We’ve already endured a brutal summer here in Texas –  and if history tells us anything, the heat will only get worse (if that’s even possible). As you keep replacing the water cooler in your building and cranking up the air conditioning, consider that extreme temperatures can cause more than discomfort for your employees; they can also damage your IT hardware. Here are some timely tips to help your computer gear beat the summertime heat, courtesy of your Austin business technical support experts at Gravity Systems.

The term “zero-day” sounds ominous even if you don’t know what it means – and if you do know what it means, it should give you that much more of a chill. Zero-day exploits and attacks can affect practically any workplace or industry by hacking into the computer network and wreaking havoc on their hardware, software, data, and everyday processes. Our Austin business tech support team at Gravity Systems wants you to understand some key points about zero-day exploits, from the forms they can take to how you can protect your organization against them.

Here in Austin, we face ongoing struggles against dust, dander, pollen, and other airborne particles that can mess with our health and comfort. But your human workers aren’t the only ones at risk for debilitating issues caused by dust exposure. The electronic devices that labor silently to keep your operations running can also sustain dust-related “health problems” that threaten their performance and longevity. Let’s examine why dust represents such a serious potential threat to your IT system, and what you can do to minimize this threat.

Do you remember the Heartbleed “bug?” Our Austin business IT support techs here at Gravity systems sure do. That little bit of code exposed millions of online accounts to scam artists, creating enormous problems for individuals and businesses alike. But Heartbleed didn’t exist in a bubble; as we’ve related in previous posts, new malware concoctions attack computers year after year. You’ve got to set your IT system up with the proper barricades against these evil operators – and that means implementing two-factor authentication, or 2FA. It’s not only good sense; it’s also a requirement in many cyber insurance policies.

Rapid technological advances have altered the landscape of business IT operations considerably in recent years. This is both good news and bad news for non-technical business owners who find themselves struggling to stay on top of all the latest developments, including the deluge of software updates, security updates, and other essentials. If you're one of those beleaguered decision makers, you may have heard of two outsourced solutions that can save you a lot of effort and confusion – software as a service (SaaS) and managed services. But if you're weighing one against the other for your organization, there are important differences between the two that you need to understand.