May 31, 2024 - This week’s notables

Infrastructure & Support  

As a reminder from last week, email phishing attempts have been on the rise. Please be careful when opening email and clicking on links – if you do click on a link, make sure you know the sender, and always think twice before giving your credentials. Because of this, we’ve started Phishing simulations for some of our client tenants…maybe you were trapped in one of them. The good news is that if you were, you’re safe with us – we will not take your secrets. Just be sure to do the follow-up training offered to you by Microsoft!

Devices 

We continue our work on network enhancements at INW offices. The latest project was upgrading the Barn at The Longview Farm. To our disappointment, WatchGuard does not offer mesh features with their access points, and they are not planning to add them in the future. This is a crucial feature for this situation because the main network is in a different building from the barn. Because of this, Ilya chose Cisco Meraki Go devices to connect the barn to the main network and improve the Wi-Fi network's speed and reliability. We are testing the new access point with the whole team at the barn this week and we will share our findings, but so far the observation is that new WiFi 6 access points don’t have the same ability to penetrate stone and metal as the older Netgear Orbi, so we’re likely looking at running some wire to upgrade access.

Information Radiation

This week we revisited our discovery of Microsoft Power Pages. We hope to have a more complete understanding of the platform soon and discussed ways that we can utilize it in our organization. A few ideas were as an ‘e-concierge’ for our art|Works Initiative member artists and a more interactive support portal for our INW customers. 

To refresh the memory: Power Pages is a secure, enterprise-grade, low-code SaaS platform that enables users to create, host, and manage modern business websites. It is designed to be user-friendly for both low-code developers and professional developers, allowing for quick design, configuration, and publication of websites on various web browsers and devices. With advanced tools, Power Pages supports the creation of data-driven, AI-enabled websites, that connect easily with 365 applications, making it a versatile tool for web development and business management.

Operations & Growth

In recent months, we’ve seen a lot of growth in our work with on-site network infrastructure. This is mainly because we’ve been updating old configurations and fixing security issues. With that, we’re excited at the opportunity to bring on a new part-time team member who will focus on our Cisco networking projects. Having this expertise in-house will allow us to be more responsive during essential maintenance windows and reduce customer downtime.