes wrong. This is called break-fix IT, and it can become a major detriment to your organization in the long run if left unchecked. Thankfully, there’s a simple solution, and it doesn’t involve hiring in-house technicians or breaking your budget.

1110 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

6 Data Backup Best Practices that Make Your Business More Resilient

6 Data Backup Best Practices that Make Your Business More Resilient

As an agency owner, you’ve surely thought about what the future holds for your organization. However, one of the areas that is often overlooked is how you will respond in the event of a data disaster. How can your business bounce back from such a catastrophic event? One of the first steps is understanding your data backup and disaster recovery process, as well as how you can improve your current setup.

1918 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

Colleges Begin to Implement Two-Factor Authentication to Improve Network Security

Colleges Begin to Implement Two-Factor Authentication to Improve Network Security

Has your business dealt with a phishing attack? If not, consider yourself lucky. There has been a massive spike in phishing attacks as hackers are aggressively going after organizations and the personal identifiable information they hold. These attacks are just not focused on typical businesses either, they are going after organizations that provide public goods. One place that has become a major target for hackers (and phishing attacks) are schools.

1289 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

You Need a Plan to Protect Your Data From These 3 Common Disasters

You Need a Plan to Protect Your Data From These 3 Common Disasters

Sometimes Mother Nature simply isn’t on your side, or you’re unfortunate enough to experience a troublesome disaster that threatens to knock your business off its feet. While various parts of the world are known for experiencing deadly natural disasters, other regions might not be as prone to them, giving business owners the wrong idea. It’s not a question of whether you’ll be hit with a crippling disaster, but when.

1001 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

Common Misconceptions Concerning Business Cybersecurity

Common Misconceptions Concerning Business Cybersecurity

Today, we want to talk about something that not a lot of businesses would want to think about. What would happen to your organization if it were to suddenly experience a hacking attack? While security solutions can go a long way toward protecting your organization, you still want to make sure that you’re not relying solely on your security tools for protection. Rather, you should always stay vigilant, even if you don’t think something could go wrong.

1096 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

What Does the Cloud Have to Offer for SMBs?

What Does the Cloud Have to Offer for SMBs?

The cloud has taken the computing world by storm. You’d be hard-pressed to find a technology that didn’t tie back to the cloud in some way. This is especially true when you consider the needs of the SMB, and how the cloud can provide for those needs.

1158 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

Self-Driving Cars: Would You Hand the Wheel Over to a Computer?

Self-Driving Cars: Would You Hand the Wheel Over to a Computer?

Are you ready to share the road with self-driving cars? According to a recent survey by the University of Michigan, 37.2 percent of drivers are “very concerned” about riding in a self-driving car, while 66.6 percent are “very or moderately concerned.” Simply put, the public isn’t quite ready for self-driving cars. Although, the gradual adoption of vehicles equipped with assisted-driving technology is already happening.

1289 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

The Cost of Adequate Cybersecurity is Way Less Than the Cost of a Data Breach

The Cost of Adequate Cybersecurity is Way Less Than the Cost of a Data Breach

It’s the nature of every problem relating to business to include consequences that extend far beyond the timeframe of the issue’s initial impact. This is especially true for data breaches; an all-too-common problem that hurts organizations in many more ways than one.

1148 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

How the Proactive Approach to IT Management Saves You Time and Money

How the Proactive Approach to IT Management Saves You Time and Money

So, you’ve just finished up a huge, potentially career-altering project. Your finger is poised over the mouse, ready to click ‘save,’ when suddenly your entire project disappears. Turns out, a critical issue just killed your network, your progress, and your mood. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to keep this from happening?

1163 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

Mobile Technology Trends Present a Major Challenge for Business Owners

Mobile Technology Trends Present a Major Challenge for Business Owners

The small business is under siege. Many small business owners do what they can to compete, but it seems like there is no solution for their revenue woes, as larger organizations are able to attract a larger part of the market share. This has been the case for some time, but there are market forces at work today that make it even more difficult for businesses to contend with competitors that have more resources.

1015 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

How to Get "All You Can Eat” IT Support Without Overspending

How to Get "All You Can Eat” IT Support Without Overspending

Let’s say you get a bill in the mail for technology support, but you don’t necessarily know why you got it. Pretty troubling, right? Clearly someone in your organization isn’t privy about the proper method of getting help for their technology, but if you regularly work with a break-fix IT provider, this kind of correspondence (and cost) is unavoidable. Thankfully, there’s a simple solution to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again.

1168 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

3 Ways to Boost Security for Your Hosted VoIP System

3 Ways to Boost Security for Your Hosted VoIP System

In the course of doing business your organization needs to lean on its communications investments. Efficient discourse between vendors, clients, and employees allows for productive action to be made quickly. If you have recently decided to deploy a feature-rich hosted VoIP business phone platform because of its ubiquity, you have to be cognizant of how to best secure your solution. Here are three variables that help you get the most out of your hosted VoIP solution.

1093 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

3 Benefits to Managed IT that Are Too Good to Ignore

3 Benefits to Managed IT that Are Too Good to Ignore

You’re in the middle of a project when your computer starts acting up. You smack it around a little bit to see if that has any effect, but it only makes the problem worse. Suddenly, there’s a blue screen and you have no clue what to do. What happened to your data? What will happen to your project? What will you do about the workstation replacement? Read on to find out.

1590 Hits
0 Comments
Continue reading

Sign up for our Newsletter!

  • Company Name *
  • First Name *
  • Last Name *