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In some industries, most users want and many users must send encrypted email. What does this mean?

The message must be delivered securely. This is accomplished if the message itself is encrypted, then sent normally, OR, the connection is encrypted and the email sent without encryption. I have been saying for over a year, “Within a very short time there will no longer be options for sending encrypted email – because all mail will be encrypted by default.”

Did you know that all iMessages sent from an iOS device are encrypted? And it’s no burden at all. (That’s why an SMS message on an iOS device shows up green instead of blue. The green ones are not encrypted.)

THREE CHOICES:

The most common option for our clients to send encrypted email is with CipherPost Pro. It provides an add-on to Outlook so you get a Send Secure button next to your Send button. You can also use their website to send/receive secure mail. This is sold on an individual user basis.

An easier albeit more expensive option is Echoworks. All email is sent through their smart host. Their mail server determines if a connection to the recipient’s server can be made securely. If so, the message is sent normally. If not, the recipient receives a link to a secure URL to read the message. Very, very easy. No extra steps. Every email is sent securely unless you put {noencrypt} in the Subject line. This is sold on a domain basis, not by user.

The newest player in this space is Microsoft with their Azure Rights Management offering. It’s inexpensive, works like Echoworx, and is sold on a user basis. Interested? Give us a call to learn about Microsoft Azure Rights Management or just to chat about email encryption.

The Microsoft Outlook app on Android and iOS is awesome. I actually use it on my iPhone and iPad, instead of the built-in Apple mail app. It looks and feels just like Outlook, and puts my calendar into the same app as my email, which is very handy.

If you haven’t tried Outlook Mobile, I highly recommend it, even for just a test day or two. Here’s the latest feature additions.

• Sync shared calendars
• Manage delegated calendars
• Meetup support
• Event management (see co-workers availability, RSVP and recurrences)
• Add a message to an invite, set events as private, mark events Busy, Free, etc.

For administrative assistants, these new features make it a breeze to stay informed and maintain the office calendar.

To get the Outlook Mobile app, open the App Store on your iOS device or the Google Play Store on your Android device. Setup is a cinch. Just give it your email address and password after choosing “Exchange” as your mail service type. As always, if you need help, give us a call!

Hello, my name is Clayton Pajot.

I’m one of the Quo Vadis techs up here in Canada. I live in a small town called Walkerton, Ontario. I’ve been with Quo Vadis for about 6 months now, and it’s been a great experience so far! I grew up in rural towns surrounding the greater Ottawa area, where everyone has the most stereotypical Canadian accent you can think of.

Life moved my family around quite a bit. My Dad owned several businesses in the reclaimed wood industry; he would find old barns and negotiate with the owner to tear it down, bring the wood back to his Wood Yard. Once he cleaned the wood up, he could sell it to those looking to improve their houses or cottages with a rustic look. The business did well for over a decade and allowed my dad to see most of North America driving the wood from place to place.

After leaving high school in 2007, I went up north to a city called North Bay. It’s really not that far north in Canadian terms, but that’s the name. I went there to attend Nipissing University for a Bachelor of Business Administration, thinking I would go into Investing or some such industry. I found out over the course of three years there that I wasn’t enjoying it. I changed majors and minors and tried new courses, and ended up graduating with a Bachelors in Commerce. I was pretty discouraged by my university education. I felt that, though I had the degree, I didn’t want or feel prepared for any job it may help me get.

University did bring me something that I will always be grateful for though; my beautiful and long-suffering wife Priscilla. We met through our church in North Bay, and eventually helped lead our Christian group on campus together. We have been married for over two years now, and have just celebrated the first birthday of our son Arlo. My wife worked in a hospital for almost a year, while I was trying to find steady work to support my family. Discouraged, we wondered what God had in store for us. At church one day, a woman mentioned that an IT company in Teeswater, Ontario was hiring. This seemed odd to me as Teeswater is basically 35 people and a dairy creamery surrounded by 100 kilometers of fields, but it intrigued me, and I felt like it was something I could do.

I went to meet David McDonald and see the Quo Vadis office. We talked for almost an hour about everything Quo Vadis was, and how I could contribute to this company. They said they would train me in-house, show me the ropes of IT, and imbue me with real-life skills that would be useful no matter where I end up. I got the job over 6 months ago and since then I’ve learned a lot, met great people on both sides of the border, and get to work a job I actually enjoy! I hope this gave you a chance to learn a little more about me.

Sincerely,
Clayton

Over the past 20 years, we have seen the server become a normal fixture in the Small Business environment. At times there have been multiple servers handling file storage, email and printer sharing.

In the past decade we have helped migrate the mail to the cloud, as Office 365 has blossomed into one of, if not, the largest online mail service. The subscription service for the Office software was next, eliminating the need for CDs and Product Keys.

The latest is the OneDrive attack against Google Docs and Google Drive. Now Office on the Web is mainstream and sharing a Word doc is a breeze. 1Tb of storage comes with nearly every flavor of 365, and adding a 365 Group yields yet another terabyte. Laptops with limited storage are no longer a pain to use, as everything is available, by connecting to the cloud.

So where does this lead our businesses?

Printers that connect wirelessly or via Ethernet are standard these days, and sharing them from a central server is not as necessary as it was when we used serial cables or USB connections. The mail and the files are “up there,” so what’s left? SECURITY.

Without central management of network security, we return to the dark ages. We were forced to create user accounts on multiple devices to share printers and keep the passwords consistent. If you forgot your password, you had better know the admin password. Security was more of a speed bump we had to deal with, rather than a lifesaver for our business and reputations.

Microsoft is moving businesses to the Azure Active Directory. With your AD in the cloud, the last need for a physical server evaporates. When will this become mainstream for the SMB space? Not today or tomorrow. There are other challenges, such as software that must be shared locally, but keep watching. Your business has evolved in your industry… and it continues to evolve in IT. We’re happy to come along for the ride.

Everything I work on is shared on one of four 365 OneDrives. I have my personal terabyte and Quo Vadis has three other 365 Groups of which I am a member. 4Tb of space without any additional cost. This is the wonder of the 365 space.

I’m reminded of Microsoft Word’s first foray into the marketplace. It was a disaster. WordPerfect was king, and it kept that crown for a long time with all its templates and macros to merge docs. But when Microsoft returned with Word 2.0, the world was flipped on its head. WordPerfect was sold to three other companies before finally disappearing.

Microsoft Word became the de facto standard for word processing in the business world. This was followed closely by the downfall of Quattro Pro, Symphony and Lotus 1-2-3 all fell to the mighty Microsoft Excel.

File Move is a new Office 365 feature. With File Move, you can now move files between locations in Office 365 – including personal files and shared sites – while preserving the full fidelity of version history and document metadata.

OneDrive for Business File Hover Card is new. With File Hover Card, as soon as you hover your mouse over a file you will be able to see file details such as access stats like number of views, who viewed, and who modified.