A white paper recently released by Microsoft makes the case for moving beyond your accounting system to an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution that delivers more insight and a greater level of control over your business. Through systems that are intuitive and easy to deploy, companies realize higher profitability, increased employee and customer satisfaction and new opportunities to grow.

Five ways ERP transforms businesses

• Helps Your People Work Better, Faster and Smarter - The most successful businesses employ passionate individuals who are engaged, committed to their organization’s success and working at their maximum potential. ERP enables your people to be more proactive and productive by giving them personalized, agile tools.
• Looks Forward, Not Backward - ERP can deliver proactive and predictive information to help your teams solve problems and prevent them from happening again.
• Transforms the Way You Work and Connect - No business can operate as an island any more. You need to connect to vendors, customers and employees with systems that make working with you easy.
• Drives and Supports Your Business Growth - Businesses with a vision for the future don’t let systems hold them back. With ERP, your business will be able to scale to meet higher demands without sacrificing the personal customer experience.
• Reduces Your Risk - Between increasing regulations and threats to security, you need a financial management system that can report accurately and consistently monitor transactions to reduce risks.

Transform your business Read more in Microsoft’s insightful white paper to help you make the right decision about ERP. Download the whitepaper here and let’s talk about how we can take your business to the next level.

On Monday, Microsoft announced that there have been attacks on a previously unknown hole in some versions of Internet Explorer 9 and earlier. The company said that customers who were worried about being attacked could try temporary workarounds (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/advisory/2757760#section7) to protect themselves.  Each of the temporary workarounds will effect usability and may make IE unusable.

Until Microsoft releases a patch the best way to protect yourself is to use another browser, such as Chrome or Firefox.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.

With the release of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 Microsoft is introducing a corporate logo.  You can see the design here.  I think it is tame.  Evolutionary.  Blah.

If you want to see some great design you should take a look at what a graphic design student in Vancouver put together. 

I like Andrew Kim’s design much better.  Would do you think?

If you use iCloud be sure to read this useful tip from OSXDaily.com for accessing iCloud documents from within your Finder.

 

Cavu Networks offers TaskFire, a powerful, hosted service desk and ticket management system your staff can use to manage internal IT service issues. It provides your IT team with a fully-integrated platform for accepting, triaging, assigning and resolving service issues – and gives your employees a simple, web interface for submitting issues and tracking progress.

But, what separates TaskFire from every other internal help desk system is the direct link to your preferred external IT service provider, Cavu Networks.

TaskFire gives you complete control over what issues get sent to our team of Network and Systems Engineers and when. Individual tickets can be automatically routed using the powerful built-in workflow automation engine, or manually escalated. Either way, you’re virtually guaranteed immediate access to additional IT resources – where and when you need them – without managing multiple vendors or adding to your headcount.

Partnering with Cavu Networks and TaskFire has these benefits:

• Improve internal IT service delivery
• Ensure coverage for remote offices and employees
• Reduce complexity and costs of multiple vendors
• Coverage outside of your normal business hours
• Access to reliable experts and resource when you need them
• Added person-power during peak demand or to help with complex issues
• Secure “institutional IT knowledge” that otherwise resides with individuals

For more information about TaskFire you can:

watch the TaskFire Demonstration video

download the TaskFire Datasheet 

or contact us for more information on how TaskFire can improve your internal IT service delivery.

New research released by Sophos has revealed a disturbingly high level of malware on Mac computers—with both Windows and Mac threats being discovered.

Sophos experts analyzed a snapshot of 100,000 Mac computers running its free anti-virus software, and discovered that one in five machines was found to be carrying one or more instances of Windows malware.

Although Windows malware on Macs will not cause symptoms (unless users also run Windows on their computer), it can still be spread to other computers.

Additionally, Sophos’s analysis shows that 2.7 percent (one in thirty six) of Macs were found to be carrying Mac OS X malware.

“Some Mac users may be relieved that they are seven times more likely to have Windows viruses, spyware and Trojans on their Macs than Mac OS X-specific malware, but Mac malware is surprisingly commonly encountered,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. “Mac users need a wake-up call about the growing malware problem.”

The recent Flashback botnet, which inflicted more than 600,000 users, and fake anti-virus attacks, which scare users into handing over their credit card details, dominate the chart of Mac-based threats.

Top Mac OS X malware found on Mac computers (7-day snapshot of 100,000 Macs):

1. OSX/Flshplyr 75.1%
2. OSX/FakeAV 17.8%
3. OSX/RSPlug 5.5%
4. OSX/Jahlav 1.2%
5. Other 0.4%

“Mac malware can spread via USB stick, email attachments, website download, or even a silent drive-by installation where the user doesn’t realize their Mac’s security has been subverted,” continued Cluley. “Cybercriminals view Macs as a soft target, because their owners don’t typically run anti-virus software and are thought to have a higher level of disposable income than the typical Windows user. Mac users must protect their computers now or risk making the malware problem on Macs as big as the problem on PCs.”

One in five Macs users who downloaded and scanned their system found Windows malware on Mac computers:

Top Windows malware found on Mac computers (7-day snapshot of 100,000 Macs):

1. Mal/Bredo 12.2%
2. Mal/Phish 7.4%
3. Mal/FakeAV 3.8%
4. Troj/ObfJS 3.6%
5. Mal/ASFDldr 3.3%
6. Troj/Invo 3.0%
7. Troj/Wimad 2.6%
8. Mal/Iframe 1.5%
9. Mal/JavaGen 1.4%
10.Other 61.2%

Some of the malware discovered by Sophos on the 100,000 Mac computers sampled dates back to 2007, and would have been easily detected if the users had run an anti-virus product sooner. Bredo, a family of malicious programs sent out via spam, accounts for 12.2 percent of malware detected on Mac computers. The first Bredo variant was detected in 2009, and since then, countless variants have been released. Only last week, it was used in a malicious email campaign that purported to have attached a compromising picture of the recipient.

“The simple fact is that you can scan your Mac for infection from your armchair. The test is painless and free; you just download an anti-virus product and allow it to check your computer and protect it against infections in future,” explained Cluley.

Home users can join the millions of others who protect their computers by downloading a free version of Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac from: http://www.sophos.com/freemacav.

Further information about these malware findings on Macs can be found on Sophos’s Naked Security site at: http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com.

About Sophos

More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing complete security solutions that are simple to deploy, manage, and use and that deliver the industry’s lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, mobile and network security solutions backed by SophosLabs – a global network of threat intelligence centers.

Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.

With the adaptation of Stage 2, companies operating in the electronic medical records will shift their focus from the capture to exchange of health information. One industry insider has recommended 10 things your EMR needs to be truly interoperable.

1. Single sign-on (SSO). Applications tend to proliferate, and if you don't allow people to switch between these applications using a common login and password, users will get frustrated and give up.
2. Context transitions. As applications grow, and you need to integrate them into an EMR, SSO won’t be enough, because you’ll still lose the “active patient or task" being performed. You’ll also need to provide for the transition of context between applications.
3. Widget publishing. EHRs often have hundreds of functions, and if some are exportable or publishable as widgets, they become much easier to integrate into new user interfaces in the future.
4. Widget consumption. EMRs will become more like containers of cross-application functionality than innate functionality, so consuming widgets will be a basic requirement.
5. Mash-ups. EMRs should allow access to their content through the content management interoperability services (CMIS) standard, thereby allowing users to unlock content they have in various health records.
6. Customizable dashboards. EMRs should provide dashboards that can be tailored by organization, user role, or even user.
7. Interactive Voice Response (IVR). IVR, which allows an EMR to interact with users through phones and other voice systems, such as Skype, will improve collaboration with patients and other physicians who aren’t at a computer.
8. Voice recognition. This will help users conduct EMR tasks more efficiently.
9. Natural language understanding. Because most EMR data is entered by humans, an EMR must integrate with systems that can convert the spoken word or typed text to structured data.
10. Customizable data import and export. A good EMR must allow customizable importing and exporting of simple lists in common formats, such as Excel, CSV and XML.

Details about these tips, and an additional two not discussed above, can be found here.

Most medical practices that implement Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) see a significant financial return on investment (ROI). Here are five ways that happens: You can see more patients; you'll reduce missed appointments; your claims processing will be more efficient; you'll spend less on hard technology costs; and you'll improve reimbursements. Below we discuss each in more detail.

1. You can see more patients. Once you've implemented an EMR and established good work flows, you'll spend less time documenting, allowing you more time to see more patients.

2. You'll reduce missed appointments. Cancelations and no-shows are key performance indicators. An EMR can reduce them by issuing appointment reminders, and a reduction in missed appointments can improve your bottom line.

3. Your claims processing will be more efficient. Once you've implemented an EMR, you'll spend less time filing, faxing, and retrieving charts and moving documents, which will allow claims to be processed faster.

4. You'll spend less on hard technology costs. Once you've implemented an EMR, your technology will be centralized, so you’ll make fewer ad hoc purchases. Moreover, if your EMR is cloud-based, you'll spend less on equipment overall.

5. You’ll improve reimbursements. Many EMRs have alerts that make sure you're using the correct document to satisfy reimbursement requirements—and improved legibility is a bonus.
   

   Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.