If you run a business in Florida, “Hurricane Central, USA,” you’d better prepare for storms.

But if you run a business that keeps other Florida businesses running, you either prepare or…you’re out of business.

No one understands being prepared like Teresa Bell. She’s the founder, president, and CEO of Citrus Networking Solutions Group (CNSG), a managed services provider in western Florida’s Nature Coast. The area is known for its abundant wildlife and for harboring endangered species like the manatee.

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Anyone who’s ever  watched a courtroom-based movie or television show knows that lawyers do a lot of reading, a lot of writing and lug around a lot of folders, legal pads, etc. They also do a lot of traveling to court, to meetings with clients, etc. So, it’s probably a great relief for them to know that there’s a wide variety of apps that they can use with their iPads — iPhones, too, if they have them.

Now, according to Sui Generis, each lawyer should choose his apps based on what he does every day. Some lawyers do more reading than writing and vice versa, so she recommends taking that into consideration before making any purchases. Some of the apps listed below are free; some are not. And although there are some iPad apps for lawyers that cost close to $90, none of them are on this list.

1. Dropbox – This free app is useful to people in all kinds of professions. Chances are most lawyers will need more than 2GB of storage.  For $9.99 a month or $99 for an entire year, storage capacity can be increased to 50GB.
2. Readdle Docs – This popular $4.99 app allows lawyers to access documents from “any source you can imagine.” Other features include a file manager, PDF reader with annotations, two-way sync with Dropbox and iDisk, and the ability to print files directly to any printer with AirPrint capabilities.
3. GoodReader – Also popular among lawyers, this $4.99 app allows lawyers to read books, view maps and pictures, and watch movies. They can also sync with Dropbox and iDisk and choose to sync either entire folders or individuals files.
4. Remote Desktop – This $5.99 app gives lawyers remote access to all files saved to their desktop computers. The Remote Desktop Lite app is free and has many of the same features as Remote Desktop.
5. FastCase – Another free app, FastCase gives lawyers free access to a searchable library of American cases and statutes, allows them to sort search results by relevance, and integrate citation analysis tools into the search results. It’s updated daily, so lawyers can feel confident that they’re getting the most up-to-date information available.
6. Penultimate – This $0.99 app is great for lawyers who like to take notes during meetings or trials but don’t like the idea of having to carry around a separate notebook or legal pad. Lawyers can use either their fingers or a stylus to take notes or make sketches.
7. Lawstack – With this free app, lawyers can access the US Constitution, Federal Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure (Dec. 1, 2010), Federal Rules of Appellate and Bankruptcy Procedure (Dec. 1, 2010) and Federal Rules of Evidence (Dec. 1, 2010). For $1.99 each, additional apps can be purchased for individual state codes and practices.

The above are just some of the many iPad apps that can make life more than a little bit easier for lawyers. Other apps that lawyers might find useful are Square, for processing credit cards and TrialPad, for organizing case presentations.

By now, we all understand that smartphones are pocket sized computers, and just as it’s important for you to protect your desktop or laptop, it’s also important for you to protect your smartphone. Security software companies have products specifically designed for use with smartphones because they are just as much at risk as computers. People use their smartphones to conduct business, shop, update their Facebook statuses, post tweets and communicate with friends and family. So, there’s plenty of information that would be useful to hackers. Unfortunately, hackers probably aren’t the most common threats to the data stored on smartphones.

People leave their smartphones on tables in restaurants and coffee shops, on park benches, on sinks in airport restrooms, all kinds of places. And not everyone who finds a lost a smartphone will try to get it back to its rightful owner. That’s why it’s so important for anyone who owns a smartphone to take the following precautions to protect the data on their devices from thieves as well as hackers.

1. The first thing you should do is create a passcode for your smartphone. Make sure the code is some obscure number or sequence of letters that’s easy for you to remember. Avoid using things like your birth date or your spouse’s birth date or anything that someone could easily guess or obtain through a little Internet digging. Make sure your screen locks after the phone has been for idle for only a minute.
2. If your device has an encryption option, use it. This is especially important for people who use their smartphones for work. With the increase in BYOD policies, employees who use the encryption options on their smartphones to protect all data stored on them are doing themselves and their employers a huge favor. Despite that, you would be wise to never store customer account information or any other sensitive company data on your smartphone, especially if you’re using your own device and not a company-issued one.
3. Get in the habit of always putting your smartphone in a pocket or purse when you’re not using it. It’s easy to set a smartphone down on the table beside you while you’re having a cup of coffee in a coffee shop, and then when you’re done, just get up and walk right out of the coffee shop without your phone. If you make a habit of always putting it somewhere that’s easy to reach should you receive an anticipated call or text message, you will greatly reduce the odds of your leaving it somewhere.
4. Of course, if you have to back up the data stored on your computer, you must also back up the data stored on your smartphone. Even if you’ve taken steps to ensure that no mission-critical or highly sensitive data are stored on your smartphone, that doesn’t mean that the lost data won’t cause a hardship. Imagine you just completed a 20-page white paper on Tuesday afternoon, then lost your smartphone on Wednesday morning, the day that the white paper was due … and you didn’t save it anywhere, except on your smartphone. Yeah, this is probably a farfetched scenario, but you get the point. Valuable work got lost because you didn’t save your document on another device and store it online in Google Docs or some other cloud storage location.

Your smartphone is more than just a phone. It’s a mini computer that needs to be protected against viruses, hackers and thieves just like your laptop or desktop needs to be protected.

Maybe Michael Moore’s 2007 documentary “Sicko” made an impression on the US government, or maybe the rising cost of Medicare forced them to find a better way of doing things. Regardless of what motivated the change, if all goes well, it could be a welcome one.

Physicians in the US have long lamented that they only get paid for treating patients, i.e. prescribing drugs or scheduling tests, than for just seeing them and recommending ways for them to stay healthy. With the implementation of the new Medicare law, that could all change.

Those who saw Moore’s film may recall that some European physicians get paid for preventive medicine, such as recommending a diet and exercise regimen for an overweight patient. The new Medicare law could make it more lucrative for primary care physicians to invest themselves in keeping their patients healthy rather than ill.

According to Kaiser Health News, Medicare will pay more to doctors “who provide quality care at lower cost to Medicare and reduce payments to physicians who run up Medicare’s costs without better results.”

That sounds pretty simple, but it doesn’t seem to consider patients with chronic illnesses or patients who don’t follow their doctors’ instructions. Some worry that doctors who want to receive the financial incentives may short shrift their patients or refuse to treat those with chronic or serious illnesses like asthma or Crohn’s disease. Any time the phrases “health care” and “manage costs” appear together in the same sentence, patients start to feel afraid. They naturally assume that in order to “manage costs,” their physicians will spend less time with patients, which could in turn lead to the doctors’ missing things that might have been caught during longer examinations or consultations.

Former administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Dr. Donald Berwick told Kaiser Health News, “We do have to be cautious in this case. It could lead to levels of gaming and misunderstanding and incorrect signals to physicians that might not be best for everyone.”

Hospitals will also be subject to the new Medicare law. Beginning in 2012, the law will reduce payment to hospitals with high numbers of preventable hospital readmissions. Beginning in 2015, it will reduce payment to facilities with patients suffering from hospital-acquired conditions. This could bode well for patients if it inspires health care workers to be more vigilant about preventing things like staph infections or discharging patients prematurely.

Health care spending in the United States adds up to about $2.5 trillion each year. A significant percentage of that goes to satisfy the health care needs of approximately 47 million elderly and disabled US citizens.

A new law that could reduce the government’s Medicare spending could be just what the doctor ordered. Those who proposed the change want patients to get high-quality health care at a reduced cost. But will that actually happen? And what will happen if private insurance companies follow Medicare’s lead? Would that affect patients in a positive or a negative way?

Are you looking for a trusted IT company to help with your healthcare IT support and support for your EMR and EHR solutions?  Give us a call today and we can provide exceptional healthcare IT support services.

Small-business owners want their businesses to grow. It’s only natural. Well, when business increases, other things increase, too, such as inventory, the number of employees, maybe even the number of business locations. More inventory, employees and locations, mean more data. Where will it all be stored? Some business owners prefer to have their own on-site servers, which are managed by one or more staff IT professionals. Over time, in spite of continued growth, the costs associated with installing on-site servers and hiring a skilled IT team to maintain them, can cut into a business’ bottom line. Enlisting the aid of a cloud storage provider can reduce costs by eliminating the need to buy new servers and hire more IT professionals and provide the additional support needed as a business expands.

But don’t be fooled. Choosing the right cloud storage provider is more like trying to find the right primary care physician than the right desk lamp.

“Before choosing a provider, it’s imperative [that you] analyze the reason’s you are looking for a provider and what you hope to get out of the service,” said Nicole Plati of SS|PR. “Some providers are larger than others, and some are more focused than others.”

For example, some cloud storage firms specialize in helping businesses that use Macs and other Apple products.

Once a business leader decides that he needs the help of a cloud storage provider, it’s time for him to start doing his homework. Michael Lee, principal consultant at SWC, offered his insights on the subject. “When choose a cloud storage provider,” said Lee,

“Think security first.

Make sure that the data is encrypted at rest as well as during transmission. Encryption during transmission is the easy part. Encrypting the data while it’s being stored on hard drives at the cloud provider’s data center is not trivial. Ask the provider how he will achieve the encryption at rest.

• How does she manage the keys?
• Who has access to the keys?
• Is there a key recovery mechanism?
• If so, how does that work and who can perform the recovery? 

Think backup.

• How does the cloud storage provider backup the data?
• How often is the backup performed?
• How does the provider ensure that the data can be restored from backup?

Think access and control.

• For corporate use, it is critical that company information that is stored in the cloud is accessible by the company if the employee leaves.
• What is the process for gaining access if an employee leaves the company?
• How do you control who has access to what information?
• Is there a portal/gateway that the company can control?

Think compliance.

Be sure to consider all the compliance requirements the organization has and make sure the storage provider meets those requirements. Remember that you cannot outsource liability. Even if the contract is airtight, your company will be in the headlines if there was a breach or a failure of compliance.

Think location.

Where is the physical location of the storage? For some companies and countries, this is important to consider from a disaster recovery perspective as well as from a compliance or privacy requirements perspective.”

Lee’s suggestions are just some of the many things that business leaders have to think about when they start searching for the right cloud storage providers for their businesses. It really isn’t easy. But once a business is equipped with right cloud storage provider, the benefits of having one become immediately apparent.

Filing federal income taxes is something that a lot of people put off until the last minute. Because Apr. 15 fell on a Sunday this year, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) gave US citizens an extra day to get all their paperwork together and their taxes filed. Instead of being due today, Apr. 16, they’re not due until Tuesday, Apr. 17.

This is the digital era, so, of course, the IRS is recommending that people file their taxes electronically rather than filling out and sending in paper returns. With helpful software like TurboTax and H&R Block, filling out tax returns correctly is a lot easier. For those who get refunds, the money arrives a lot faster, and thanks to direct deposit, with a lot less hassle. If you want or need someone else to do your taxes, then H&R Block and many other tax preparation businesses can electronically file your taxes for you.

Those who have to pay taxes have a choice of three payment methods:

• The Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS)
• Electronic funds withdrawal
• Credit or debit card

If you decide to pay your taxes with a check or money order, the IRS instructs you to do the following:

• Make the payment out to the “United States Treasury.”
• Write “2011 Form 1040,” name, address, daytime phone number and Social Security number on the front of the check or money order.
• To ensure that the payment is credited promptly, also enclose a Form 1040-V payment voucher.

Anyone who can’t pay the required amount has a few options available to him that can be found on the IRS website here.

Filing taxes is never fun, especially if you have to pay. Fortunately, those who like to wait until the last minute got a two-day reprieve this year.

As people increasingly use their mobile devices – laptops, smart phones and tablets – for personal as well as professional purposes, they also increase the risk that they’ll fall victim to hackers.

Since iPads are rapidly becoming the mobile devices of choice, here are 10 tips from the National Security Agency to help you make your iPad more secure.

1. First and foremost, keep your iOS up to date. As with Windows, you can set your Mac OS X to automatically check for updates. Give permission for the updates to be installed on your computer as soon as you’re notified.  To keep your iPad up to date, you must connect to a host that runs iTunes. The NSA recommends doing this at least once a month or just prior to traveling if you plan to use your iPad during your trip.
2. Keep third-party software, such as security software, up to date. Whenever possible, set up the program to automatically search for updates.
3. Be selective about how you use your administrator account. The NSA recommends only using your administrator login for software updates and installations. For day-to-day Web browsing and business operations, you should create a separate “user” account. “Browsing the Web or reading email as an administrator provides an effective means for an  adversary to gain persistence on your host,” the NSA cautions.
4. The iPad has a data protection feature, which protects the hardware encryption keys with a passcode, that once enabled, will enhance your device’s existing hardware encryption.
5. For the most secure wireless protection, use the Wireless Protected Access 2 (WPA2) rather than Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP), which modern innovations have rendered virtually obsolete.
6. Disable remote administration. This might not be a viable option for those who use their iPads for work.
7. Choose an alternative domain name server (DNS) provider.  The ones that Internet Service Providers (ISP) usually provide don’t offer security features like blocking malicious or infected websites. The NSA suggests using open source or commercial DNS providers instead.
8. Use strong passwords. You should never use passwords that are easy to guess, such as your birth date or the word password, as your password. You should have a strong password to log on to your device and for every account you have on the Internet. It can be difficult to remember a lot of different, complicated passwords, so go ahead and write them down, just make sure you keep them tucked away in a safe place.
9. Avoid using login information in wireless hot spots. It might seem convenient to work in Starbucks instead of the office, but those networks are not secure. If you have your own 3G or 4G wireless device for connecting to the Internet, it would be much safer to use that.
10.  Enable SSL encryption. This will protect your information while it’s traveling from one point to another. If you can, the NSA recommends forcing your Web browser to use SSL encryption. If you see a lock icon next to the URL in your browser or in the status bar of the sight you’re on, that means that SSL is enabled.

Since the iPad’s popularity continues to grow in leaps and bounds, it’s a good idea for everyone to learn to how to keep his device safe from hackers and other external threats.

Laptop makers have nothing to fear from any version of Apple’s iPad … for now. The iPad may be all that, but where’s the bag of chips? Apparently, according to Dan Gordon in his article for Intivix, they’re not coming. Others, like Will Shanklin and Lauren Hockenson, would disagree. Shanklin and Hockenson believe that the iPad will one day supplant the laptop, even in the business world.

If you have an iPhone, or any type of touchscreen smart phone, you have some idea what it’s like to use an iPad. Shanklin and Gordon agree that the iPad might not be the best tool for people who do a lot of writing. As Shanklin put it, “Repeatedly tapping your fingers on glass is never going to be pleasant.” But there are solutions to that problem, which Shanklin pointed out himself. If you don’t mind carrying around an extra device, then there’s a Bluetooth keyboard that you can use when you need to type something longer than an email message or tweet. Another option is to spend about $100 for a case with a built-in keyboard. There’s also the option of using dictation software like Dragon, which will set you back about $200, to dictate articles or lengthy reports. So, what do you do if you store your documents on a CD or thumb drive? As any iPad owner can tell you, the device isn’t equipped for them.

In the cloud era, files can just as easily – and according to some, more safely – be stored online with Dropbox or Box.net. Most public libraries have desktops that allow you to use both CDs and thumb drives. You could use Google Docs for creating, editing, storing and sharing new documents, or for about $15 a month, you could subscribe to Documents-To-Go and create and edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on your iPad. So, that solves the problem of file storage.

For the average person – even the average small-business owner — who uses his iPad for sending emails, tweeting and posting updates on his Facebook page, the iPad is as good as a PC and lighter weight. It’s also good for basic photo and video editing. With more and more websites switching to HTML 5, the fact that the iPad lacks Flash is becoming less of an issue as well.

There are all kinds of apps and other improvements, particularly with the new iPad 3, that make using an iPad as simple as using a laptop. But it doesn’t seem to be as convenient. Cloud storage is great, but it shouldn’t be the only place your documents are stored. In iPad’s just don’t have thumb drive capabilities. So, in that regard, they will never replace a laptop. Given what iPad cost, the extra expenditures required to make it a viable option for people who do a lot of writing make it less cost-effective than a laptop.

Advocates of the iPad have an answer for every reservation that a laptop user might have for not wanting to switch, although, as Shanklin pointed out, professionals like graphic artists will probably never be better off using an iPad. Bottom line, regardless of how many improvements Apple makes to the iPad, for most users, it all comes down to a matter of taste.

Privacy is important to everyone. And it’s an essential part of public safety. Just as patients’ health records contain ultra-sensitive information like Social Security numbers and home addresses, so do student records. And cyber thieves don’t discriminate when it comes to hacking the information they need to commit identity theft.

The soon-to-be released Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM), under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), would allow states to share data to ensure that tax dollars are being effectively invested in programs and increase accountability for schools that process FERPA protected records, according to a press release on the Department of Education’s website.

Not all schools and libraries have the necessary wherewithal to hire on-staff IT professionals to help them stay compliant with CIPA and FERPA regulations. That’s where managed services providers (MSP) that specialize in serving the needs of schools can help. Instead of school administrators having to remind themselves to keep up to date with any changes in the laws and ensure that compliance policies are properly implemented, MSPs provide qualified IT professionals to take care of those vital responsibilities and give advice when needed.

Under the Department of Education’s proposal:

• Enforcement provisions of FERPA would be strengthened to ensure that everyone who works with personally identifiable information from student education records is only using it for authorized purposes.
• Schools will be able to implement directory information policies that limit access to student records, preventing marketers or criminals from accessing the data.
• States can enter into research agreements on behalf of their districts to measure the success of programs, such as early childhood programs that effectively prepare kids for kindergarten.
• High school administrators can share information on student achievement to track how their graduates perform academically in college.

Maintaining the privacy of students’ personal information is of the utmost importance. Without the protections provided by FERPA, CIPA and other regulations, it would be difficult, even dangerous, for schools and libraries to allow students access to the Internet to do research, apply to colleges and universities or any of the many other things that they use the Internet for during the day.

Need help figuring out how to protect your organization and maintain compliance with FERPA standards?  Call us today and we can help you understand FERPA and everything you need to watch out for.