Love it or hate it, remote work is here to stay. I reflected on what the last two years have taught us about remote work in an article for the CT Mirror. Two years ago, IT workers scrambled to make remote work not only feasible but productive. It's been a crucial aspect in keeping America working ever since.

In the old days, when people had important documents they wanted to keep secure, they would lock them in a filing cabinet. The only people who could access the files would have a key or would need to contact the file administrator.

You are in the middle of an important project (on deadline, of course); that’s when your computer decides to act up. It’s the last thing you need. We’ve all been there.

It's a security-focused world these days. Many of us are still working remotely — if not full time, at least partially — and this opens up a lot of new avenues for malfeasance from the hacker community. As a senior systems engineer, I understand the vital importance of properly balancing security with productivity. If you talk to our security engineers they would say they prefer a locked-down, zero-access policy, but that's not going to work in a real-world scenario.

We’ve all been there...you cleared your calendar to tackle that major project and your computer isn’t cooperating. The deadline is looming. You fill out a help ticket and come to that age-old question...is your ticket “urgent” or “critical?” Most of us don’t like to hit the “panic button.” We don’t want to send out false alarms, but we also want things fixed quickly.

When you think about cybersecurity, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Passwords?

Remote collaboration is more important now than it has ever been. Businesses are searching out and identifying the best ways to empower their employees to stay connected from wherever they’re working. Microsoft Teams aims to meet that need by offering a single productivity and collaboration platform that allows you to video message or make/schedule video conference calls, instant message, file share, and collaborate on file editing in real time. You can check out my previous article on Microsoft Teams for more information about its capabilities and ways it could potentially benefit your organization. As an IT managed service provider (MSP) in Connecticut, we’ve seen an increased interest in Teams both internally and with our clients which is why I wanted to show you around the Microsoft Teams interface. Whether you’re just starting to use Teams or want to see what the interface is like before you consider it, this video and article below will show you what you or your end users would see as well as a quick run through of the tabs and features in the product.

With so many businesses operating fully remotely, the ability to collaborate in the cloud has become essential. Hybrid cloud solutions give companies the flexibility to use the cloud in a way that best suits them. TechTarget recently interviewed me about how Amazon Web Services (AWS) fits into the hybrid cloud landscape. Thus far, AWS has not made a play to be a leader in hybrid cloud. But could that be part of a bigger strategy for the cloud computing giant?