How productive are you and your team?

Working remotely, working from home, at the very least in some capacity, looks like it's becoming the new norm so having optics on how your team is doing with their tools is starting to become crucial.

With such a high uptake in the Microsoft 365 suite of tools for teams to work, collaborate, and meet virtually, Microsoft has put together the productivity score for organisations.

Your productivity score is a great dashboard overview of how your organisation is using the tools at their disposal, for how long, and at what times. Great to match up against meetings or training sessions!

Privacy is of the utmost importance to Microsoft at all times, so the productivity score is in no way a work monitoring tool, but simply a way to track the trends and identify the areas the team may need some extra training or the tools aren't being used to their potential.

For you Microsoft 365 users, please give it a go and let us know how you find it!

You can find your productivity score in the Microsoft 365 admin centre under 'reports'. You might have to enable the feature, in which case it can take up to 24 hours before insights are available.

"You can't measure what you can't see!"

Simple tool to help make the online workspace more fun!

How many of your team are working remotely in the current climate? A few of them, most of them, all of them?

Even if it's only one or two team members working remotely, including them in the workplace culture is critical to making sure they feel like they are part of the team and everyone is seeing and acknowledging what they are accomplishing.

We communicate through Microsoft Teams so we've added an app/bot called HeyTaco! 🌮 to help boost workplace culture.

This works on Slack too.

We aren't actually sending each other tacos🌮 to munch on (unfortunately...) but what we are sending each other is a fun version of kudos! Whenever a teammate does something that you want to highlight, you send a message to HeyTaco! saying that you want to give a taco🌮 to your team member for a certain reason and the whole team gets to see it.

As you work towards gaining a certain amount of tacos🌮, they can be redeemed for prizes for individual team members or pooled for a team prize.

It's a great way to shout out your teammates whether they are in the office or working remotely, helping maintain a great culture.

Recognition and feeling valued are super important, now even more than ever, with so many employees moving around jobs and even careers.

We as employers need to ensure we're creating and maintaining a workplace of choice that attracts and retains good people.

How are you keeping everyone involved and growing workplace culture online?

Are personal devices putting your organisation at risk?

Does your organisation allow employees to 'bring your own device(s)' (BYOD)?

A few years ago, the trend shifted from strictly company-issued devices to allowing employees to BYOD.

The motivation was simply convenience. With a surge in smartphones and devices, it seemed an easier choice for organisations to just allow users to use their own devices rather than issuing company ones for all staff.

Since the pandemic, this trend is reversing, and the main reason is the security and control of company data.

Simply put, it just isn't possible to completely secure access to company data for employees using personal devices.

There are some conditional access policies we can enforce for M365 accounts, which is better than nothing, but still not enough security.

Therefore, we currently provide clients with recommendations on how users can improve security when accessing company information. Still, they are simply recommendations, and without having full control over those devices, you're putting the organisation at risk.

The issue for those organisations that have allowed BYOD, is the cost and project scale involved in replacing all personal devices with company-issued ones.

Microsoft has recently released Windows 365, which will deliver a full, personalised PC experience from the cloud to any device, giving workers and organisations power, simplicity and security for hybrid work.

Virtual cloud desktops are not a new thing for Microsoft. Azure Virtual Desktops (AVDs) have been around for years, but the configuration and costs have traditionally been quite complex, and therefore not offered by many IT providers.

AVDs are great when you have multiple users, as you can pool resources to save costs, and as you're charged by the minute, so they won't cost you once shut down.

Windows 365 differs in this respect, as they are a fixed cost per month per virtual desktop, regardless of how much it's used.

For us and our clients, these two solutions are the answer to the BYOD dilemma for remote or offshore teams using personal devices, or if your organisation has part-timers, casuals or contractors, where it's difficult to justify the cost of company-issued devices.

Does your organisation allow the use of personal computers or phones?

Technology is becoming simpler and more easily accessible.

Whilst this is at large a good thing, there are pitfalls to this.

Most businesses seek technology solutions as the answer to a business problem.

Anyone can use Google to research technology solutions, and many modern businesses do this and also implement the solution on their own without a solid selection and digital transformation process.

The result is that they set themselves up to fail, and the following things can happen:

- the technology isn't implemented successfully
- the technology doesn't get used to its fullest potential
- the team are often not trained in the new technology
- once implemented the business realises there are key things it doesn't do
- if it's an app, it may not talk to other core apps in their business

Common Google searches might include:

- What is the best CRM?
- How can I best manage my emails?
- What is the best Antivirus?
- Which is better, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365?
- Should I use Windows or Mac?

These questions might sound familiar to you. You have probably asked at least one of them yourself.

The truth is, these are the wrong kind of questions to ask.

Hear me out.

As I often say, technology is no silver bullet.

If you ever find yourself asking this sort of question, I challenge you to go higher upstream. Or, as I like to call it, what's the 50,000 ft/m question?

What is the actual business problem you're trying to solve? Is it actually a technology problem, or could it be a process problem?

Technology is not going to fix a bad or missing system or process. In fact, without solid underlying processes in your business, your technology will just amplify your frustrations and pain.

Always start with your people in mind first, then the systems and processes before adding technology.

Once you've reviewed and refined your processes, it will be much easier to evaluate what technology will best fit into your business, rather than trying to fit your business around the technology.

So what's the best CRM?

Some better questions to ask might be:

- What do I want/need a CRM to do for my business?
- Do I need it just for customer relationship management or do I want to run campaigns? Or both?
- What features are must-haves/would be nice, but not essential?
- What missing feature would be a deal-breaker?
- Does it integrate well into my existing apps and email?
- Do I have a solid underlying process for managing clients right now?
- If I want to run campaigns, do I have a clear marketing plan in place?

And perhaps the best question of all:

Is this the most important thing I should be focusing on right now?

Or put another way:

Will it make the boat go faster? (Bonus video in the comments)

Are you asking the right questions before implementing technology into your business?

Not all multi-factor authentication (MFA) is created equal.

While any MFA is better than none, there are different levels of security risks associated with the various types of MFA that are available to secure your online accounts.

We at Infinite Edge are on a mission to make businesses more cyber intelligent, and part of that is cyber security intelligence (CSI).

So I thought I would break down the different types of MFA available, and the various risk levels associated with each.

🔑 Email authentication

This is the least recommended version of MFA and belongs in the one time password (OTP) category. If a hacker or scammer has access to your email account, it's simple for them to circumvent MFA by getting the code sent to your compromised email account.

🔑 SMS authentication

There have been a number of documented cases where hackers steal someone's identity or trick the customer service representative from the victim's phone provider into locking the owner out of the account. Then they port the mobile number to another carrier and get the MFA code sent to themselves.

🔑 Push Notifications

This was very commonly recommended by IT providers in previous years, due to the ease of use. i.e. instead of entering the six digit OTP MFA code every time, you receive a push notification to your authenticator app asking you to approve or deny the login.

Uber suffered a well-known breach due to an MFA fatigue attack, i.e. the hackers sent continuous MFA prompts to the victim until they eventually hit approve.

In some cases, users may accidentally hit approve when prompted.

🔑 Number match

As a result of the risks associated with push MFA authorisation, companies such as Microsoft introduced number matching. Essentially, this adds an extra step to push authorisation and asks the user to enter a matching two-digit number on their authenticator app.

Microsoft has recently announced they are forcing this on push notification MFA setups from Feb 27 2023.

🔑 Passwordless Authentication

For Microsoft users, even better is passwordless authentication. If you don't have a password, then it can't be compromised.

The way passwordless authentication works is the user enters their email address, and then they are prompted by the MS authenticator app to number match the displayed two-digit code.

We've begun rolling this out to all our clients, and it's a game changer.

There are also biometric MFA and hardware USB keys. The former is not recommended to fully replace OTP MFA due to reliability and stability issues, and the latter whilst considered probably the most secure type of MFA, is costly and the keys can be lost or misplaced.

Unfortunately, sometimes you're at the mercy of whatever MFA solution is offered by the online service. Whilst not ideal, as I said earlier, any MFA is better than no MFA.

What MFA authentication are you using?