Whats New in Tech?

Our pick of everything you need to know to stay ahead of the latest trends and updates in tech.

Black Friday shopping puts customers at risk

Holiday shopping has always been a focus for cybercriminals but extra vigilance is needed in 2020. With more employees working from home on their corporate devices due to COVID-19, switching from working to shopping (and back again), companies are at a greater risk of an attack. Cybercriminals are aware of this risky behavior and as a result, suspicious domain registrations are on the rise. As part of its regular security research, Mimecast monitored 20 top global retail brands beginning on October 26, 2020 and found almost 14,000 recently registered, suspicious domains related to those retail brands.
Link to full article

New Features for MS Teams

MS Teams continues evolving to assist in the ‘new normal’ that is working from home. New features include:
Together Mode – With multiple people in a meeting everyone can be united in a virtual space as if in a room together instead of being separated in boxes.
Breakout Rooms – This allows for meeting participants to split up into smaller groups and go into their own closed meeting spaces for discussions and brainstorming sessions. Presenters will be able to jump between these different rooms to make announcements and then bring everybody back into the main meeting room when they need to.
Meeting Recap – This feature will automatically save a record of everything said and shared during a Teams meeting, including audio of the conversation, a transcript, chat logs and shared files.
Walkie Talkie – A new feature for Android only that turns company-owned and personal Android handsets or tablets into a walkie talkie, using a simple push-to-talk function.
Additional features – New info pane, pinned posts, and a conversation button are being added to Teams help highlight important posts pinned by members, and other relevant information shared in a Teams channel.

Recent Apple Releases

Apple have recently released a new line of products. The iPhone 12 will come in 5.4” Mini and 6.1” standard as well as a ‘Pro’ version which comes in 6.1” standard and 6.7” Max. Apple are also releasing a new iPad Air featuring a new A14 processor and compatibility with both the Apple ‘Pencil’ and the ‘Magic Keyboard’. For more information on Apple products contact our sales team.

Office 2010 and 2013 no Longer Supported

As reported earlier in the year and recently via a customer communication, Microsoft announced that Office 2013 clients’ connections to commercial Microsoft 365 services will not be supported after October 13, 2020. Microsoft will not take any active measures to block older Office clients, such as Office 2013 and Office 2010, from connecting to Microsoft 365 services. However, legacy clients attempting to connect to a modern, always up-to-date cloud service may experience performance and reliability issues. Customers will face an increased security risk, and may find themselves out of compliance depending on specific regional or industry requirements.

Make Calls Through Teams With New Microsoft 365 and 3CX integration

Our VoIP provider of choice 3CX have partnered with Qunifi to bring a new product to market – Call2Teams™. Call2Teams™ is a unique add-on which integrates 3CX with Microsoft 365, enabling the Calls feature within Microsoft Teams. Allowing your staff to make and receive calls using the Microsoft Teams app on any device, wherever they are. You get to keep all the existing numbers, routing and call centre functionality configured in your 3CX phone system. For more information please contact our team on 01933 426162.