NetWorthy Systems Blog

For the modern-day business owner, moving to the cloud means to take advantage of the several strategic advantages it offers. Companies no longer have to restrict themselves by relying on physical servers, desktops, or hardware. Most businesses see the value that cloud-based operations can offer them, and they are racing to take advantage of this fairly recent development. In fact, Joe McKendrick of Forbes magazine says that four-out-of-five small businesses will be based in the cloud in the near future.

Major retailers are having a rough time of it these days concerning the security of their customer's financial information. Last December, Target was hit with malware that compromised 40 million customer credit and debit card accounts, and recently, Home Depot was hit with the same malware. What's a connoisseur of mass-produced boxed goods to do?

Not only can Microsoft PowerPoint make great slideshows, it can also make engaging infographics. The latest trend in marketing is fairly simple: Visual content sells. Images and videos are the most popular way to take advantage of this. Infographics can offer your marketing campaign a combination of text and image, allowing your marketing content to be both engaging and informative.

A business owner must understand the licensing status of their company's software, but this has grown more complicated since the inception of the Internet. If you feel like your employees, or maybe even your corporate culture survives off of pirated software or applications, or stuff you found "for free" online, then your business could potentially suffer from legal issues.

Children across the world are heading back to school, and their parents breathe a sigh of relief. Instead of playing video games, children can now expand their minds in institutions designed for learning. But, what if a popular video game could teach children how valuable programming is as a real-world skill?

Most of the Internet's data is stored in data centers. Logistically, data centers are a great solution to store ridiculous amounts of data. However, from an environmental perspective, data centers may be doing more harm than good. This, according to a new report by the National Resources Defense Council.

In Europe, there's a lot of discussion about whether or not citizens have the right to be forgotten, or rather, be forgotten by search engines. According to a May 2014 ruling, search engines must consider requests from the public for removal of content. Not just any content, though; according to ZDNet, the content must be "inadequate, irrelevant, or no longer relevant." As you might guess, this concept is extremely controversial.

Keep It Simple Stupid, aka KISS, is a sure way to find success in business. By keeping operations simple, the cost of doing business is reduced, there's less room for error, and more people understand what's going on. Your IT infrastructure is at the heart of your organization, keeping IT simple will help your business kiss many of its problems goodbye!

The office is a unique place designed solely for the purpose of getting work done. Therefore, no matter how your workplace is designed, there's always room to improve it in order to squeeze out a few more precious minutes of productivity from each worker. As productivity goes, every minute saved adds up!

Every business owner understands the importance of planning and the proper implementation of said plans. However, after everything is set up, it's easy to overlook the testing of one's plans, which can really come back to hurt you when all of your careful planning falls apart. Nowhere is this more true than with data recovery.

Crime might pay for those bold enough to do it, but that doesn't mean everyone should. Hackers likely don't take into account the fact that they are costing the world countless millions of dollars in damage only to further their own gain, and their influence can have far-reaching effects on people all over the world, let alone your business.

How your business chooses to store its data is a major decision. You can implement a private cloud computing model and spend more on equipment and maintenance than you need to, or you can save money with a public cloud. Although, in light of the recent celebrity-nude-photo-iCloud hack, is the public cloud secure enough to host your company's data? Let's address this concern and explore your cloud computing options.

You're on vacation with your family and your smartphone notifies you about a work email entitled "URGENT!" What do you do? Checking the message could mean hours spent putting out a fire at the office. Ignoring it will give you more time with your family, but you'll be distracted and stressed the whole time thinking about the worst-case scenario.

It can be difficult to keep track of your budget and expenses, especially when prices and needs are always changing. But perhaps the biggest annoyance is the intense paper trail that you leave behind when building your budget. By taking advantage of Microsoft Excel's formulas, you can easily keep track of your budget and alter it as prices change and demand increases.

Civilization has passed through various ages, like the Stone Age, the Ice Age, Bronze Age, and so on. And now, we're progressing through another one - the Data Age. In fact, 90 percent of the world's data was created in 2013. With each new device and system comes an incredible amount of data that must be processed, stored, and catalogued. This is Big Data, and the way that your business works with this information will determine the success of your business in the Data Age.

Smartphones have revolutionized the way that we communicate with each other and increased productivity, but for some businesses, they are only making things worse. A perfect example of this is the restaurant business - in fact, one restaurant owner decided to take matters into his own hands, and has performed a study which examined their business before and after the mobile revolution.

If 2014 hasn't been a legendary year for data breaches yet, it certainly is now. Community Health Systems, a hospital network for over 206 facilities across the United States, has been the target of a data breach resulting in 4.5 million records being compromised by Chinese hackers, including Social Security numbers, birthdays, names, addresses, and telephone numbers.

For Washington D.C. residents, there's a dubious threat looming in their backyards putting their personal data at risk. It's Coco, a Siamese cat wearing a high-tech collar designed for hacking WiFi networks. Have you taken the proper security measures to protect your sensitive information from feline foes like Coco?

Outsourcing your companies IT is a great way to free up money and take advantage of time-saving remote services. Businesses have different reasons for signing up for the outsourcing service, but many clients have similar expectations of the results they want out of their managed IT service provider.

The battle between iOS and Android operating system enthusiasts has been a long and bloody affair with plenty of third-party casualties (sorry Blackberry), but did you know that you might be able to tell a lot about someone just by looking at their smartphone?