It has never been more critical to create a secure password. Cyber attackers are always looking to steal passwords so they can access our information and harm our business. According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 81% of hacking-related breaches occur due to compromised passwords. Don’t become a statistic. It’s on us to make it difficult for them. A strong password is a simple yet essential way to protect your accounts and your business. You can take several steps to create the most secure password possible. It can be tricky dealing with character counts, punctuation and password length. The list of requirements seems to go on and on. Let’s walk through it and explain how you can protect yourself.

My first week at Innovative brought many challenges someone might usually deal with when starting a new job. There were lots of new names and faces to learn, as well as the ins and outs of an entire company. On top of all this, I joined a managed IT services company without any background in technology. Being in such a different environment, everything I encountered was a learning experience. With every meeting and demonstration, I was gaining new information. One of the demonstrations I had the chance to sit in on was for Avaya Cloud Office (ACO). ACO is a hosted phone system that provides communication services to businesses, including Innovative. This made it especially relevant to me because it's a service I'll use at work regularly. The demonstration was hosted by Innovative's CIO Tyler Snyder, who did a great job explaining how many features ACO offers and how these features can change the way an office uses its phones. In this blog, I'll go over some of those features that will be crucial to our clients, my colleagues and me.

When it comes to cybersecurity, it's easy to feel like solution vendors are constantly exploiting your worst fears to sell you the latest and greatest solution you need to keep your business safe.

We are thrilled to congratulate Calen Vesper on her recent promotion to Senior Accountant! 🎉 Calen joined the team as an administrative assistant back in 2016. And we quickly learned what a rockstar team member she is. While excelling in her administrative duties, Calen began taking on more bookkeeping and general accounting functions until she earned the role of staff accountant in 2019. Calen reports to Rose Fetters, Director of Finance, who is thrilled to have another Innovator who loves numbers and spreadsheets as much as she does! Rose has been constantly impressed with the way Calen rises to every challenge. Calen is responsible for Innovative's general ledger. She spends her days reviewing reconciliations, managing the close process, and analyzing financial statements. She also plays a key role in the overall budgeting and forecasting process while managing the general office administration. As if that wasn't enough to keep her busy, Calen is currently working on finishing her associate degree in accounting at Hagerstown Community College. "Innovative is committed to creating pathways for our team to grow along with the company. Calen's promotion is another example of how we're successfully building out our leadership team from within," Rose said. If you've been paying attention, you'll know this is one of many recent Innovative promotions as we've been actively growing our team, ramping up for future expansion. We created more than ten new positions and expanded our leadership team through internal promotions over the past year.

It's been an exciting few months for the Innovative team! We're thrilled to congratulate two of our earliest employees on their recent promotions to the highest ranks of Innovative's executive team.

Be prepared for some sticker shock the next time you go to replace hardware in your business. Computer component costs have gone up 20% to 40% since 2020. Business-grade PC prices have doubled since 2019, thanks to the perfect storm of inflation paired with increased demand and decreased supply.

Do you like surprises? The answer probably depends on the context. You welcome surprises like lottery winnings and visits from an old friend. But surprises like, “Hey, we need an extra $5,000 to finish this project that’s already started” are very unwelcome. That’s where a contingency comes in.

Here we grow again! Twenty-twenty-one has been an exciting year filled with big changes and accomplishments. Over the Summer, we expanded our management team and promoted five employees to newly created management positions. Now, we’re thrilled to introduce six new employees we’ve welcomed to the Innovative family over the past few months.

As a fellow elder millennial, Iliza Shlesinger said, “Gather round Snapchat children, let me tell you the story of the landline.” Or, in this case, the story of how millennials introduced Google Docs to the workplace. There was a time when Microsoft Office exclusively ruled the corporate world and still does in many ways. But as the first wave of millennials started entering the professional workforce in the early 2000s, they expected online document sharing and collaboration capabilities.

Google Workspace vs. Microsoft 365 — which is best? Many people are passionately on team Microsoft or team Google when it comes to productivity suites. You may not even remember why you chose one or the other. It could have simply been what you knew was available way back when you started your business or first adopted the technology. Someone, at some point, came along and suggested switching from Google to Microsoft or from Microsoft to Google. When the question comes up, most organizations struggle to identify which solution is truly best for their business vs. which one was just the flavor of the month when they made the choice.