Xenex Systems’ monthly information technology news continues, keeping your business up to date with changing technology trends from our services providers.
IT Help Desk Support technician wanted!
We are excited to announce that our team is expanding! In the next month or so we will be taking on a new IT tech to look after our helpdesk. We want to ensure that our clients, both new and existing, are all being looked after as our business grows.
The new Advanced Communications plan can be added on to any Microsoft 365 or Office 365 paid subscription
Microsoft has launched a new user license called Advanced Communications for Teams, which introduces branded backgrounds, scales meetings up to 20,000 participants, and welcomes a new cloud-based phone system called Teams Calling. These new capabilities are designed to assist organisations to push beyond meetings into wider scale communications, like company-wide conferences and events. Teams general manager Nicole Herskowitz states that this is important as businesses needed to adapt rapidly in the early stages of the pandemic and find more sustained transformation in the long term.
East Metropolitan Health Service takes lead for state-wide requirements
When word of the pandemic first spread globally, East Metropolitan Health Service (EMHS) Chief Executive Liz MacLeod said she was confident that she had the right teams to rise to the challenge. COVID testing was about to ramp up to recognise people with the virus and WA Health urgently needed a system to capture the information and keep it secure, while also providing minute by minute insights to the WA Government to advise its decision making. A system was required that had capability to communicate a patient’s COVID test results to them and additionally. The system needed to address that there would be results from multiple testing sites across the State of Western Australia.
Microsoft takes one more step toward the death of Internet Explorer
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 11 web browser is on its way out after seven years, with support to be withdrawn for key online services. By November 2020, Microsoft Teams will no longer support IE11 and Microsoft won’t run on the legacy browser by August 2021, Microsoft said. For enterprise and business customers with legacy IE11 apps, Microsoft advises using the Chromium-based Edge browser, which comes with an Internet Explorer mode that can run in a separate tab.
3CX Selected in MKB Proof 2020 Awards – best in Unified Communications!
3CX has been listed in the MKB Proof 2020 Awards! 2020 has been a defining year for 3CX, and one that has strengthened their position as a market-leading business communications solution, which was something that the MKB Proof editors recognized. 3CX was selected for its reliability, flexibility, usability and UC features such as website live chat, video conferencing, collaboration tools and more.
Cisco collaboration unveils a blueprint for the hybrid workplace
Cisco has outlined the considerations and technologies to create a blueprint that empowers remote worker while also paving the way for a safer return to the office. Cisco states that the hybrid/ blended workplace needs to allow for inclusive and equal team collaboration experiences. Workers need to be able to be productive no matter what device they use or what their Internet connectivity is like.
Seamlessly join an Amazon EC2 for Linux instance to AWS Directory Service
AWS manages the infrastructure required to run Active Directory and handles all the software and patching updates needed. It’s fully managed, so if a domain controller fails, monitoring will automatically detect and replace that failed controller. Manually connecting a machine takes time, and if there are several machines then this task quickly becomes a time sink. The AWS team unveiled a new feature which enables a Linux EC2 instance to connect to AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory seamlessly. Now you can have both your Windows and Linux EC2 instances seamlessly connect to AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory.
AWS introduces a solution of AI services to manage contact centre workflows
AWS announced the availability of AWS Contact Center Intelligence (CCI) solutions, a group of services that empowers customers to effortlessly integrate AI into contact centres, made available through AWS Partner Network (APN) partners. AWS CCI has solutions for live-call analytics & agent assist, self-service and post-call analytics, making it possible for customers to quickly integrate AI into their existing workflows or build completely new ones.
Multi-part series examines escalating detection evasion techniques and 5 early warning signs organisations are about to be hit by ransomware
A manager on the Managed Threat Response team, Peter Mackenzie explains what to assume when expecting a ransomware attack. He states that when working with ransomware victims, time is spent looking back through telemetry records that span a previous couple of weeks. These records sometimes include behavioural anomalies that are perhaps not inherently malicious, but in the context of a cyber attack that has already taken place, could be an early indicator of a threat actor conducting operations on a victim’s network.
Report: endpoint protection best practices to block ransomware
In Sophos’ recent survey of 5,000 IT Managers across 26 countries, 51% of respondents answered that they were hit by ransomware in the last year. In 73% of those incidents, attackers were successful in encrypting data. An endpoint protection solution is one of the most effective methods to defend against ransomware if it’s properly configured. Sophos’ new guide, Endpoint Protection Best Practices to Block Ransomware, explores how ransomware attacks work, how they can be stopped, and best practices for constructing the endpoint solution for the strongest protection possible.
Managed IT services team
If you have any questions in relation to these new technologies or require assistance for your IT system, please do not hesitate to get in touch with the Xenex Systems Managed IT Services team.