Macnamara blog Archives - Page 2 of 4

Best practices

What is Information Management and Information Security?

Before the cloud, when businesses were primarily working from an office, they knew where their information was, how people could access it, how it was backed up and how it was protected. Now since we’re ever increasingly working in the cloud and from multiple remote locations, it’s less clear. This can cause all sorts of problems and headaches for businesses, including a heightened risk of becoming the victim of fraud through to non-compliance with your legal and regulatory obligations.

Macnamara Content Team 9 November 2023

Best practices

Why You Shouldn’t Mix Personal and Business Browsing

Using browser profiles is extremely useful. It allows you to sign in on multiple devices and get the same bookmarks, passwords, and history across your devices. BUT, you should never use the same profile for work that you use for your personal browsing, and for good reason.

Geoff Courts 8 November 2023

Best practices

Why Use Managed Email Signatures?

While email signatures are not (let’s face it) the most glamourous aspect of IT, they are however often overlooked and under-appreciated. Not only can they be great for branding, they can even be used as an important element of your company security. There are also some regulatory reasons to have a signature on company emails too. ‘How can my email signature contribute to my security’ you ask? Good question!

Geoff Courts 13 July 2023

Best practices

Surviving The Summer Heat: How To Keep Your Devices Cool And Protected

As the summer sun beats down, it’s essential to keep our electronic devices from breaking a sweat. Whether you rely on a PC, laptop, mobile phone, or server, excessive heat can put a damper on their performance and even lead to functionality problems.

Hubert 19 June 2023

Macnamara blog

Could You Have Been Breached And Not Even Know It?

If your account is breached, how would you know? A clever cybercriminal, on gaining access to an account, would not necessarily take immediate action. They may linger for some time, taking advantage of their access to explore what you have access to, examine your data, and read your email transactions, waiting for the moment to pounce. In this article by one of our security partners, we dispel some myths and examine some scary truths about how malicious actors take advantage of access.

Macnamara Content Team 16 June 2023

Best practices

Biometrics: Face The Future Of Digital Security

With 4 in 10 small businesses and a quarter of charities reporting cyber security breaches in the last 12 months * it’s more important to protect your personal and company data than ever before. With the increasing rise in cyber-attacks and data breaches, relying on a password alone can leave your computers, mobile devices, and online accounts in a vulnerable state. This is where passwordless sign-in can save the day.

Ash 5 June 2023

Cloud Services

What Does ChatGPT Know About Cyber Essentials?

A day doesn’t go by when AI, and ChatGPT in particular, are not in the news. The Large Language Model (LLM) has absorbed every word on the internet up to the year 2021 and as a result it’s able to answer all manner of questions as well as write content for you based on the simplest of queries. It even threatens the once dominant status of Google as THE go to source of information. Curious, I asked it why Cyber Essentials is good for small business. Here’s what it said.

Geoff Courts 31 May 2023

Best practices

Why Is The File Path Length Important?

The file path length is the total number of characters in the file path. This includes spaces and backslashes. When working with files and folders, it is important to consider the file path length. The Windows operating system has a maximum file path length of 260 characters, but this limit is often reduced to 255 characters due to some reserved characters that take up extra space. In this blog, we’ll discuss why file path length is important and the potential issues that can arise if the length of the file path is too long. Additionally, what can be done if you are encountering an error caused by a long file path.

Lee 18 May 2023

Best practices

Stay Safe Online: Why Public WiFi is a Risk You Can’t Ignore

Love using public WiFi? Beware! It can be dangerous. From hackers to identity theft, public WiFi can leave you vulnerable to all kinds of online threats. But do not worry, I have your back! In this blog, I will show you why public WiFi is so risky and give you some easy tips to stay safe. So, before you connect to that free WiFi hotspot, read on to find out how to protect yourself!

Hubert 3 May 2023

3d rendering of computer monitors with stock market data on the display

Best practices

How to Configure Your Display and Monitor Settings

Are you tired of straining your eyes and feeling uncomfortable while working on your computer? In today’s digital age, we spend a significant amount of time in front of computer screens. Configuring your display monitor settings can greatly enhance your computing experience and improve your work comfort.

Hubert 13 April 2023

Hardware

What Does It Mean To Say “My Computer Is Supported By Macnamara”?

At Macnamara, we like to say that we support people, not machines. And, of course, that is true. We support people who use computers, and we help them to get past the problems that their computers throw up. Every now and again though, when no one is watching, we drop what we learned in Marketing 101 for Small Businesses, and admit that we love computers and we do in fact support computers as well as people (who we love even more).

Ciaran Kenny 14 March 2023

Celebrating 20 Years 2003-2023

Celebrating 20 Years 2003 – 2023: A Look Back

2023 marks a milestone for Macnamara, at 20 years since the company was founded, way back in 2003, by Ciaran, with a view to bringing the world of enterprise IT to the SME market. In 20 years a lot has changed in technology, but that same commitment to outstanding service hasn’t. We take a look back at some of the history of the company and how we ended up where we are today.

Geoff Courts 14 March 2023

Macnamara News

Aarven – Reconditioned Laptops Helping Small Business Artisans In Uganda And Kenya

As an offshoot of our Digital Inequality project, we provided 3 reconditioned laptops to artisan crafts shop Aarven based in Margate. I travelled down to meet co-founder Bee Friedman to learn a bit more about what they do and how the laptops will help the craftsmen and women to build their businesses.

Geoff Courts 10 March 2023

Best practices

CEO Fraud – How It Works

CEO fraud is up there, along with phishing and ransomware, in the top three cyber threats facing small businesses. CEO fraud comes in a variety of more or less sophisticated forms, but most commonly appears as a forged email or SMS message purporting to come from the CEO or other senior person and asking for money to be transferred to meet some urgent requirement.

Ciaran Kenny 4 November 2022

Macnamara News

Chapter 3: DNS and Domains

In this excerpt from Ciaran’s upcoming White Paper ‘The Mail Must Get Through’ on email deliverability, we examine one of the core underlying features of the internet, DNS and Domains.

Ciaran Kenny 17 May 2022

Best practices

LastPass Password Manager

Password management can be a bit of a nightmare. We’re always told to use complex passwords that are hard to guess, and to never re-use passwords. But, in practice this can be a challenge to remember them all! Most of us may have dozens if not hundreds of online services that require a username and password to access. How on Earth are we supposed to have a different complex password for them all and be expected to remember them without writing them down?

The good news is, you don’t have to remember them, or write them down!

Geoff Courts 20 January 2022

Macnamara blog

You have a new Fax!

When was the last time you received a fax? Possibly never. But, it might surprise some of you to know that millions of faxes get sent every day. In Germany, Japan and the US especially, they are alive and well, if not so much here in the UK. But how are they used in Phishing?

Geoff Courts 24 September 2021

Macnamara blog

Information Security

You can’t have IT without Security!

There, we said it, but what does that mean and perhaps more importantly, what does it mean for our customers?

Steve Hood 15 September 2021

Best practices

To Save or to Auto Save?

Save as you go. If ever there was a golden rule of working with computers, this is it. Anyone who has ever worked on a document before losing their progress to an application crash or power cut knows only too well the dangers of not saving your work. So the introduction of Auto Save in Office seems to be, on the face of it, an absolute gem. But how does it work and what if you need to turn it off?

Geoff Courts 13 September 2021

Macnamara blog

Is The MSP (Managed Services Provider) Model Broken?

The evolution of the MSP started in the 1990s with the emergence of application service providers (ASPs) who helped pave the way for remote support for IT infrastructure. From the initial focus of remote monitoring and management of servers and networks, the scope of an MSP’s services expanded to include mobile device management, managed security, remote firewall administration and security-as-a-service, and managed print services.

Steve Hood 19 August 2021

Cloud Services

Is Cloud-based Information Technology holding back progress for Architects?

That sounds a bit counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? There have already been great strides made by architects, engineers, and other related construction professionals to adopt cloud-based software such as Autodesk BIM360. Whilst these tools bring huge benefits, it still seems that it’s the domain of large practices and corporates. Why is that?

Steve Hood 19 August 2021

The Macnamara Blog