LSeven Solutions Blog

"As a business owner, when should I worry about implementing data backup for my company?"

The answer comes in the form of another question, "How much do you value your business?"

We can't stress how important data backup is for businesses. Backup is so important that March 31st is World Backup Day, a day for people and businesses to observe the importance of backing up data regularly.

Read on for World Backup Day's excellent Infographic.

Server Virtualization has been around for a while but has quickly become more popular for small businesses due to the long-term costs saved when your servers are virtualized. What exactly is server virtualization and how can it benefit South Florida businesses?

Fans of Microsoft's note taking application can now use OneNote on iOS devices, Windows Phone 7 Smartphones, and at long last, Android devices. Up until now, Android users have been left in the dark for synchronizing and managing their notes through an official OneNote app.

We've seen a pattern over the years as Microsoft releases operating systems where every other operating system is great, while the releases in between are somewhat lacking. Windows 98 was pretty solid, as was XP, however the middle-child Windows ME? Not so much. This kind of progression is usually reserved for Star Trek films. What does this mean for Windows 8, the successor of the great Windows 7?

For those who find themselves struggling with resizing windows and flipping between documents and getting lost in a sea of open applications on their desktop, connecting a second monitor to your workstation can double your screen real estate.

One of the benefits of managed IT services is allotting time and having the proper tools to effectively monitor an entire network for issues. This allows technicians at L7 Solutions to detect, identify, and resolve issues before they start to affect users.

Microsoft's Excel may look daunting, but it can be incredibly useful for presenting and organizing massive amounts of data. While it is capable of letting you put together advanced formulas, much of the time it's just nice to see a sum of a column of figures.

Over the past couple years we've seen a huge shift in the reliability and functionality of the tablet PC. What was once was a struggling market of just a few overpriced, bulky, devices that were neither practical nor stylish has become the next big consumer product. Tablets have been making it into the business world, supplementing smartphones as a new addition to mobile arsenals. We're going to highlight the best two tablets on the market that you can buy right now.

If your company has employed a backup solution, what process to you go through to ensure it is doing its job? Backup systems need to be tested regularly to ensure all the proper files are being backed up, and to check data integrity.

Email is a huge part of day-to-day business, and it can take a lot of time out of your day to manage it. Fortunately, Outlook has a lot of great features that will help you manage your inbox and effectively handle your email as efficiently as possible.

Social Media is a tough industry - the only way a good social network can succeed is by being extremely popular, and it takes a lot of criteria for that to happen. A social network site either has it or it doesn't, and Pinterest apparently has it in massive quantities.

We've been blogging a bit about ways to prepare for laptop theft and what to do if a company laptop is actually stolen. Laptop and mobile device theft is a widespread issue for businesses and can lead to data theft which can be extremely costly; much more than the mere price of the hardware. This issue is all too familiar with NASA, which admits that thousands of mobile device theft incidents have occurred over the past few years.

We saw a statistic the other day that really boggled our minds. LoJack, a security firm that specializes in theft, estimates that two million laptops are stolen each year. That's about a one in ten chance that your laptop will fall into someone else's hands. What can you do to prevent that?

To most people, computer viruses are things that cause annoyance, downtime, and cost money to fix. That's pretty bad on it's own, but some viruses are much more complex than others and can be far more dangerous. Let's look at Stuxnet, coined as the first weapon made entirely out of code, and why it is so frightening.

Television and films have almost desensitized us to the very idea of dangerous viruses. From nonsensical 'hacker' jargon in crime investigation shows to Jeff Goldblum using a computer virus to save the world from an alien invasion. While they might not have their science down, computer viruses can be crafted to do cause some pretty serious trouble.

Stuxnet is a computer virus that was discovered in 2010, infecting computer databases in power plants all over the world. It has some very specific features that target nuclear reactor, specifically centrifuges that spin nuclear material at Iran's enrichment facilities. Viruses like Stuxnet aren't just fabricated in basements by angry, malevolent computer nerds - hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of data, meticulous research, and even knowledge of very classified internal systems all go into the development.

On top of that, viruses like Stuxnet can be available for anybody to find and toy with - it could be retooled for other malicious purposes.  Check out a short video about the threat of the Stuxnet virus.

Network security is becoming increasingly important for businesses, corporations, and organizations of all sizes. Malicious software is becoming more intelligent and more devastating, and even harder to purge from infected computers. Taking proactive measures is necessary to ensure business continuity.

Is your network at risk of malicious viruses, worms, and malware? Contact us at (954) 573-1300 to get an evaluation of your network's security.

Business owners, this one is definitely for you. You've probably experienced the fact that shaving expenses here and there can lead to more flexibility and long-term savings, but at what cost? Are you limiting your company by nixing those extra services and costs? Sometimes you can get more and still save money. Let's look at a few ways South Florida businesses can do just that.

The problem with carrying around an expensive, portable piece of equipment is that it's possible for someone to pick it up and run with it. According to LoJack, a security firm that focuses on stolen property, two million laptops are stolen each year. What should you do if you are a victim of laptop theft?

Unfortunately cell phone service providers are discovering that smartphone users love their bandwidth. With the majority of carriers dropping unlimited data plans, when a user goes over their limit massive charges can apply. Let's cover a few tips to limit the amount of bandwidth you use on your smartphone.

Google has gradually become a major part in our lives. Most of us use it every day to find answers, research products, and determine what South Florida restaurants are open on a Sunday night.  Google is on our phones, we watch videos on YouTube, and we get from point A to point B with Google maps. So what does Google know about us?

Whether you are going completely paperless or just want to send digital copies of paper documents, there are a lot of solutions out there for quickly scanning a doc and converting it to PDF for easy archiving and emailing, but most of these devices aren't exactly portable. Here's a quick way to digitize documents with the camera on your Android smartphone.