Tag: Microsoft

Hybrid Meetings in the Philippines With HP, Polycom, and Teams

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Hybrid Meetings solution Philippines

In the ever-changing landscape of business, the Philippines is undergoing a paradigm shift towards hybrid work models. With the convergence of technology vendors like HP Inc., Polycom, and Microsoft, Filipino businesses are on the brink of revolutionizing their hybrid meetings, fostering seamless communication and collaboration while tackling the challenges of ambient noise disruptions. Let’s delve deeper into how these innovative solutions are poised to reshape the way Philippine companies optimize their hybrid work setups.

Optimizing Hybrid Meetings and Work with HP

HP laptop Philippines

HP Inc. is acutely attuned to the transformative potential of hybrid work. As professionals harmonize personal life and work obligations, HP is arming IT teams with the essential tools to render the era of hybrid work viable and productive. The ‘HP Work Happy’ ethos finds resonance in businesses across the Philippines, echoing the possibilities of achieving productivity, collaboration, and recognition across different locations and time zones.

Polycom’s Noise-Reducing Headsets

Polycom Headsets

As the virtual meeting landscape becomes the norm, the issue of ambient noise intrusion has emerged as a pertinent concern. This challenge is equally applicable to Philippine businesses, making Polycom’s noise-canceling headset technologies a vital addition to the arsenal. With a 2020 survey highlighting that a staggering 94% of workers encountered ambient noise during calls, the need for efficient noise reduction solutions is more pressing than ever before.

Polycom directly addresses this concern through their array of noise-canceling headset technologies. Tailored to thrive in demanding environments, these headsets are perfect for the dynamic business landscape in the Philippines. For instance, the Voyager 8200 UC employs passive noise reduction techniques, effectively creating a physical barrier to diminish external sounds. This is complemented by active noise cancellation (ANC) options, provided by Polycom, which offer enhanced control over background noise for both the user and the participants at the far end.

Hybrid Meetings with Microsoft Teams: The Glue that Binds

Hybrid meetings Microsoft Teams Philippines

In the Philippines, Microsoft Teams has emerged as the linchpin of virtual collaboration. Seamlessly integrated into the Microsoft 365 suite, Teams provides a comprehensive platform for communication, file sharing, and collaborative workspaces. As businesses navigate through hybrid work environments, Microsoft Teams serves as the bridge between the physical and digital realms, facilitating real-time interaction and engagement.

What’s particularly intriguing is how Microsoft Teams complements the offerings from HP and Polycom. The Dragonfly laptop‘s 5G capabilities mesh seamlessly with Microsoft Teams’ requirement for robust virtual communication. Furthermore, Polycom’s noise-canceling headsets align perfectly with Teams’ capabilities, ensuring that the auditory experience is as seamless as the visual one. The integration of Microsoft Teams with both HP and Polycom technologies creates a comprehensive ecosystem that optimizes hybrid meetings for Filipino businesses.

The synergy between HP’s forward-thinking hybrid work solutions, Polycom’s advanced noise-canceling headsets, and the collaborative prowess of Microsoft Teams ushers in a new era of work. As businesses embark on their hybrid journey, these technologies empower them to communicate, collaborate, and innovate regardless of physical location. With noise-canceling technologies and seamless virtual communication, Filipino businesses can navigate the dynamic landscape of hybrid work with clarity, confidence, and unparalleled efficiency.

To learn more about how to better improve your hybrid meetings or about HP and Polycom, you can message us at marketing@ctlink.com.ph to set up a meeting with us today!

How Microsoft Office 365 is Helping Small Businesses Grow

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Office 365 SMB
Microsoft Office 365 banner

Around 90 percent of all businesses are small and medium businesses (SMBs) worldwide. They account for almost 44 percent of the global gross domestic product of all businesses. SMBs can be considered the lifeblood of the global community, even more so here in the Philippines. While the past few years have been challenging for SMBs, there have also been sign of growth and opportunity in the space. Microsoft has seen the potential of the SMBs and have been striving to help them succeed through solutions like Microsoft Office 365.

Creating ways to do more with less with Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft Office 365 login

Pressures in the economy are forcing companies of all sizes to strive for growth while maintaining a low costs. Microsoft Office 365 helps SMBs achieve this by centralizing your business technologies in to one easy to access application. It enables your team to use multiple business apps like PowerPoint, Excel, and Word to boost productivity at an affordable price.

Microsoft Office 365 Provides SMBs a complete solution

Microsoft Office 365 Download

Historically, SMBs had to rely on multiple solutions, of which none were ideal for their unique needs. Microsoft 365 gives SMBs the solutions together in one integrated experience that delivers on the power of the cloud. This enables employees to be able to work from anywhere while also keeping the costs relatively low. It is a cost-effective, secure cloud solution that includes all the tools needed by SMBs to grow their business, reach new customers, and provides a way for employees to collaborate.

Enabling SMBs to Create Documents, Meet, Call, and Chat Securely

Microsoft

Microsoft Office 365 is full of applications that your users are already familiar with. These applications include all the office staples like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. In addition, these tools can now be accessed in real time by your team to be able to collaborate on certain documents through the cloud. Other added benefits would include access to Microsoft Teams which can be used to do chat-based messaging or audio/video calls.

Microsoft Office 365 also keeps your business security in mind when enabling these collaboration features. Microsoft 365 helps safeguard devices and data from cyber threats with built-in security features. The basic package includes access control and email protection while the Business Premium includes more advanced security features that have minimum impact to IT complexity.

Microsoft Office 365 Customer Success Stories

Office Success Stories

Below are a few success stories of how Microsoft 365 has helped some SMBs grow their business the past few years:

  • At Tony’s Chocolonely, the team found new ways to keep employees connected with virtual book clubs, themed weekly meetings like “flip-flop formal Friday,” and fitness classes—all running on Teams as a part of the Microsoft 365 solution.
  • 1083, a sustainable jeans and sneakers manufacturer, leveraged Microsoft 365 and Teams to communicate and collaborate more effectively, internally and externally, while the platform’s embedded security features helped ensure that communications were highly secure.
  • Rodel Financial Services realized the benefits of a unified, easily managed environment from Microsoft apps, services, device management, and information protection. It replaced a disjointed on-premises environment with Microsoft 365 Business Premium, helping South African businesses and their own bottom line to flourish.

You can read the full article here. To learn more about how you can incorporate Microsoft 365 into your business, you can email us at marketing@www.ctlink.com.ph!

Innovating Industries: Teams for Manufacturing

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Innovating Industries: Teams for Manufacturing
Microsoft Teams Manufacturing header

Technology is always evolving to make life simpler for businesses and their employees. No matter which industry, there are always new ways to improve the operations and make jobs easier for every job level. In today’s article, we are taking a closer look at some of these advancements for manufacturing. Specifically on Microsoft Teams and the variety of apps within it that can empower all employees within the company to help finish tasks more efficiently.

Updates: Create, Review, Submit Employee Updates

Microsoft Teams Manufacturing updates

Many in the manufacturing still use tools that are considered outdated or do manual updates to sync with each other and get work done. This is a process that Microsoft looked into to save employees time and energy through a streamlined app available out-of-box. With Updates in Microsoft Teams, you are able to easily do recurring tasks such as check-ins, and reports such as inspections and maintenance updates, or even real-time urgent updates like incident reports. Updates can be your one stop app to manage them all.

Approvals: Integrate Approvals into Microsoft 365

Microsoft Teams Manufacturing approvals

Microsoft Teams allows you to integrate and extend approvals through the Approval app. Through it, your team will be able to create approval requests directly into Word documents, either the whole documents or just a section of it. Additionally, you can manage and create your requests through Microsoft Lists to easily interact with your approvals.

Walkie Talkie: Enable Simpler Communication Through Teams

Microsoft Teams Manufacturing walkie

A simple way to immediately contact one another is sometimes vital in manufacturing. The Microsoft team understands that sometimes its not necessary to reinvent the wheel. The Walkie Talkie app in Teams allows for a secure way for frontline workers to communicate each other with the familiar push-to-talk experience. Unlike a regular walkie talkie however, team members are able to communicate even if they are anywhere in the world, as well as do away with the static for a cleaner audio between one another. This can be used through devices such as corporate given devices or BYOD, you may also opt for partner devices that optimizes its use with it as well.

These are just a few of the ways Microsoft 365 and Teams can help digitally transform the Manufacturing industry. Through many different integrations and applications, Microsoft can help streamline the flows and process of many manufacturing organizations through different customizations.

If you are interested in learning more about more about the different ways to improve your business with Microsoft, you can send us an email at marketing@www.ctlink.com.ph!

Security Advisory: Critical Vulnerability for Microsoft Exchange Found

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Security Advisory: Critical Vulnerability for Microsoft Exchange Found

It has recently been reported and come to the attention of Microsoft of two critical zero-day vulnerabilities that affect Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, Exchange Server 2016, and Exchange Server 2019. The first one, identified as CVE-2022-41040, is a server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability, while the second one, identified as CVE-2022-41082, allows remote code execution (RCE) when Exchange PowerShell is accessible to the attacker.

CVE-2022-41040 can enable an authenticated attacker to remotely trigger CVE-2022-41082. However, authenticated access to the vulnerable Exchange Server is necessary to successfully exploit either vulnerability, and they can be used separately.

Unfortunately, there is evidence that there are currently active attacks using these vulnerabilities as of today. As of today, Microsoft is still working on a patch/update to fix this vulnerability. They have provided a few ways to mitigate the issue in the meantime. We strongly suggest that you take the following steps to mitigate the threat

Known Mitigation

Firstly, if you are an Exchange Online customer, you do no need to take any action as Microsoft security already has you covered. For those using Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, Exchange Server 2016, and Exchange Server 2019, you may try the 3 options below:

Option 1: For customers who have the Exchange Emergency Mitigation Service (EEMS) enabled, Microsoft released the URL Rewrite mitigation for Exchange Server 2016 and Exchange Server 2019. The mitigation will be enabled automatically.

Option 2: Microsoft created the following script for the URL Rewrite mitigation steps. https://aka.ms/EOMTv2

Option 3: Customers follow the steps found here for the third option for mitigation

Exclusive Workshop: Collaborate and Stay Secure with Microsoft 365 for Business!

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Exclusive Workshop: Collaborate and Stay Secure with Microsoft 365 for Business!

When the pandemic hit, businesses all over the world had to scramble and adapt. Many small and medium-size businesses really struggled with these changes and did not know if they would be able to make it through. The “new normal” has demonstrated that in order to thrive, businesses need to invest in developing capabilities in key two areas:

  • Real-time collaboration
  • Security

Real-time collaboration was hard to maintain during the start of the pandemic as many did not have the means to work remotely. Those companies that were unable to adapt to the pandemic were not able to recover their business. As you know, Microsoft Office 365 was able to help many businesses collaborate in real time and keep the user performance high even during those uncertain times.

Security does not fall behind collaboration in terms of importance during the pandemic. The spike in malicious attacks at the start of 2020 caused many businesses to lose important business data. Although some businesses were able to recover, many did not. These attacks also cost businesses significant amount of profit over time as lost business opportunities were hard to recover.

Microsoft Office 365 Business Premium Workshop

Even as we are emerging from the pandemic, remote work setups are now more accepted, and we can expect to see it from businesses. Therefore, we should keep finding ways to improve the business processes with better and innovative ways. This is why we at CT Link are partnering with Crayon Philippines to create an exclusive workshop for some of our customers to learn more about the benefits of Office 365. With better real-time collaboration and security features, this workshop aims to show you how you can keep improving despite the ever-changing IT landscape.

Interested in learning how you can attend our next exclusive workshops? Inquire at marketing@www.ctlink.com.ph to learn more!

Office 365 Tips for Improving Data Security

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Office 365 Tips for Improving Data Security
Microsoft Office 365 Tips for Improving Data Security

Microsoft Office 365 has become one of the most widely used collaboration tools for many businesses around the world. This is due to the familiarity, convenience, and functionality that the platform gives its users. The pandemic made it even more apparent when businesses had to close their offices and remote work was enforced globally. However, cyber criminals are aware of this and are actively looking for ways to exploit user ignorance for their gain.

Below are a few security tips to help you and your company improve your Office 365 security:

Enable Device Protection

Microsoft Office 365 Tips for Improving Data Security protection

Users of Office 365 will agree that one of the best features it has is its mobility. Being able to access your files, collaborate with others, and checking business emails on any device is incredibly convenient. However, this can lead to security risks in the long run if devices are not properly secured.

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based service that focuses on mobile device management (MDM) and mobile application management (MAM). It helps your organization properly manage and secure your users’ devices, whether or not they are using company devices or using their personal devices (BYOD). One example of its capabilities is preventing emails from being sent to people outside your organization. It also allows your corporate data to be secured even if they are on a personal device, keeping it isolated from personal data.

Microsoft Intune Capabilities

  • Option to be purely cloud or co-managed with configuration manager and Intune.
  • Customize rules for both personal and organization-owned devices when accessing corporate data and networks.
  • Protect your company information by controlling the way users access and share information.
  • Ensure security compliance for all devices and apps

Set up Email Security

Microsoft Office 365 Tips for Improving Data Security email

Attackers usually take the path of least resistance when targeting your network which is usually your users. Phishing attacks have gone up since the pandemic since users are more vulnerable outside your network. Making use of the default Office 365 anti-phishing capabilities can help your company monitor and block known campaigns to lessen the risk of a breach. These functions can be enabled through the Microsoft Defender in the settings window.

If your company would like a complete email security solution for your Office 365 defense, Trend Micro Email Security for Office 365 can help. The Trend Micro solution uses an optimum blend of cross-generational threat techniques, like machine learning, sandbox analysis, data loss prevention (DLP), and other methods to stop all types of email threats.

Trend Micro Email Security Capabilities

  • Stops phishing and spam by examining email senders, analyzing email content and malicious URL
  • Protects against BEC by examining email behavior while allowing you to define priority users for BEC protection
  • Detects and blocks advanced threats using machine learning and sandbox analysis

Turn on Multifactor Authentication (MFA)

Enabling the MFA capabilities of Office 365 adds an additional layer of security to avoid data breaches. By verifying each user that requests for access, lessens the chance that any malicious attacker can get into your network. Office 365 MFA can be enabled for individual accounts or through policies for all users. Individual account option makes users go through authentication on their login while policy-based MFA can be customized based on the user’s role or permission levels. The policy-based option is not available on all licenses.

RSA SecurID is another option if you are looking to improve your MFA capabilities for Office 365. With a native Office 365 integration, you can better secure your network with a variety of different authentication methods. The below authentication methods are also available whether or not the user has internet access:

  • Hardware tokens
  • Soft tokens through the mobile app
  • Biometrics through the mobile app
  • Tokens received through Email or SMS

For further security form the RSA solution has machine learning for its authentication solution. However, it is not included in the basic edition.

Contact us at marketing@www.ctlink.com.ph to learn more on how you can better secure your Office 365 suite today!

Streamline your Workflows with Microsoft Approvals

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Streamline your Workflows with Microsoft Approvals

The pandemic has changed many things over the past year, remote work has now become a more widely accepted set up when it comes to managing your workforce’s schedules. However, even with cloud-based tools to help with collaboration, files and decisions can still be hard to track if it is scattered throughout different platforms like email, messenger apps, or even through video or audio calls.

This is not a problem for users of Microsoft Teams as Microsoft has recently added a new application called Approvals.

https://youtu.be/Z9fdqSxKuJw

Approvals in Microsoft Teams allows users to create, manage, and share approvals directly from the Team app. Approval flows can be made directly from where users chat, channel conversations, or from the Approval app itself. They can be monitored easily from the Teams app and will notify approvers once the request has been made.

Your Approvals in one App

With Approvals, you can see and manage all approval requests in one app with all key details, status, requestors, and approvers. You can also track the progress of specific approvals to find out more on what’s happening or if there are delays.

Upload documents, images, links, and other files

Approval allows for requestors to upload files or pictures when creating approvals. This ensures that their task or request has supporting documents to prove completion and creates a faster approval cycle. This also makes it easier to find files when you need to find it.

Approvals built on the Power Platform

Approvals in Teams is built on top of Power Platform and is easily integrated to create an uninterrupted flow of work to reduce the wait time of tasks. With integration of Power Platform, you can do more than just simple approvals and rejections. Since it is a workflow app, you can immediately place tasks and objectives after an approval or rejection customized based on what you need, so that the flow of work continues until the end result you are after is achieved.

For example, you can create a flow to act on the request directly from Teams and define what happens after the request is approved (e.g. post a confirmation message in Teams) or rejected (e.g. create a task in Planner). When a specific form is submitted, this flow will automatically be triggered, which makes it easier for both the requestor and the approver to expedite the process.

To learn more about Microsoft Teams and Approvals, you can fill the form below and we will get in touch with you as soon as we can!

Office App: Your new Microsoft Office on the Go

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Office App: Your new Microsoft Office on the Go

Most Microsoft Office users hardly use their phone to do their work, if ever they do its for revisions or small adjustments.  Users usually save majority of the work for when they can use a desktop, this should be expected as the mobile version, while handy, had a lot of limitations.  Microsoft took this as a challenge to better improve their mobile app so that you could use the app on the go to create majority of the content of your files, be it a document, a spreadsheet or even presentations.

Microsoft has announced on February 19, 2020 that the Office app is now generally available for use on both iOS and android for you to test and hopefully give more feedback.

The Office app delivers several key benefits including:

  • Combining Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in a way that simplifies the experience with fewer apps to download or switch between. It requires far less phone storage than installing individual apps while maintaining virtually all the capabilities of the existing mobile apps people already know and use.
  • Integrating our Lens technology to unlock the power of the camera with capabilities like converting images into editable Word and Excel documents, scanning PDFs, and capturing whiteboards with automatic digital enhancements to make the content easier to read.
  • Adding new functionality for common tasks people often encounter when working on a phone—things like making quick notes, signing PDFs, scanning QR codes, and transferring files between devices.

New features are also on the works that will hopefully help you do more content heavy work when using the Office App.  Below are the features that are currently being worked on and hopefully will be out on a future update:

Word Dictation— a feature where you can enable writing via voice while keeping all punctuation and symbols via a shortcut bar.

Excel Cards View— a feature in which excel rows will be displayed as easy to read and edit cards to better.

Outline to PowerPoint— a feature in which your powerpoint slide based on an outline you write will be automatically designed by powerpoint designer.

To learn more about Microsoft Office or any other Microsoft products, you may visit our product page or you can contact us directly at 8893 9515 and we would be happy to answer your inquiries.

You may also find the link for the Office app below for your respective devices:

Download for Android | Download for iOS

AIP Scanner: Automating Data Protection for your Organization

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AIP Scanner: Automating Data Protection for your Organization

Organizations these days have large amounts of unstructured data just being left alone in their on-premises data repositories and SharePoint libraries.  With the amount of data usually amounting to terabytes (or even Petabytes in some cases), it can seem like a daunting task which can take long hours to accomplish.  However, with the help of some tools and apps, this seemingly difficult task may not seem that daunting anymore.

This is where Azure Information Protection (AIP) Scanner comes in.  AIP Scanner can scan your on-premises data repositories against the standard Office 365 sensitive information types and custom types you build with keywords and regular expressions.   Once the data is discovered, the AIP scanner(s) can aggregate the findings and display them in Analytics reports so you can begin visualizing your data risk and see recommendations for setting up protection rules based on the content.

Benefits

Below are some key benefits that one organization who is currently using AIP Scanner have mentioned:

Enhanced functionality:  AIP scanner has the capability to not only scan sensitive data, but also to apply labels and encrypt files. PDF and RMS-encrypted files can be scanned as well, given that the operator is an accredited RMS superuser.

Simplified management processes: AIP scanner has an integrated view with centralized logging for the scanner results which make viewing and managing them easier especially when you are scanning large amount of data.

Consistent scan results across the enterprise: With AIP Scanner, you can reuse Office 365 DLP information types meaning that you don’t have to rebuild policies between your cloud scans and third-party products.

To learn more about AIP scanner, you can visit the original article here or you can contact us at 893-9515 and we would be happy to answer your inquiries!

Security Advisory: SWAPGS Attack

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Security Advisory: SWAPGS Attack

A new Security Vulnerability was recently announced by Microsoft which can be considered a variant of the old Spectre vulnerability.  This new vulnerability is called the SWAPGS attacks.  Its name comes from the fact that the vulnerability leverages on the “SWAPGS instruction”, one of the predictive executions within the affected processors which helps improve the speed of our computers.

So which systems are affected?

The researchers from BitDefender, the ones responsible for the discovery, have stated that the vulnerability affects all Intel CPUs manufactured from 2012 to the present.  However, Red Hat has also come out with its own security advisory  stating that the vulnerability affects x86-64 systems using both Intel and AMD processors, which AMD itself disputes as its own statement on this matter states they are not affected by the vulnerability.  The advisory also stated that from the industry feedback, they are not aware of a way to exploit this vulnerability of Linux kernel-based systems.

Is this attack easily executed?  Am I the target for these attacks?

With the details of these attacks fully disclosed, the chances of becoming a victim of these attacks are a lot higher.  However, as these kinds of attacks are very time consuming, cyber criminals would be more likely to attack more lucrative targets such as organizations or their key personal rather than target smaller individuals.

“Criminals with knowledge of these attacks would have the power to uncover the most vital, best-protected information of both companies and private individuals around the world, and the corresponding power to steal, blackmail, sabotage and spy,” Gavin Hill, vice-president for datacenter and network security products at Bitdefender warned.

What can I do to prevent this?

Firstly, this vulnerability was already included in the July 9 security update of Microsoft, so if you’ve already up to date with the security patches you don’t have to do anything.

As for existing Trend Micro users, given that this is a local type of vulnerability, Trend Micro IPS rule cannot be created for this. Vulnerability exploitable with only local access requires the attacker to either have physical access or be logged on to the vulnerable system. DPI can only detect attacks over the network.

As stated above, it would be best to immediately update your OS Security Patches, you may find a list below:

For more inquiries regarding this vulnerability, please do contact us at 893-9515 and we will be happy to answer them!