6 Tips for Conserving Battery Power

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There’s nothing more frustrating than having your battery die on you just as an important deadline looms. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to conserve your laptop’s battery. Here are six tips for keeping your battery power going.

Display Auto Turn-Off

Set your laptop so that your display turns off by itself if your laptop is not used for a specific amount of time. This can be one minute, five minutes, ten minutes, or whatever. This way, your battery won’t drain while you are on a bathroom break.

Reduce Brightness

Even when the display is on, reducing the brightness will help save a lot of battery power.

Disable Wifi

If you do not need the internet and can work offline, disable the wifi. Having your laptop connected to the internet causes a strain on the battery. A lot of things will be going on in the background. For example, Windows may be updating its software.

Remove External Devices

If you are not using them, remove any external drives or devices from your laptop. Take out any USB sticks and DVDs. Do not use your laptop to charge your phone. All of these things take up precious battery power.

Use the Battery Saver

Turn on the battery saver feature that is built into Windows if you need to save battery. Some manufacturers install additional features to help you save and conserve battery power.

Shut Off Background Noise

Focus on one thing at a time when your battery power needs to be conserved. Shut off things that are running in the background by using your task manager to figure out what is using up the CPU. Don’t have multiple windows open at once; if you do not need a program at the moment, close it instead of minimizing it.

For more information, contact us today.

Proactively Addressing Mobile Threats

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More and more employees are using their smartphones and other portable devices in order to work on off-site projects, at home, or simply on the go.  While this has greatly increased productivity in many respects, there are inherent dangers in essentially allowing access to corporate systems to go out the office door, with very little to safeguard this access.  Any organization that allows their staff members to either use their own mobile devices for work-related activities and/or who issues mobile devices to their staff for external use should ensure they have an all-inclusive policy to cover usage and security practices. This will help protect individuals and companies from mobile threats.

External Threats

So what are some of the issues that can arise from the use of mobile devices used for corporate activities?  Regardless of whether an employee is using their own device or a corporate one, it is very easy for any of the following to occur:

  • a device is lost or stolen,
  • downloading of questionable 3rd party apps,
  • sharing of devices with unauthorized people,
  • and/or using unprotected Wi-Fi sources.

If any of these situations occur, unless protective measures are already in place, corporate data can easily fall into the wrong hands.  In addition to the expenses incurred from cleaning up a data breach, are other costs such as loss of trust and potential litigation from clients, and loss of public reputation as a trustworthy source of products and/or services.

Policy Solutions

A good mobile device policy will cover two key areas, and both must be addressed proactively, rather than after the fact.  The first part of the policy is put into place by IT administrators.  Their responsibilities include:

  • remotely locking lost or stolen devices,
  • creating and enforcing proper password and encryption policies,
  • discovering and restricting tampered devices,
  • and ensuring corporate data is removed from personal devices upon employee termination.

The second part of the policy pertains to instructing employees on the proper use of their mobile devices.  Employees need to follow certain protocols including:

  • reporting lost or stolen devices immediately,
  • following their employer’s policy on downloading 3rd party apps,
  • following password and Wi-Fi policies,
  • and not sharing their devices with family members or other external parties.

By creating a proactive and comprehensive mobile device policy, employees will thoroughly understand what their employer expects of them and IT administrators will be able to quickly resolve issues if they arise.  Using this two-pronged approach maximizes the ability of any business to properly secure both corporate and client data.  Please contact us if you would like more information on how to properly institute a mobile device security policy to protect your organization’s essential data.

How to Keep Your Business’s Mobile Devices More Secure

a laptop computer with a blue shield on top of it

Security is both an online and physical concern, even for mobile devices. More and more employees have laptops, tablets, and phones for their business tasks, and this is even truer for small businesses. If you’re worried about how secure your company’s devices are, here’s how to cover both angles.

What’s the physical threat to mobile devices’ security?

Phones get stolen. They also get lost. No matter how vigilant your employees you are, eventually a phone or tablet will go missing; up to 95% of security attacks are through stolen mobile devices or proximity-based phishing, which makes the devices themselves the weakest point in any defense.  This means you have to protect more than your business’s network: you have to protect what’s tapping into the network, too.

How can you protect your data from physical break-ins?

One option is to use a mobile device as a connection point only. Keep all of your files in a cloud that doesn’t require any downloading. Additionally, make sure all work is done through online portals. If your employees can comfortably get their work done through a browser or a protected app without turning to local storage or offline programs, then there’s nothing on the phone to steal.

Another option is to use security as a service program. Using sign-in systems that use devices in tandem makes a single stolen device useless. You can also use programs that allow you to remotely wipe lost devices once they’ve been reported. Thus, any cookies, caches, and data are out-of-reach.

Physical security of technology used to be easier when you had a single office with a privately owned server and desktop computers.

Mobile devices and working on the go are all but required to keep up with your competitors. So go to Bluwater Technologies to get started on closing gaps in your security.