$7 or $6.89?

The theory goes like this. Since we read from left to right, we tend to see the first digit and ignore the .79/ .89/ .99  portion of the price. But does it still work? With most restaurant sales being done with credit cards these days, consumers aren’t worried if they have enough cash on hand. Decimals tend to roll costumers’ eyes nowadays. This time consider aesthetics. Drop the decimals and make your menu board cleaner and decision-making process quicker.

Brightness and ambience

The character and atmosphere of the room is key when trying to match your menu board. Intuitively, relaxing environment requires turning down the brightness of your displays. On the flip side, menu board located outdoors requires adjusting the brightness to maximum. The brightest setting possible equals to drawing more power. A creative way to use less power is to use white text on a black background. In this scenario, the menu can be adjusted to maximum brightness and still save power.

Swiping and jiggling menu boards?

Better don’t. It can be fun to design menu board that swipe, jiggle, animate, etc. When someone is trying to decide what to order and in the middle of their decision-making process, the screen moves and the information is no longer present – it becomes very annoying. The simple equation is applied. The longer it takes people to order, the slower you’re making money.

From confusion to higher sales

What’s the connection between them? Upselling is a sales strategy used to convince customers to buy more products. How to achieve that? Simply by confusing them. Confusion makes them ask questions naturally. A great cashier behind the counter, who’s been trained to nudge customers can do wonders! Make your menu board confusing intentionally. Have a section called “ask for a combo!”. Use a mouth-watering photo of a combo meal. In this case, the call-to-action doesn’t list what’s in a combo, which leads customers to ask the cashier for more information and the potential for an upsell can occur. Generally, combination meals increase the average order value.

Let audio be your secret weapon

Why? Simply because you can’t “unhear” something. With a menu, eyeballs can dart around all over the place avoiding your most profitable items and combos. However, if a narrator announces, “How does a big juicy cheeseburger combo meal sound right about now?”, well that will surely get your customers’ attention.

Let’s not offer everything under the sun

An interesting study was conducted right outside an upscale grocery store in Menlo Park, California several years ago. The study offered different samples of jam to shoppers and during the test when there were more jam samples offered, sales decreased.

This experiment leads us into consideration of reduction of items you offer. Even though this can be a real headache for many restaurant owners. If you offer, let’s say 50+ menu items, chances that you’ll be amazing at making all of those items are low. You’ll be offering a lot of mediocrity. Customers will make decisions quicker, there will be less friction at the counter, lines will move faster, employees will be happy, sales will boost. Just keep it simple and run a test. It may improve your business substantially!

The post Fast food restaurants: Profit from your menu boards! first appeared on Intellope.

Since the platforms were secured poorly, cybercriminals took advantage right away. As the pandemic started, companies reported increasing number of targeted cyberattacks. From ransomware to email phishing campaigns – they come in all forms possible.

Now, with the end of the pandemic within reach, cybersecurity teams face another potential headache — the vaccine passport.

If project requires the mass collection, storage and access of giant amounts of sensitive data, it will always raise eyebrows among cybersecurity professionals. Undertaking such a task in the middle of the disruption, confusion and malaise of a global pandemic causes a whole new level of anxiety – from now, cybercriminals know precisely which buttons to push.

Designed to prove that a traveler is vaccinated or recently tested negative for Covid-19, many are recommending vaccine passports as the best way to bring to life travel globally.

They represent an attractive target for cybercriminals as well.

A troublemaker needs to set up a website with convincing branding, and it can trick unsuspecting phishing victims into revealing their credentials and other personal information. Simple as that. Vaccine passports will be an email phishing temptation — and if they can be monetized, then they’ll certainly be a target.

These days, people are desperate to return to normalcy, to travel and see loved ones again. Consequently, many of us are much more disposed to clicking on malicious links and logging into spoofed websites — exactly the kinds of mistakes that cyberattacks rely on to succeed.

With so much traveler data already available to troublemakers because of previous breaches, these attacks may be highly targeted and incredibly convincing.

Cyber risks aside, there are also serious concerns about privacy. Many critics have already labeled the vaccine passport system as unfair, ineffective, discriminatory, with no settled format nor central issuing body. All of this brings us to the final crucial area of concern: how to protect your data when choosing a vaccine passport app.

The key features that are suggested to be checked if you are thinking about using a digital vaccination passport app:

• The creation of the vaccination passport should verify the request against healthcare records.
• Any data and communication stored must be encrypted.
• Confirmation by the pass holder when the passport is scanned for verification.
• Only the minimum required data is used to create the passport: name, date of birth, and vaccination date. Enough to validate vaccination and if needed to validate identity against another source, such as a driver’s license.
• No tracking of location or unnecessary collection of data, other than device data for the purposes of improving app experience as is normal.
• Only download apps from an official source, such as the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.
• The privacy policy should state the purpose of the app and that no personal information is shared with any third party.

The post Covid passport: Ticket to normalcy or privacy nightmare first appeared on Intellope.

An electronic chip is also known as an integrated circuit. It consists of components such as transistors, resistors and diodes which are all contained in one small plate. The plate will be made from a semiconductor material, most often silicone. It consists of many complex layers of semiconductor wafers, copper and any other required materials.

In the middle of an ongoing chip shortage, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) plans to raise its prices by 10% to 20%. This has greatly affected the electronics industries such as LED displays, TVs, mobile phones, and electric vehicles, to name but a few. Although the chip foundry doesn’t sell directly to end-users, this price increase will eventually filter through the supply chain.

Keep in mind that TSMC’s price contracts are annual, so the new prices don’t take effect until January 2022. Although the company is one of the largest chipmakers, its rising prices are just part of an ongoing trend that will make this year a banner year for semiconductor companies but a difficult one for CIOs and other customers who buy equipment that contains lots of chips.

The post TSMC’s Price Hike: the Sooner You Can Buy Your Electronics, the Better first appeared on Intellope.

Hotels and IT systems

To make the operations more efficient, improve service and remain competitive, many hotels use IT systems to handle number of tasks daily. Those might include payment transactions, accounting, reservation systems and key-card access to rooms. Computers are also utilized to automate many functions from turning on and off lights to controlling temperatures and so on.

Hotels and cybercrimes

The threat of cybercrime and data breaches have never been so prominent. By 2021, damages related to cybercrime is set to hit $6 trillion according to Cybersecurity Ventures.

Put plainly, the bigger the organisation, the more of a target it becomes for hackers due to the volume of information held. And that’s why cybersecurity is so important; protecting your customers’ data should be a primary concern.

According to zdnet.com, hotels, restaurant chains, and related tourism services have been subject to a range of techniques when it comes to cybercrime; due to the compromise of Point-of-Sale (PoS) terminals to harvest guest data, phishing emails sent to staff which are designed to give attackers access to internal systems, and Man-in-The-Middle (MiTM) attacks through hotel public W-Fi hotspots being only some of the potential attack vectors.

In the hospitality industry, hotel cybersecurity is a matter that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Get an IT Audit of your hotel and information systems. Do not rely on your current status!

The post Hotels: Cyber attackers never sleep first appeared on Intellope.

Microsoft Intune is a secure cloud service that enables mobile device management and mobile application management. With Intune you can manage how devices are used and enforce policies that allow you to control applications.

Intune is an advanced cloud-based service that integrates with other Microsoft services to provide comprehensive management of mobile devices. This blog post is going to be a bit of an overall look at Intune, including:

• How Does Microsoft Intune Work?
• What Can You Do With Microsoft Intune?
• How Does Microsoft Intune Integrate With Other Microsoft Services?
• Why Use Microsoft Intune?
• What Licences Do I Need To Use Microsoft Intune?

By the end of this blog post, you should know how Intune works and how your organisation would benefit from using it.

How Does Microsoft Intune Work?

As I said, Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based service that allows you to remotely manage mobile devices and mobile applications. One of the biggest benefits of Intune is that you can have an ultra-productive mobile workforce without worrying about the security of your organisation’s data.

You can do a lot with Intune, making it possible for your teams to work anywhere using their mobile devices. You can:

• Set rules and configure policies for a range of devices, whether they’re personal or organisation-owned. This means your company can have a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy without major concerns about security.
• Deploy apps to mobile devices from any location to several devices concurrently. For example, you can deploy apps such as Microsoft Teams, Word, and Outlook to the devices you manage using Intune.
• Control what users and devices can access. Protect your organisation’s data by controlling the information that users can access and share.
• Ensure that the devices your team members are using are compliant with your security requirements. If devices aren’t compliant, this will be flagged up and you can resolve the issue.

Intune is an excellent cloud-based service to use for both organisation-owned and personal mobile devices. However, I think it’s particularly useful for businesses that embrace a Bring Your Own Device policy.

If your team members are using their own devices (mobile phones, laptops, and tablets to give 3 examples) for work, you must do everything within your power to protect your organisation’s devices. Microsoft Intune is massively beneficial here, as it lets you prevent users from accessing certain data on certain devices. You can also prevent users from sharing your organisation’s data and isolate organisation data from personal data.

Intune is actually part of Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility + Security Suite and it also integrates with several other Microsoft services. For example, Microsoft Intune integrates with:

• Azure AD (Azure Active Directory)
• Azure Information Protection
• Microsoft 365 Applications

Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security Suite (EMS) is made up of a range of applications and services:

• Azure Active Directory
• Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager
• Microsoft Intune
• Azure Information Protection
• Microsoft Cloud App Security
• Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics
• Microsoft Defender for Identity
• Microsoft Secure Score

As you can see, Microsoft Intune is a small part of Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS). The EMS Suite is designed to offer businesses excellent, best-in-class protection, detection, and response capabilities.

To fully appreciate Microsoft Intune and make the most of it, you need to fully understand what you can do with it. Here’s what you can do with Microsoft Intune.

What Can You Do With Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune is an excellent cloud-based service for MDM (mobile device management) and MAM (mobile application management). Here’s a quick overview of everything you can do with it.

There are 3 main things you can do with Microsoft Intune:

• Set rules and configure policies for devices
• Deploy apps to mobile devices remotely
• Control what users can access and share

I think those points give you a really good idea of how you can use Intune and how doing so would advantage your business. However, I’m going to break down each point and give you some real-world examples of what you can do.

Set rules and configure policies for devices

Microsoft Intune enables you to set rules and policies for enrolled devices. Your organisation can control how team members can use the devices, ultimately protecting your business and its data.

In Microsoft Intune, you can create several configuration profiles that you can apply to mobile devices used by your team members. There are numerous features and settings that you can enable and disable on devices that are enrolled in Intune.

Configuration profiles can be created for a range of devices and operating systems, such as iOS, Android, and Windows. Configuration profiles contain a range of settings and rules that can be applied to any device within your organisation. For example, here are some of the functions Intune will allow you to control:

• Block access to Bluetooth settings on devices
• Block/allow access to certain devices on the network, such as printers
• Create VPN profiles, enabling the devices to remotely access your organisation’s network
• The installation of updates

There are literally hundreds of configuration profile templates ready to go. Pick and choose between the templates you want to use to create profiles that are tailored to the requirements of your organisation.

Deploy apps to mobile devices remotely

A part of Microsoft Intune is mobile application management (MAM). Mobile application management within Intune allows you to deploy and control apps, as well as monitor usage.

For enrolled devices (personal or organisation-owned), you can:

• Remotely configure apps, controlling when the device user can open apps or force them to open at a certain time
• Assign devices and users to fully-configurable groups, making deploying apps, policies, and rules simple
• See reports on when and how devices are used
• Wipe data from apps remotely, which is ideal if a device is stolen or you suspect malcontent
• Control actions that users can take in apps, such as preventing sharing, screenshotting, and copy & pasting

You can give users as much flexibility as required to enhance productivity while still controlling your organisation’s data.

Control what users can access and share

With Microsoft Intune, you have complete control over what users can access and share on enrolled devices.

Controlling what users can access and share can be much more advanced than just allowing or restricting access. You can micromanage access and sharing with app protection policies, preventing users from performing certain actions within apps.

For example, you can restrict users by preventing them using copy and paste functionality within certain apps. You can also control whether or not users can send emails to email addresses outside of your organisation’s control, or prevent certain types of data from being transmitted via email.

Using user groups, you can assign certain policies and rules to groups of users and devices. Alternatively, you can assign policies and rules per user and per device should you wish to. However, using groups you can rapidly push policies and rules to large numbers of devices and users.

How Does Microsoft Intune Integrate With Other Microsoft Services?

Microsoft Intune integrates with a number of other Microsoft services as I mentioned earlier in this blog post.

Intune integrates with Azure Active Directory for access control and Azure Information Protection for data protection purposes.

Microsoft Intune also integrates with the Microsoft Office suite of products. With Intune, you can remotely install applications such as Outlook and Word on devices and for certain users. You can also control how these applications work for certain devices and users.

As one of the cloud-based services that makes up Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) suite, Intune is also closely integrated with the other services that make up the suite. EMS is a mobility management and security platform, so all the services within the platform are designed to empower your organisation’s team members to work productivity anywhere while ensuring your organisation is kept secure.

Are you still wondering why you should use Microsoft Intune? Here’s why Intune is beneficial for organisations and their employees.

Why Use Microsoft Intune?

The workforce, or labor force, is becoming increasingly mobile worldwide. More organisations than ever have people working on the move, which is enabled by the number of cloud services available to us. However, security is a big concern when users are working remotely or on the go. Intune is one of the Microsoft services that makes working on the go secure and accessible for all organisations.

Microsoft Intune lets you give your team everything they need to work on their mobile devices without sacrificing security. Essentially, you get the best of both worlds. Users can remain productive regardless of the device they are using without having to worry about the security of your organisation’s data.

What Licences Do I Need To Use Microsoft Intune?

There are three primary ways to get access to Microsoft Intune. They are:

• As a standalone Azure service. Intune is available as a standalone add-on within Azure. You will pay a subscription fee per user.
• As part of a Microsoft 365 licence. Microsoft Intune is available to users with any of the following M365 licences:
  • Microsoft 365 Business Premium
  • Microsoft 365 E3
  • Microsoft 365 E5
  • Microsoft 365 F3
  • Microsoft 365 Government
• As part of Mobile Device Management for Microsoft 365. Mobile Device Management for Microsoft 365/Basic Mobility and Security is essentially a more basic version of Intune. This is available to users of all M365 plans.

The post What Is Microsoft Intune and How Does It Work? first appeared on Intellope.

1. No Backup

This is the most obvious, yet the easiest mistake to fix. If you don’t have any kind of backup, you are not alone. As Ponemon Institute reported, 39% of small and medium-sized companies don’t have this covered. Disasters of any sort, whether simple human errors, natural disasters, or ransomware attacks, will affect your business one way or another. There is no knowing how and when a disaster will occur. Fortunately, there is a way to diminish thus negative impact. The first step is to put some backup in place.

2. Physical storage = physical danger

Physical storage, such as discs and tapes, may seem like the most reliable backup system, because they are the only type that is tangible and visible. However, physical storage equals physical dangers, such as fires and floods, and even human error, such as discs breaking, overheating, or being misplaced. Other storage, like the cloud, is intangible. Therefore, it gives an advantage to its users by defying physical disasters.

3. ‘Sync’ vs. ‘Backup’

Many people get confused about syncing and backing-up their data. If you think that by syncing your files and documents you do not need to back them up, you’re wrong! When you ‘sync’ a file, it simply means that if you make any changes in a file on one device, the same changes will be made to a file that is synced to other devices.

4. Consistency is key

The average failure rate when backing up all data is 75%. Installing some kind of data backup system and calling it a day won’t be enough. Backing up data calls for consistency, a thought and a plan. For the average small business, a weekly backup is often enough. Daily backups are recommended for remote work, regular work with client data and/or for businesses in regulated industries. Long story short, the more data produced and the more significant the data is, the more frequent the backups should occur.

5. Check your files

Setting automated backups might help most of the time, but let’s be one step ahead. Incorporate checking saved data to ensure that they are working correctly. Generally, automated processes sometimes end up failing over time – making sure everything is working as it should be is vital.

6. Try it out!

Doing a backup and checking it from time to time are only the first steps. If you can’t restore anything, you’re dead in the water. You need to ensure that those backups will work, if and when you need them.

7. Backup for your backup

Because backups are so critically important, you should construct your backup architecture in a way that avoids (at least as much as possible) having a single point of failure. If possible, have a backup of your backups. You never want to find yourself in a situation in which you did not backup the night before and, you are just praying that the server doesn’t fail that day, because you have nothing to fall back on.

8. Make room for your data

This is another very common mistake; hard drives and cloud drives that are almost completely full. When this happens a backup cannot be fully performed. It is important to always ensure that there is sufficient storage on whatever devices or locations that you use for your critical backups.

9. Neatly organised folders

Cluttered data may not have any impact on your cloud backup process, but it will sure turn into a nightmare when it’s time for a restore. Most of the time, you’ll restore several key files, so you need to be able to find them promptly. As such, you need to sort out your information in easily manageable clusters. The less complex, the better. You need all employees that have access to the backups to find everything as easy as possible.

10. Close your apps before it’s too late

Not every cloud backup service offers the possibility of backing up your files while they’re open. That means if you leave your “in progress” spreadsheets and documents open overnight, your file might not be present in the backup. Now, a single document may not be such a problem, but what if you forget an entire database? Basically, your system has skipped a crucial backup. So, remember to go the extra mile and close such apps.

The post 10 Data Backup Mistakes You Can Easily Avoid first appeared on Intellope.

No organization is safe. From hospitals dealing with surges in COVID-19 cases to Hotels and restaurant in the Italy to UK train stations — the only rule businesses must learn is that it’s not a case of “if” but “when.” Attacks surged by 150% in 2020, with the average extortion amount doubling, according to some experts. This is down to three key factors:

Organizations must now factor into their risk modeling service disruption possibly lasting days and the theft of sensitive data and follow-on DDoS attacks. Over three-quarters of attacks directly involve the threat to leak exfiltrated data, and there’s strong evidence that even if a ransom is paid, data will not be deleted. 

With this in mind, prevention or rapid detection and response are the best options for security teams. Here are five key strategies:

1. User Awareness Training

Phishing remains one of the top threat vectors for ransomware groups. While endpoint/email anti-malware capabilities are therefore key, so too is staff awareness training. If organizations can train employees on how to spot phishing emails, they create a valuable first line of defense that forces their adversaries to work harder.

2. Protect RDP

Remote desktop protocol (RDP) is the other primary vector for ransomware attacks. Threat actors often brute force log-ins or use previously breached credentials to hijack endpoints. Organizations have several strategies they can take to reduce their risk exposure. This includes forcing staff to use a VPN to log in, use strong passwords or multi-factor authentication and using a firewall to restrict RDP access. They could also change the RDP port so malicious scans may miss it and limit RDP for users who don’t need it, reducing the attack surface. 

3. Prompt Patching Everywhere

A less common but still dangerous route to compromise is via vulnerability exploitation. Last year, bugs in popular VPNs were frequently targeted, along with legacy flaws such as CVE 2012-0158. Wherever there’s an opportunity, cyber-criminals won’t be far away. Although patch volumes have become increasingly difficult for sysadmins to manage, risk-based patching programs can help organizations to prioritize their efforts. Virtual patching capabilities also offer a useful option when systems can’t be taken offline to test regular patches.

4. Network Segmentation

As a key component of any zero trust approach, network segmentation can help to reduce the impact of ransomware. By controlling traffic flows between segments, organizations can limit the spread of malware, reduce the lateral movement of attackers and shield critical assets. 

5. XDR

Extended detection and response (XDR) is a relatively new class of cybersecurity tooling which correlates threat information across multiple layers (email, cloud workloads, networks, servers, endpoints) for optimized visibility into ransomware attacks. XDR solutions prioritize alerts, allowing security operations teams to quickly isolate and remediate an attack before it impacts the organization.

The post 5 Ways to Stop Ransomware first appeared on Intellope.

Psychology of colours

Colours are a powerful tool when used wisely. One simple rule is applied – colours influence our emotions, affect our behaviour, and, finally, influence our decision making. We tend to associate certain emotions with certain colours.

If you care about your brand’s personality, make sure to set your colour palette. By excluding certain colour schemes, you can exclude unwanted emotions from your visual content. That comes in handy, right? Knowing this simple rule, you can now look at popular brands’ colour schemes differently and learn that Facebook choosing a blueish colour scheme wasn’t any coincidence.

Psychology of text

Finding balance between images and text, is crucial. While images boost the visual part, text is what provides customers with basic information. Think thoroughly about the font you’ll use. It should reflect your brand’s personality, as well. Try not to overplay it! Here we can imply the less-is-more rule, meaning 2-3 fonts are enough to make your content eye-catching, yet simple to understand. We have 4 basic types of fonts, learn the emotions behind them and make the best use of them.

When it comes to sizing, there’s no golden rule. Sizing must reflect the size of the digital signage. However, experts suggest that a 55 pixel font is the best size. Anything less won’t improve the reading experience.

Psychology of shapes

When designing a logo, designers need to bear our subconscious in mind. We respond to different shapes (lines, curves, circles, etc.) differently. Every shape delivers a particular marketing message. Take a closer look!

Last, but not least

To make your content flourish you need to add suitable pictures. Those produce 180% more engagement and 94% more view rates. You can customise them to make them work for you. Try collages, changing the shape of the picture, or adjusting the colour to fit your colour scheme. Or try adding text and frames. The possibilities are numerous!

High quality videos, even though they might be expensive, represent your brand or message on point! Video stimuli evoke such emotions as self-identification, passion, and connectedness with what happens on the screen. It’s easier for us to become emotionally attached to something we watch, rather than by something we read.

The post What is the marketing (#1) psychology behind the visual content? first appeared on Intellope.

What is a NOC? How does it work? How can network operations center monitoring software help MSPs run their businesses as efficiently as possible? Here’s everything you need to know.   

What is a NOC?

NOC, pronounced “knock,” is shorthand for network operations center, which can be thought of as a command center for MSPs and system administrators. A NOC provides a centralized location from which technicians can supervise, monitor, and maintain a company’s network and IT infrastructure 24/7 in order to ensure business-critical services remain available. It functions as the center point of all troubleshooting, updating, and network performance monitoring, and is often provided by a specialist outsourced company due to the resources required.

A NOC shouldn’t be confused with an IT help desk. A help desk is a call center designed to help end users who are actively experiencing an issue with their service, while a NOC provides back-end maintenance and support so MSPs can respond to issues as they arise and keep services up and running, often before end users even know there’s an issue. In fact, unlike a help desk, an end user never needs to know the NOC exists. NOC technicians only interact with the MSP technicians, which creates a seamless user experience in which the MSP delivers high-quality support and fast problem resolution with seemingly unlimited resources.

A NOC also shouldn’t be confused with a security operations center (SOC). Although there is some overlap between them, the two centers have very different approaches. While both a NOC and SOC work with the MSP to resolve IT issues, a NOC focuses on the remote monitoring and maintenance of the customer’s IT network to maximize customer uptime. A SOC, on the other hand, is much more security-focused and only monitors the managed network for security vulnerabilities, attack vectors, and emerging threats.

One thing both have in common, of course, is that they require specialized software to operate efficiently.

How does NOC software work?

The goal of any NOC is to maintain optimal network performance and reduce downtime as much as possible, which can encompass a variety of different tasks. Common critical activities include, but certainly aren’t limited to:

• Monitoring network servers, applications, and devices for health and performance
• Continuously monitoring the network for security threats
• Installing, updating, and troubleshooting applications
• Analyzing bandwidth and identifying bandwidth hogs
• Supporting firewall management

Typically, when network operations center monitoring software detects an issue that needs the attention of an MSP, a NOC technician will create an alert or ticket that identifies the issues and categorizes them based on severity and other criteria. Then, the NOC team and MSP work together to resolve the problem and identify its root causes to help prevent future issues.

Not all businesses need a NOC, but MSPs managing large networks often find communications and operations run much more smoothly with the help of NOC software and an external vendor to help them run the NOC if needed.

How does NOC software help MSPs?   

NOC software is designed to help MSPs monitor managed networks without having to do everything manually, making it an excellent companion to remote management software and features. Once you have input accurate network information into the network operations center monitoring software, it will constantly monitor for a range of different things on your managed networks.

NOC software can also provide numerous benefits beyond constant network monitoring. As the NOC serves as a centralized command center for network support related operations, MSPs only have to interact with one tool in order to provide high-quality services to their customers. They can easily install, update, and troubleshoot any device that’s connected to the managed network, deploy patches and managed antivirus support across all applications, and manage firewalls without toggling between disparate tools.

Additionally, NOC software can help aid troubleshooting—it’s excellent for analyzing suspicious activity and spotting external threats before any harm is done to the managed network. MSPs can use the data gathered from the NOC’s constant monitoring to create detailed reports about network performance, which can then be used to create performance baselines that make it easier to identify when performance has faltered. These reports can then be used to help power future network optimization efforts.

Key features to look for in NOC software

A NOC is essential for larger MSPs or MSPs managing complex networks. If you’re planning to run the NOC in-house, it can be hard to choose the right solution to meet your business needs. We recommend choosing NOC software that offers the following features from a single pane of glass:

1. Fast remote access: Your NOC software of choice should offer full functionality from anywhere and support fast remote access. Also, make sure remote sessions started from the NOC take place over a secure connection and have a limited bandwidth impact.
   
2. High-level visibility: Make sure the NOC software you’re considering can easily (and automatically) discover all elements on your managed network, including devices that enter or exit. Your NOC should also be able to provide details about these elements, down to a granular level.
   
3. Automated patch management: Let your NOC software take care of patching so your customers’ devices and software stay updated without you having to be responsible for manual installation.
   
4. A robust alerting system: When it comes to using NOC software to optimize network performance, alerting is key. Look for a solution that has a robust but customizable alert system so you don’t miss an important development.
   
5. Solid web protection: For comprehensive protection, it’s important not to forget about web-based threats. Your NOC solution should include broad-spectrum web protection from malware, adware, botnets, and phishing. You should also be able to set custom blocklists and allowlists for total control.
   
6. Advanced managed antivirus: With the right NOC software, advanced antivirus should be included so you can easily and automatically keep managed networks safe from both known and emerging threats.

The post What is a network operations center (NOC)? first appeared on Intellope.

Why should you care about applying visual content to your marketing strategy?

Colored visuals increase people’s desire to read content by 80%.

Content with images increases a view rate by 94%.

Visuals generate more backlinks than any other form of content.

Posts with images produce 180% more engagement.

People are 85% more likely to buy your product after watching a video about it.

Although many retailers find it challenging to adapt to the marketing strategies with a scalable solution, they can quickly adapt to digital signage, which provides the best solution for every retail business. Below are its benefits.

It’s entertaining!

Customers will want to spend more time shopping while watching entertainment features such as floating games and on-screen characters. With these entertainment features, brands can attract customers to the display content screens while promoting the brand through screen content display. Regardless of age or customer preference, entertainment features presented by digital signage displays can grab customer attention. Retailers should use this opportunity to deliver their engaging catalogs, real-time marketing trends, and retail launches.

It reduces human labour costs!

Today, you can perform most product promotion operations with fewer employees. As a retailer, you can easily update the screen broadcasting with relevant content thanks to easy-to-use digital signage software. Customers can remain confident and in control of their decision if they receive updates of the relevant information such as digital signs, help points, room locations, and other essential information required in the retail stores.

It provides Online and Physical Store Experiences!

Retailers can systemize their products and increase their online presence through digital signage. Moreover, retailers can change their store display content based on consumer feedback thanks to the retail signage software. Always keep your customer actively engaged by displaying relevant information. Change your content display on your digital signage marketing screen to likable messages to boost brand image.

It  helps Cross-Selling and Upselling!

Retailers can utilize this opportunity to post messages that can boost purchase decisions and increase impulse buying. Usually, this is the best platform to promote seasonal products in your retail store. Customers mostly purchase goods on offer, and digital displays remain important in conveying this essential information.

It drives traffic in!

The in-store digital media does the cross-merchandising for you by educating customers about the various products and solutions you provide. Digital signage can be a platform to inform your customers about multiple promotions you might be running in-house.

The post Anything less than digital content isn’t going to cut it first appeared on Intellope.