IT Horizons Blog

When helping our Grande Prairie clients plan their hardware lifecycle I’m often asked about the price difference between consumer and business class devices. If you can go down the street to Costco or Best Buy and pick up the latest back-to-school-special laptop for $500, why on earth would you spend two or even three times that amount for a business-line laptop from Lenovo or Dell? Here are some important points to consider when purchasing computers to make sure you’re getting the best return on your investment. In the Windows PC market, inexpensive home lines come with whatever low-cost surplus components are available to the manufacturer on the factory floor at the time. Because of this, the specifications change month-to-month or even faster and there can be wide differences in the nuts and bolts even within a single model of PC or laptop. This means that not only are you often...

You’ve probably heard of Cryptolocker. It’s the nefarious ransomware trojan targeting Microsoft Windows that made the rounds via email starting in 2013-2014 that locked businesses out of their own files by encrypting them and holding them hostage. It impacted many – including Grande Prairie organizations that you know and may do business with! Cryptolocker and its many ransomware cousins act like typical viruses in the way they’re spread and distributed. But what makes ransomware so dangerous to you and your business is the fact that it specifically targets corporate data for monetary gain and the results can be catastrophic for those whose network is unprepared and inadequately protected from such an attack. Ransomware works by encrypting and locking you out of the files on your computers, server, and network storage. These files could include your policies and procedures, sensitive contracts and agreements, or your accounting database and financials. The attackers...

We all rely on tech to help run our business, and it’s great when it’s running smoothly, but it can be horrible and expensive when it isn’t. Hiring the right tech company to look after your technology will keep your systems functioning effortlessly, and can make the difference between just surviving and powering ahead in full growth mode! What to look for: A good IT firm will start by having a consultant sit down with your leadership team to listen and learn all about your business before recommending anything. They should provide unlimited computer support to you and your staff for a fixed monthly fee. A technology strategy plan will be offered and created for your business, with at least one year planned. Every business is different and has different technological needs. A custom tech solution is part of every successful business. Experience! Hire an IT company that has experience...

Folders suck at making your data and documents easily searchable and they’re slowing your business down. That’s a pretty bold statement isn’t it? After all, file folders have been used since the early days of enterprise to store documents and information, why all of the sudden do they suck? I’m going to answer that for you with a quickly conjured example of your typical folder, letting you down when you need it the most. I’ve always thought accounting was sort of a neat field, so I’m going to create a fake accounting firm called ‘Horizons Accounting and Bookkeeping Company’ (HABCO). Here is what a folder structure for a company such as HABCO might look like. You can see we have: Duplicate sub-folders such as invoices, taxes and year end. A complicated amount of folder/subfolder nesting. Folders are containers. They describe what is inside of them. The invoices folder holds invoices, straightforward...

I hear people often refer to Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive as backups. I’d like to dispel that myth by explaining why these cloud services do not provide enough data protection to be considered a true backup and also how an actual online backup system can provide robust data protection that compliments the convenience offered by you cloud storage service of choice. Cloud storage service – how does it work? A cloud storage service like Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box.net synchronizes documents and files from your personal computers and devices with your cloud provider. If you make a change to your documents on one of your connected computers or devices, those changes replicate to all your other devices by synchronizing through the cloud (and by cloud we mean a data center/set of servers and storage devices maintained by the provider). This is handy because now you can access your files...