With cybercrime growing more and more sophisticated, having a robust email security program in place is mandatory.

There are several ways to approach email security, each with different benefits for small-to-medium sized businesses.

If you are looking for an email security program for your DC-area company, take a look at the options below and call Solvere One at (202) 905-2722 to learn more.

Email Encryption for Business

Encryption prevents emails from being accessed by anyone other than the sender and intended recipient.

You can use an encryption program to only encrypt messages that have specific content (attached files, personally identifiable information, etc.). Another option is to encrypt all of your outgoing email.

The challenge for most small-to-medium sized businesses is that encryption software can be complicated to the point of becoming a hindrance to efficient communication. This is why Solvere One encourages clients to apply a user-friendly email security program like Encryptics for Email.

Making Email Encryption Easy

Encryptics for Email can be used with Microsoft Outlook to secure communication with all recipients and senders. A simple software download is all that is needed for outside parties to have their replies encrypted. This program also allows you to subject your sent messages to certain protocols—like disallowing printing, forwarding, copying, and saving.

Companies whose employees work via mobile device or remote office can use Encryptics for Email just as easily, as also protects mobile communication and can function as the data security component of a broader Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution.

Email Security for DC, Maryland, and Virginia Businesses

Solvere One can help you determine what level and style of email security is right for your company or organization. Contact us for effective email security solutions!

More Network Security Solutions from Solvere One

• Virus and firewall protection and monitoring for business
• Secure instant messaging
• Content filtering

Get a free network security review from Solvere One!

Are you overwhelmed thinking about Office365 email migrations for your organization? Although you’ve likely heard that this is no easy task, you can ensure the process goes smoothly by conducting the proper planning necessary. The migration will take time and you want to be sure you’re prepared in order to minimize downtime and have a smooth transition. If your organization is ready to switch to Office365, plan your email migrations by taking these things into account!

Plan for Your Exchange Server – Just How Old Is It?

When attempting to determine which migration method is best for your organization’s Office365 email migrations, you’ll first need to take a look at your current Exchange Server. These servers tend to be more expensive and more difficult to manage than a cloud-based server such as Office365, so you’re probably ready to get rid of it! However, considering how old (or new) your server is will be an important step in planning your Office365 email migrations.

Exchange Servers 2007 and older pose the potential for bigger problems for your Office365 email migrations. If you have a server that’s older than 2007, a two-step migration process will be the best route in order to avoid halted migrations. This process allows you to upgrade your server before migrating, therefore eliminating problems that’ll happen when migrating to the cloud. This will make your Office365 email migrations easier and more successful!

Determine Readiness with Microsoft Tools.

How can you know if your network is ready for Office365 email migrations? By properly planning and preparing, you can ensure your organization is ready. The Office365 health, readiness, and connectivity checks tool comes with Office365 and will assess your organization’s readiness. Whether you need a fast check of all major components or a more detailed assessment, this tool can help you properly plan for Office365 email migrations.

There are other tools you may consider using in your Office365 email migrations process, including Microsoft Exchange Server Deployment Assistant (which will effectively build a migration plan for your organization) as well as third-party tools. Although the email migrations process won’t be easy and will take some time, these tools can help you effectively prepare for the migration.

Factor in Room for Problems.

Even with proper planning, the road to successful Office365 email migrations isn’t always smooth. Factoring in room for problems in your planning process is smart. Without bringing in a professional, there are likely a host of problems that you simply can’t foresee that may stall the process. If the migration process is interrupted, it must start over from the beginning!

For instance, if you have a bad network connection, heavy security, or misconfigured servers, all of these issues will need to be addressed before migration. A staged migration needs the proper infrastructure to perform Office365 email migrations successfully. Run a pilot migration to see how your chosen migration method does as well as to pinpoint certain errors that may happen during the process.

Should You Bring in a Professional?

Planning is crucial, but your migration process needs to be planned out by someone with extensive IT expertise in order to be successful. Attempting to plan and execute Office365 email migrations without proficiency in Office365 as well as other fields such as networks and security could set your organization up for a failed migration—meaning costly downtime and even more time needed to figure out what went wrong.

At Solvere One, our team of experts help organizations of all sizes migrate to the cloud and complete successful Office365 email migrations. When you have an expert in security, Office365, network infrastructure, storage, and more on your side, your Office365 email migrations can go according to plan. We can also help you decide which migration method would suit your organization best, as well as an approximate timeline for the email migrations to happen, and much more!

When you’re ready to make the switch from your Exchange Servers to Office365, ensure your organization is fully prepared. Determine readiness with Microsoft’s tools. Upgrade your Exchange Servers if needed. Leave room for error. And remember—bringing in a professional can alleviate the hassle of trying to perform Office365 email migrations on your own!

While the term “continuous partial attention” was coined by writer Linda Stone all the way back in 1998, it seems particularly on point for today’s world, nearly two decades later.

The phrase refers to those moments when you are engaging with a number of information sources simultaneously—but at only a superficial level. It doesn’t take much to recognize the state of continuous partial attention, or CPA, in ourselves and others. It’s when you’re checking your phone while watching television and (barely) carrying on a conversation with someone in the room; when you’re doing a task on your work computer while reading text messages or instant messaging with one or more colleagues or friends. You might be checking on a client’s social media page while working on another client’s project. Most of us have been there. In fact, whether we’re willing to admit it or not, most of us are in a state of CPA for the better part of the day.

Continuous Partial Attention at Work

This perpetual distraction can have a negative impact on the workplace and on the quality of work produced.

While it seems normal now—even necessary, some would argue—that everyone has chat windows and social media sites up while working, along with a smartphone sitting within arm’s reach at all times, more and more studies are finding that we are losing the focus and concentration required to be truly productive.

“It has become clear that we are at our best if we can devote 90 minute blocks of uninterrupted time where we can focus deeply on an activity,” says leadership and productivity writer David Taylor.  “Any interrupts during this period of time can cause significant inefficiency to our thoughts and work process. It is estimated that it takes at least 3 minutes to recover from each interrupt and get back to our original train of thought. If this is the case, in a 90 minute window if we are interrupted by 15 things…we would literally waste 45 minutes out of the 90 minute block (and this does not count the time that you might take to actually respond to the interrupts). This means that at best we would be working at about a 50% productivity rate!”

Many employees might argue that they can be productive with several tabs open and while engaging in multiple conversations in addition to answering emails and phone calls. But it’s clear that this is rarely the case. CPA can lead to errors, miscommunication, and missed opportunities.

How to Combat Distraction in the Workplace

So how can we keep employees focused in a society that expects everyone to be “on” the network all the time? If you don’t see CPA has a major issue at your company, perhaps a casually-worded guideline about staying on task and keeping personal internet activity separate from work would be sufficient.

But if you see a number of employees texting, surfing the web, and having personal conversations over IM, you know that you are losing productivity—and for most businesses, decreased productivity means decreased revenue.

Some companies have put policies in place that limit personal use of cell phones and the internet. A good example is in this article in Entrepreneur. If you decide to enact such a policy in your company, introduce it by emphasizing how it will benefit the team as a whole. Increased focus = more work done during work hours = less need to do work in off hours. Encourage your employees to see the policy as a way to build a stronger team.

If you are looking for ways to keep remote employees engaged and connected with smart IT support, contact Solvere One.

Most companies and organizations have a set limit on how much space you are allotted for email. Combine that with many people wanting to save every email they ever send or receive (you never know when you’re going to need to dig it back up) and the stacks of email that a person usually gets in the average business day and mailboxes can fill up very quickly. This article is going to focus on checking your inbox size, archiving and sorting your email in Outlook and Entourage. If you’re looking to clear out your gmail inbox, here are two great articles, one from lifehacker and one from web worker daily, on giving your gmail a fresh start.

Outlook

Outlook allows you to archive and sort emails by using personal folders, which are also known as archive folders and PSTs. The terms personal folders, archive folders and PSTs are terms that can be used interchangeably, so for simplicity we will refer to them as personal folders.

To create a set of personal folders in Outlook, go to the File menu, select New, and click Outlook Data File. You will be given a choice between two types of files. Chose Office Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst). Click OK. You are then given an option of where you would like your personal folders to live. If you have space on a server, it’s a good idea to put your personal folders file there. Click on My Computer to see a list of drives available. When you’ve chosen, click OK.

Next you will be asked to name your personal folders. You can pick any name for them you’d like and you can always change the name later. Here you can add a password if you’d like, but it’s not recommended. If you lose your personal folder’s password it is difficult to recover. When you’re finished click OK.

Your personal folders will appear on the left of Outlook under your mailbox folders with the name you chose. Click the + sign to expand the folders. Here you can add more folders to organize your email. Right click and select New Folder.

Name your folder. Under “select where to put this folder” you can choose which folder you’d like to contain your new folder. The folder you right clicked to create a new folder will be the default.

Now you can archive your emails. There are two ways to do this. One option is to manually chose what emails you want to archive. In this method you drag and drop your emails directly into your personal folders. Doing one email at a time would take forever, but you can select multiple emails at once with the control (ctrl) and shift keys.

The ctrl key lets you select emails individually. Just hold down the ctrl key and select emails, then drag them into your personal folders.

The shift key selects a set of emails in a row. Select the first email you want to move, then hold down the shift key and select the last email. All the emails in-between will be selected and you can move them into your personal folders.

Your second option is AutoArchiving. To setup your AutoArchive settings, to go the tools menu, click options, and click the other tab. Click AutoArchive.

Here you can edit the auto archive settings. Choose how often you want the auto-archive to run. We recommend checking the box next to Prompt Before AutoArchive Runs so that you will know when AutoArchive is running and you can cancel it before it begins. Make sure the following boxes are checked: Archive or Delete Old Items, Show Archive Folder in Folder List, and Move Old Items to. Click the Browse button to navigate to the personal folders file you created earlier. Note that when you AutoArchive items it will create folders in your personal folders that are identical to the folders you are archiving from. So if you just have an Inbox and a Sent Items folder it will create a folder called Inbox and a folder called Sent Items in your personal folders. You can click the Run AutoArchive Now button to auto archive your files immediately.

You can also use rules to automatically archive emails when they come into your inbox. This is helpful if you belong to a mailing list or subscribe to a newsletter. See our blog entry on Outlook rules for more information.

Entourage

Archiving emails in Entourage is incredibly simple. First, expand the section under your inbox called On My Computer by clicking the triangle next to it. You can drag emails into the inbox or sent items folders here, or you can create your own folders. Create your own folders by right clicking or holding down the control key and clicking On My Computer and selecting New Subfolder.

You can create as many subfolders within subfolders as you would like.

There is no AutoArchive option for Entourage but you can move emails over manually. The command and shift keys help you select multiple emails at once:

The command key lets you select emails individually. Just hold down the command key and select emails, then drag them into your personal folders.

The shift key selects a set of emails in a row. Select the first email you want to move, then hold down the shift key and select the last email. All the emails in-between will be selected and you can move them into your personal folders.

There are many different methods for organizing your email once your folders are created. You can choose to have a different personal folder for each year, or you can have different folders for projects you are working on. Another option is the trusted trio method from LifeHacker. How you sort your email is up to you.

Having an organized inbox is just as important as keeping a clean workspace. But, if you’re getting hundreds of emails daily, it can be difficult to find time to sort through your many messages. Outlook and other email applications can help you keep your inbox tidy and highlight the important information with rules.

In Outlook, rules are a set of conditions, actions, and exceptions that process and organize messages automatically. Rules are completely customizable to your specific needs and can do many functions that help organize, customize and clean your mailbox. To create a rule for your mailbox, look in the tools menu bar for “Rules and Alerts” and open it. Here, Outlook lets you decide whether to create a rule using a pre-created template or to create a new rule from scratch. While the pre-created templates can be useful, creating a rule from scratch gives you the most flexibility and is what we recommend.

Since there are countless options for creating a rule, we will use an example to explain the process:

Say you want to create a rule that will automatically put all the emails you receive with the word “finance” in the subject into a folder labeled “Financial Information” in your personal folders. Find where it says “Start from a blank rule.” Then choose “Check messages when they arrive.” This tells Outlook to check the emails you receive as opposed to the ones you send. Click next. Check the box next to “with specific words in the subject.” Here you’re telling Outlook to look in the subject line for a specific word or phrase. Other options include looking for emails sent from a specific person, or sent to a certain email address—if you want to sort out emails that are sent to a distribution list you’re on. By clicking the blue underlined “specific words” at the bottom of the page it will let you customize which words you want to specify. Type in “finance” and click add. Now this rule will run on any email that arrives in your inbox with the word finance in the subject. Click OK to return to the previous box and click next.

Now you will designate what you want done with the emails. Check the box next to “move it to the specified folder.” You will need to specify which folder to send it to by clicking on “specified” at the bottom of the dialogue box. Choose the folder in the personal folders labeled “Financial Information” (you will need to create the folder you want the messages to go in beforehand) and click OK to set that option and then click next. This brings us to the exceptions. For the example, we’ll say that you would like this rule only to apply to those messages sent directly to me, if you are being CC’ed they will stay in your Inbox. Choose the box next to “except where my name is in the CC box” and hit next. The rule is now set up! You can now decide whether to run this rule on the emails in that are already in your inbox. This will move any emails in your inbox that follow the rule into the specified folder. You can also choose to turn on or leave it off for the time being. Rules and alerts are only active if they are checked in the “Rules and Alerts” box and the rules you set up will only be active when your Outlook is open.

There are many rules and alerts to customize and we suggest that you utilize this feature to improve efficiency and minimize your workload. For more information and tips on using rules, check out Tips for Managing Your E-Mail Using Rules from Microsoft Office Online.

Please contact us for assistance or further information for other email applications, including Entourage, Apple Mail, etc. ]]>