If you are a business owner, then you will likely have heard the phrase "IT budget" before. It's not as simple as just having a chunk of money to spend on your IT needs - there are many variables at play when it comes to this important part of running a successful...
Portland IT Support Articles & Business Tech News
Cybersecurity, M365, Managed IT Services, AI, & Technology Trends for Portland Businesses
A few chuckles from your IT people around the Facebook campfire
We all had a few chuckles around here when we learned the reasons for the Facebook outage on Monday. Datacenters use something called BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), a way for routers on the internet to learn the fastest path for traffic to take, learn when a circuit...
Windows 11 is available now
This week, Microsoft announced the availability of Windows 11. While it offers some interesting new features, we recommend you wait a bit to let us sort out the bugs first. Our initial testing has revealed a few annoyances that you might want to be aware...
The Latest Threat to Your Computer? Malware embedded in GPU’s
This month, a proof-of-concept (PoC) was sold on a hacker forum, suggesting that cybercriminals may be moving to a new level of sophistication in their assaults. By embedding malware inside video cards from AMD and NVIDIA, the criminals are able to better...
CISA: Don’t use single-factor auth on Internet-exposed systems
Today, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) announced that it has added single-factor authentication (SFA) to a rather short list of cybersecurity bad practices it recommends against. The CISA's "Bad Practices" list includes procedures...
The previous 2 articles were written with the assistance of AI
This article is about the use of AI in content creation. The previous two articles (The latest Threat to your Computer, CISA: Don’t use single-factor auth) were written with the assistance of artificial intelligence, and this one will be as well. Artificial...
Ransomware education and mentoring
Some of our employees just returned from a training session in Denver, CO – the first time we’ve attended such an event in person since Early 2020. Most of the discussion revolved around security and the persistent threat of ransomware. We...
Windows 365 now generally available
Microsoft has been working on this for a while, and now it’s generally available. Basically, it’s your desktop in the cloud. Instead of VPN’ing into work, or using remote desktop to control a computer at your office, you can...
Windows 11 coming later this year
On June 24th, Microsoft announced Windows 11, it’s evolution of the Microsoft Windows operating system. While hard to believe, Windows 10 was released almost 6 years ago, on July 29th, 2015. Microsoft hasn’t officially announced a release date, other than stating it...
Kaseya Hack and SpireTech’s response
Although SpireTech uses Kaseya software for systems management, neither SpireTech or our customers were victims of the latest headline news breach. Our response, analysis of the hack, explanation of why we were not...
“4th of July” Holiday
Our office will be closed on Monday July 5th in observance of Independence day. Technical support will not be available on this day so that our employees can enjoy the holiday with their families.
M365 subscription billing prorate policy changes
Due to changes in policy with our vendors, we can no longer credit Microsoft 365 services for partial months or partial years. This is a change in the cost structure to us, and we are simply passing these costs on to our customers. Reassignment of licenses are...
Service desk phones
Along with many of our clients, we're switching the entire office over to Microsoft 365 Business Voice (Teams voice). We've been using it on the Professional Services side of the house for nearly a year, and now the entire team will be on it. Our legacy PRI service...
Does your company have Cyber insurance?
Ransomware is a plague on businesses and insurers. Cyber insurance can provide protection in the event your business falls victim. However – we’ve heard insurance rates are going up across the board due to ransomware, and hefty payouts that insurers have...
Recent vulnerability affects many Dell systems
A new vulnerability affecting most Dell computers was announced this week. The vulnerability cannot be exploited remotely – but we have remediated the issue. Our NOC team prepared an automation and removed the vulnerable file from all Dell systems supported...
Celebrating our wins
Our team has refined the process of migrating systems from on-premises Active directory servers to Azure AD quite well. We’re liberating our clients from the bounds of the office, removing legacy file servers, and enabling employees to work from anywhere. ...
