From a network security point of view you should assume that every Wi-Fi system is insecure! Yours included!

Really!

By leveraging the technology built into wireless access points and routers you can make your Wi-Fi system more and more secure but it’s ‘safe’ to say that anyone with enough time and resources will be eventually be able to circumvent your Wi-Fi security and gain access to your network.

By properly securing your Wi-Fi you can make it more difficult and time consuming for a hacker to breach your Wi-Fi security and hopefully less likely to want to spend the time on your Wi-Fi system and move onto an easier target.

The time a hacker can take to break into your Wi-Fi system increases significantly if you implement the following technologies:-

• Increasing Wi-Fi Encryption Level
• MAC Address Filtering
• Binding IP Address to MAC Address
• Hiding a SSID
• Replace old hardware which only works on WEP

In the same context that any internet connected computer’s security can be breached, any Wi-Fi system’s security can be breached.

If you need help or advice securing your network, give us a call. We don’t just do Wi-Fi but are experts in computers, networks, servers, internet and email.

Century IT Services – Getting IT Right

Providing Computer Support & Network Support to businesses in Hampshire, Dorset, Surrey, Wiltshire, Sussex and Berkshire.

Microsoft Small Business Specialist, Microsoft Exchange Expert, Microsoft Exchange Trouble shooter, Microsoft Exchange Problems, Microsoft Small Business Server 2003, 2008, 2011, Exchange 2003, 2007, 2010, Microsoft Partner

This article has been written by a small business for small businesses as a free, easy to read and understand document on the benefits of Microsoft Exchange Server.

We have tried to use plain English to simplify the technical jargon, to help businesses make an informed decision on how Microsoft Exchange Server will help and support their business.

What is Microsoft Exchange Server?

Microsoft Exchange Server is comprehensive piece of email and collaboration software designed for businesses.

Microsoft Exchange Server can make your business more productive and make your email system more flexible and feature rich. You should consider that a Microsoft Exchange Server as a massive upgrade in features and capability when compared to Internet Service Provider’s (ISP’s) hosted POP3 mailboxes.

Microsoft Exchange Server is a reliable and robust industry standard email and collaboration system suited to businesses of all sizes.

Quite simply put, Microsoft Exchange Server, if properly installed and setup, has the potential to make your business more profitable by making certain operations of your business slicker and less time consuming in manpower.

What Productivity Features Can I Expect

• User and Group mailboxes

• Unlimited Mailbox and Group Email Aliases

• Shared Calendars & Tasks

• Centrally stored contacts

• Full integration with compatible mobile phones

• Integration with CRM products

• Remotely Access email via a web portal – Outlook Web Access

• Secure Remote Microsoft Outlook email functionality

• Spam filtering

Besides all of the immediately obvious features/reasons for implementing a Microsoft Exchange Server in your business there are also some other not well known benefits of resource management.

For example you can use the Microsoft Exchange Server to electronically manage the following shared resources

• Meeting rooms

• Projectors

• Company pool cars

• Booking of company vans

• Employee Sickness

• Employee Holidays and Holiday Requests

What Compliance Features Can I Expect?

A Microsoft Exchange Server is primarily, a robust and reliable email platform specifically designed for businesses, but you can also utilise Microsoft Exchange Server systems to help you ensure you meet your electronic communication’s legal and compliance obligations.

There are numerous facilities which can be implemented but generally the most commonly used benefits are:-

• Centrally Stored Email within the Business Premises

• Journaling (Recording Copies of) Incoming and Outgoing Emails

• Centrally Controlled Email Footers and Disclaimers

• Auto responding of incoming Emails to ensure SLA’s are met

• Central Data Backup and Data Restore of Key Email Systems

Utilising a combination of the above can help your business meet its compliance and data protection obligations.

Ensuring compliance with governing bodies for example FSA, ACCA, Law Society and also Data Protection obligations.

How Can I Get Microsoft Exchange Server?

Microsoft Exchange Server can be purchased either as a separate product or is included within Microsoft Small Business Server.

If you would like to speak to an I.T Expert, why not give us a telephone call to discuss your requirements and clarify any business specific questions you may have.

To ensure you purchase the correct version we would recommend you get sound expert advice.

If you are looking for support for your Microsoft Exchange Server – Telephone us on Tel. 023 8007 0101

Microsoft Small Business Specialist, Microsoft Exchange Expert, Microsoft Exchange Trouble shooter, Microsoft Exchange Problems, Microsoft Small Business Server 2003, 2008, 2011, Exchange 2003, 2007, 2010, Microsoft Partner

Century IT Services – Getting IT Right

Providing Computer Support & Network Support to businesses in Hampshire, Dorset, Surrey, Wiltshire, Sussex & Berkshire.

It’s all about your agents, well that’s what 3CX think anyway, the 3CX Call Center Edition provides vast array of extra features to an already feature rich affordable PBX system with Enterprise features for Small to Medium size businesses.

“Customer service is key in today’s cut throat market. The 3CX Call Center Module allows small and medium businesses to deliver superior customer service without having to buy an expensive enterprise call center. Previous to the 3CX Phone System, adding much needed call center features to your phone system was prohibitive” – Nick Galea, 3CX CEO.

Below are the features that are currently in the 3CX Call Center Edition, they give comprehensive control over incoming calls to agents.

Listen in, Listen & Whisper and Barge in

3CX Call Center Module also features Listen in, Listen & Whisper and Barge in functions, allowing the supervisor to monitor agent responses.

Customer service supervisors can listen into an agents call with the Listen feature. If the agent isn’t too sure on how to respond to the customers’ request, the Listen & Whisper feature allows the supervisor to provide feedback to the agent only, allowing him/her to take the best course of action with regards the customers request. The Barge in feature allows supervisors to join calls directly.

Call Back Feature

Additional Queue Strategies

Besides the Call Back Queue strategy, the 3CX Call Center Module also features a Round Robin Queue strategy and a Longest Waiting strategy which sends the call to the agent that takes the longest time to answer on average. Least Talk Time and Fewest Answered strategies are also available, as well as Hunt by Threes Random and Hunt by Threes Prioritized. These additional 3CX strategies allow a business to more accurately tailor how they wish to serve their customers or divide the calls amongst the employees.

Service Level Agreement Alerts

The 3CX SLA Alerts feature allows supervisors and managers to be notified when callers have to wait beyond a configurable amount of time. In addition the event can be logged, so that you can do SLA reporting to customers. Customer satisfaction can be ensured with the 3CX SLA alert feature, as staff can act immediately if a given customer service level is not met.

Wrap up Time

Wrap up time gives agents a configurable amount of time to enter notes in the customer record or follow up tasks before they have to take another call.

3CX have produced this YouTube presentation on the 3CX Call Center Edition

If you are in the South of England, especially in the Southampton, Bournemouth, Portsmouth or Isle of Wight areas and would like to talk more about the 3CX Call Center Edition then please feel free to contact us.

Century IT Services – Providing 3CX PBX VoIP Telephone System Installation & Support in Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Surrey, Sussex & Berkshire

iPhone 4S: is it worth the upgrade for your business?

The iPhone 4S was announced yesterday, after the usual build-up of speculation and hype surrounding the release of a new Apple device.

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/04/iphone-4s-launched-apple-tim-cook)

Analysts and journalists have been disappointed by the technical specifications of the device, as they were expecting more.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8807235/Apple-shares-drop-5pc-on-disappointing-iPhone-4S-launch.html)

The iPhone 4S will be available from all the major UK networks on 14th October. Pricing has yet to be announced.

So, if you are an existing Apple customer, is it worth the upgrade? Will the iPhone 4S improve productivity and functionality?

What has improved?

1. Faster processor, the Dual-Core ARM A5 which debuted on the iPad2. Substantially faster than the Single-core processor of the iPhone 4.

2. Dual, improved 3.5g mobile antennas. Apple states that it has made substantial improvements to ensure that mobile reception issues are a thing of the past.

The Dual 3.5g antennas also allow one to receive data and the other to transmit, theoretically doubling data transfer speeds over 3g mobile networks, up to 14.4 Mbps.

3. Siri. Advanced voice recognition. Integrated into the phone and throughout Apple and third-party applications, it reportedly works fairly well. Only available on the iPhone 4S.

(http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/siri.html)

4. Improved Camera. 8 Megapixels as opposed to 5 Megapixels on the iPhone 4, 1080p Video Recording as opposed to 720p, with facial recognition, advanced backlight and improved CMOS sensor.

What has not improved?

1. Screen. Same 3.5-inch size and resolution.

2. Appearance, dimensions and weight are almost exactly the same as the iPhone 4.

Technical specifications are available at

http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html

What about iOS 5? Do I need an iPhone 4S to run it?

No. The iPhone 4S will include the latest operating system, iOS 5, upon launch. However, iOS5 will also be available for the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad and iPad 2.

One of the major new features of this operating system is iCloud

http://www.apple.com/icloud/what-is.html

For further details on iOS 5, see http://www.apple.com/uk/iphone/ios/

British Prime Minister – David Cameron MP pays tribute to Steve Jobs of Apple

Century IT Services – Getting IT Right

Providing Computer Support & Network Support to businesses in Hampshire, Dorset, Surrey, Wiltshire, Sussex & Berkshire

As you may be aware, the new Apple iPhone will be announced today, at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. At 6pm UK time, the press and special guests will arrive at the “Let’s talk iPhone” event. Finally, Apple will end all the speculation surrounding the upcoming iPhone and reveal it to the world. Is it called iPhone 4S? iPhone 5? Will there be just one model, or two? What will it, or they, look like? All will be revealed this evening.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8804922/Apple-iPhone-event-live.html

As is customary on such occasions, hackers are taking advantage of the hype by sending spam emails purporting to be from Apple. The emails contain a link to malware.

The email advertises the ‘iPhone 5’. This should send alarm bells ringing, as it is not known whether the ‘iPhone 5’ will be revealed today, or indeed if it even exists. The emails also contain grammatical errors. The sender may purport to be ‘news@apple.com’, but this could obviously change.

The malware only affects Windows PCs. Clicking on any of the included links will attempt to download the file ‘iphone5.gif.exe’ onto your machine.

Sophos and F-Secure have announced advisories. For more information, visit the following sites:

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/10/03/iphone-5-email-malware/

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002246.html

If you receive this email, do not open it, and delete immediately.

To combat this problem, it is recommended that antivirus products are kept up-to-date, and that an advisory is sent throughout your organisation.

Century IT Services – Getting IT Right
Providing Computer Support & Network Support to businesses in Hampshire, Dorset, Surrey, Wiltshire, Sussex, & Berkshire

Over the last couple of years, USB 3.0 has begun to emerge. Any newly purchased computer will have USB3.0 ports.

The main improvement is transfer speed: USB2.0 has a maximum speed of 480 mbps (megabits per second), whereas USB3.0 is capable of a whopping 5 Gbits/s (5000 mbps), or a 10x speed increase. This means that if it takes an hour to transfer some data to a USB2.0 device, it could take as little as 6 minutes using a USB3.0 device.

As with previous versions, USB3.0 is fully backwards compatible, therefore any USB2.0 device will work when plugged into USB3.0 ports.

Another major advantage is that USB3.0 devices will work with USB2.0 ports, though obviously at a decreased transfer speed. Therefore, it will not be necessary to replace computers, or add an expansion card, just to use these new devices.

Century IT Services – Getting IT Right
Providing Computer Support & Network Support to businesses in Hampshire, Dorset, Surrey, Wiltshire, Sussex & Berkshire.

In this article you will find what 3cx Myphone gives you access to the Company and Personal Phone books, lets you manage calls by transfer, forwarding calls, setting your presence and communicating with colleagues.

Firstly the 3cx Myphone software is now based on a Microsoft web platform called silveright, this makes it very simple to deploy and upgrade on Windows and Mac OS X computers. 3cx have also intimated that future versions will be available on Apple’s iPhone’s IOS and Google Android phones.

We had a look at the functionality of the latest version of the 3cx Myphone tool and here are the main features we found.

• Dialler, the dialing function can be used to access the 3cx Phone system’s company phone book and a personal phone book associated with the extension it is associated with, the phone numbers can be dialled by simply typing in a name or number and clicking on the dial button. 3CX Myphone then dials the number and transfers the call to the extension number.

• Voice Mail, this is a very easy way to manage the voice mail on your extension. You can instantly see Voicemails left and play them either through your extension, or from your Computer’s speakers. This function also allows you to delete voicemails that are not wanted or ones that have already been listed to.

• Presence, allows you to set the extension’s out-of-office status and what to do with calls that are directed to the extension. The features of this function are extensive and allows some very complex call routing if required. Set the presence to available will send calls to the extension as normal.

• Call history, this displays the history of calls that have been dialed and received and missed by the extension number that 3CX MyPhone is linked to. This is very useful for calling people back who perhaps did not leave a message of your voice mail.

• In call functions, this allows the user to perform several operations on a current call, ie transfer the call, add the call to a conference, place the call on hold or record the call. These functions are very easy to implement as all it requires is a click or drag of a mouse.

• Phonebook, the phone book can be used to store and dial internal or external numbers from. They are two phonebooks that can be accessed, the first is a personal phonebook for the extension number that 3CX MyPhone is connected to, and the other is the company phone book which are numbers that can be accessed by any user on their 3CX MyPhone.

• Messaging, the 3CX MyPhone software gives every user the ability to send instant messages to any other user, this is useful if a user is already on the phone and another user wants to send them a message. The message will pop up on the computer screen even if the 3CX MyPhone is minimised.

So as you can see, all in all the 3CX MyPhone Application is a very powerful tool which allows call and contact management and instant messaging, giving the user a simple interface to these sometimes complex functions of a PBX phone system.

If you would like to know more about the 3cx Phone system in general or the 3cx MyPhone program for Windows and Mac then contact us, we will be pleased to help.

If you would like to read the manual that 3CX have prepared then please click here

Century IT Services – Providing 3CX VoIP Telephone System Installations & Support in Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Surrey, Sussex & Berkshire

We know that when you are looking at starting any business the best way to succeed is to get the best possible advice available

Poor Advice + struggling start up business = maximum chance of failure

Failure could mean a loss of time, materials and ultimately financial loss.

You don’t need an I.T expert to tell you technology is the future – everybody can agree with that statement but what you do need is expert, impartial I.T advice from another small business that has been in your situation – you don’t want to blow your time and effort investing in a path that leads to a dead end.

Expert advice + innovative ideas = maximum chances of success

We like to see innovation particularly locally in our own county Of Hampshire! What could be better than a thriving local business economy and low unemployment!

If you are a start-up business or are looking to start your own business we would love to hear from you – as a special offer we will give you a free 2 hour appointment to listen to your ideas and will give you free confidential, impartial and expert advice in our capacity as I.T and telephony experts and there is no obligation – guaranteed!!

Unfortunately there is a catch!!!! (but only a small one)

As you can imagine an unbeatable offer like this is fairly unique and very popular so we can only see you by appointment at our offices in Totton

If you would like to see an I.T professional

If you would like to see an I.T professional to give you free expert and confidential advice ‘click here’ and fill in our online contact form.

We look forward to being of service to you.

Important links

SYOB

Federation of Small Business (FSB)

Business Link

Department for Business Innovation & Skills (BIS)

Southampton & Fareham Chamber of Commerce & Industry

Century IT Services – Getting  IT Right

Providing Computer Support & Network Support to businesses in Hampshire, Dorset, Surrey, Wiltshire, Sussex & Berkshire.

This will affect your business if you currently use Plus Net’s SMTP Store and Forward service.

You need to be aware that Plus Net are ceasing their Email SMTP Store and Forward Service (autoturn.plus.net)

We have had notification from Plus Net that it is their intention is to cease the Email SMTP Store & Forward service they provide to save costs. If your company uses this service from Plus Net it will mean you will lose incoming emails. To ensure you don’t lose emails you must take steps to make alternative arrangements for your SMTP Store & Forward service – there is a deadline of the end of September 2011

If you are unsure what this actually means to your business, please give us a call to discuss this important matter.

Plus Net link – http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,97124.0.html/

Century IT Services – Getting IT Right
Providing Computer Support & Network Support to businesses in Hampshire, Dorset, Surrey, Wiltshire, Sussex & Berkshire

A clever feature of the 3CX VoIP telephone system is the ability to configure a Skype VoIP Gateway.

Basically this Skype / VoIP Gateway allows Skype users to make free telephone calls straight into your 3CX telphone system.

Incoming Skype telephone calls are received by the 3CX VoIP telephone system, and can be dropped directly into a Ring Group or Call Queue and therefore can be routed in the same way as all of the other incoming phone calls.

The main benefit of a Skype to 3CX VoIP Gateway is the flexibity offering to clients, prospect and employees wanting to telephone the office.

Many hotels nowadays in the U.K and abroad offer wifi service which can be used by your remote and mobile workers and therefore is ideal.

If you are looking to make some productivity improvements to your I.T system, why not give us a call to find out how we can Empower Your Business For Growth

Useful Links

3CX & Skype Requirements

3CX Website

3CX Brochure

Century IT Services – Providing 3CX VoIP Telephone System Installations & Support in Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Surrey, Sussex & Berkshire