Datalyst Blog

As a provider of information technology services and support, a big part of our job is helping the businesses we work with make the best decisions regarding their critical IT. This responsibility means we often provide an advisory role to business leaders.

In that role, we strongly advise that you make any intended technology purchases and upgrades right now… because if you wait, you may have no good options left.

The holidays are over and some of the best gifts are ones that replace our dead and dying electronics with shiny new ones. Then comes the matter of discarding your old devices. In today’s blog, we will discuss what you should and shouldn’t do when looking to get rid of your old devices. 

Nostalgia is a powerful force. It can drive us to look to the past for things we once loved, such as the music we listened to over the years. However, what if the music you loved was lost forever?

This could be the case for many, as older hard drives that archive this music have been discovered to have failed. Let’s examine the situation to see what lessons any small-to-medium-sized business can learn.

We’re still getting more information on this, but at the time of writing this, every American can assume that their social security number has been stolen. Let’s share what we know so far.

Your computer has a brain, of sorts, in its CPU… a tiny square that literally enables everything the device does, as it processes billions of instructions at a time. Of course, to support this on such a relatively tiny piece of hardware, most CPUs are packed with microscopic transistors—these transistors being small enough to fit hundreds on a single blood cell.

As you might imagine, this means things can go wrong pretty easily… and gone wrong, things have. Many newer computers are suffering from a bug that could cause permanent damage to the CPU… and if you don’t take steps fast, it could be too late.

Is your business frequently grappling with the challenges of implementing new solutions, whether software or hardware? Consider harnessing the power of virtualization in the cloud to address these issues head-on. With the right tools, virtualization can open up remarkable opportunities to enhance your business' operations while bolstering its security and flexibility.

It is important to keep modern computers clean, and laptops are no exception. However, a laptop's different form factor makes cleaning it much different from cleaning a traditional desktop computer.

When taking stock of your business assets, technology is particularly critical to pay attention to. Let’s discuss why this is and what you must do to manage it properly.

We’re at a weird point in the technology world (but honestly, when is it not at least a little convoluted?). Right now, modern technology has been slowly shifting between a few different technologies and consumers and businesses are stuck in the middle trying to figure out what to do and how to future-proof their hardware investments.

Every organization, whether it’s a farm with a stable full of horses or an office with a stable filled with people, depends on its access to the Internet. Most people take for granted their ability to connect whether it be with their smartphone via Wi-Fi or their workstation, which is typically hardwired. There is a whole infrastructure behind the near ubiquitous Internet access you enjoy. Today, we will go through some of the essential hardware needed. 

Let’s face it; running a business can be expensive, and taking any measures possible to mitigate those costs can have huge benefits for your bottom line. One way companies are minimizing costs is by implementing a Bring Your Own Device policy, or BYOD, to allow employees to use their own personal devices for work purposes. We’re here to help you do so without putting security at risk.

Google’s Project Zero team has discovered 18 zero-day vulnerabilities impacting the Samsung Exynos modems—four of which enable remote code execution. Let’s talk about what this issue does, and what needs to be done to minimize risk.

Magnets are often portrayed as the bane of technology’s existence, especially in media where data must be scrubbed from devices through the use of a magnet. How true is this representation of the relationship between magnets and technology? We’ll examine this in today’s blog article.

For millions of people, the rubber ducky is a benign reminder of childhood. Depending on when you were a child, the rendition of Sesame Street’s Ernie singing “Rubber Duckie, you’re the one,” is ingrained in your mind every time you hear the term. Unfortunately, the Rubber Ducky we are going to tell you about today has only fond recollection for people who are looking to breach networks they aren’t authorized to access or deliver malware payloads that are designed to cause havoc. 

For years, IT has been at the forefront of business administration, productivity, communications, and many other parts of an organization's efficient operations. For the growing business it can be rather difficult to know where to invest your capital so that you can get the best ROI or the most value out of your IT investments. Let’s take a look at how the growing business can use their earmarked capital to improve their business.

In efforts to curb the semiconductor shortage and jumpstart the technology industry, the United States Congress passed legislation that includes funding for manufacturing semiconductors. Partially in response to China’s increasing economic influence and partially in response to the semiconductor shortage, the CHIPS Act could be just what industry leaders need to kickstart the manufacturing of these important devices.

It’s a common enough frustration—just as you really need it, your mobile device’s battery is on its last legs. This is something that we all would like to avoid if we could. That’s why we wanted to take the time to share a few ways to prolong your device’s battery life just a bit longer.

Sad to say, but for the foreseeable future, cost control is going to be the number one priority for almost every business. With the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic still lingering, and revenue streams interrupted, many businesses are still being extremely cautious with their capital. One place where most businesses can cut back is on printing. Let’s discuss how to cut your organization’s printing costs. 

For modern organizations that depend highly on their technology, nothing is quite so scary as an event that can completely marginalize its ability to operate. This doesn’t need to be a fire, flood, or some other major cataclysm; it could be something as simple as some of your old IT fails and you’re not ready for it. This week, we thought we’d briefly go through what a catastrophic failure looks like and some steps you can take to keep your business from experiencing one.

Businesses that depend on their technology try to stick with it as long as they can so as to not incur large unnecessary costs. Ironically, that may be the thing that is causing a lot of those costs. Today, we thought we would take a look at a couple of variables that can let you know it’s time to upgrade away from your current technology.