Nine iOS 17 Features for Work

Nine iOS 17 Features for Work

On Friday, September 15 Apple made iOS 17 available for everyone. It’s easy to miss some monumental new features, but that’s why we made this! Check out our team’s favorite nine features you can get today for FREE on your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

New iPhone 15 Pro Features for Small Business

New iPhone 15 Pro Features for Small Business

There are plenty of outlets to get the highlights of Apple's fall iPhone announcements. But we wanted to save you time and share the iPhone changes that matter for small business!

Why Foojee is For Small Business

Why Foojee is For Small Business

If you're reading this, it's very likely you're part of a small business. And that's no accident.

Like many of you, we started Foojee looking for business anywhere that would help us grow. After nine years into the business, we decided it was time to grow roots, and go all in with one specialty. But why?

Let me tell you! In fact, there are four reasons why. Watch below. And tell me if this resonates with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

On Employee Monitoring

On Employee Monitoring

More often than I’d like to admit, we get asked for advice on how to spy on employees while they’re at work. The reason behind their question is usually for understandable reasons: they want to ensure employees are being productive on the clock (which is kind of a futile effort anyway). But we think there’s a better way, and a better perspective to take. So we’re going to share it.

Foojee does not support employee monitoring of any type. While there are products on the market that offer many ways to monitor employee activity, they violate human privacy, are intrusive to the operating system, and often result in inconclusive data.

In scenarios where the company’s goal is to hold employees accountable for their work, Foojee has found other practices to be significantly more effective, without violating human privacy.

In our constant pursuit of designing a better future for small business we want to champion best practices for IT, security, and small business management. After being in business for over 15 years, and working with hundreds of businesses in different industries, we want to elevate best practices for creating a productive, accountable work environment. So if you're looking to create a culture of accountability, trust, and high performance, here are some of our favorite methods we practice at Foojee.

  1. Daily check-ins to review completed work. We use Basecamp and our ticketing system to keep record of activity and tasks completed.

  2. Setting weekly goals or scorecards for work. This can either be project-based goals, or metrics-based score cards. When all parties are aligned on what success looks like, great team members are eager to meet, and even exceed expectations.

  3. Getting feedback from your customers directly. Sometimes this can be a phone call directly with the customer (I'm sure they would love to share their thoughts!), and sometimes you can do this digitally. We've created a simple rolling 60-day survey to our clients so they can help keep us accountable with how we're doing.

  4. You can't motivate employees. You can only hire motivated people. This is why we place an incredible amount of effort in our 5-part interview process. One of the core values we look for in candidates is "Make it Better". We want fellow team members to have a natural desire for self-improvement, and to make their work a better place to work. If your team members aren't compelled to do great work, then no policies or monitoring will change that. They're probably not a great fit for your team.

We are here for small businesses. We know the challenges of growing (and just maintaining) a small team. And we’re committed to designing a better way to run a small business. If you’d like to discuss what that means for you, shoot me an email. I’d love to hear from you: lucas@foojee.com.

Best Practices for Passwords in 2023

Best Practices for Passwords in 2023

It's 2023 and passwords are still the most vulnerable (and frustrating!) part of your security environment.

So if there was ever a Foojee seminar where we could gather all of our clients (from all states) and give you a brief overview on how you should be looking at passwords in 2023, here it is! How long should a password be now? Is there something more secure than passwords? What's SSO? Find out below!

Looking for a Help Desk Engineer in Atlanta

Looking for a Help Desk Engineer in Atlanta

This post is to announce that we have an opening for a Help Desk Engineer in Atlanta! We're accepting applications until March 20, so don't hesitate, and let your pals know if you think they'd be interested!


Who's This Position For?
If you're the guy or gal in your circle that everyone asks for Apple tech advice, this role may be for you. The Help Desk Engineer is our entry level support role on our Delivery Team. It's where you can get your career started in IT. Our technical career track generally progresses like this:

  1. Help Desk Engineer

  2. Engineer

  3. Sr. Engineer

  4. Principal Engineer

Being on the front lines allows you to learn core technologies in iOS, macOS, security, networking, and general IT practices. While you've got to have a knack for technical work, you've also got to love human beings. We love to delight folks. It's part of our bigger vision to design a better future for small business. So if you like to guide others to success (and see a smile on their face) you should apply.


What Qualifications Do I Need?
To meet our minimum requirements, you should really have 1-2 years of working with Apple technology in some form or fashion. Our Help Desk Engineers all complete official Apple device training upon joining the team, and grow their career by completing specialized certifications.


If you have more experience than this, you should still apply. Our compensation package can be modified to account for experience.


What's The Day-To-Day Like?

You'll be taking care of requests coming in from our hundreds of clients every day (many from other Foojee Cities). For this role, expect at around 50% of your work to be remote, and 50% client side. (While we offer roles in other locations from time to time, this is an Atlanta-based role.) You can work from your home office, or a coffee shop. When you're on site, you're driving across Atlanta metro. This means you've got to enjoy driving, and that you have a few podcast subscriptions or audiobooks queued up. As far as the actual work goes, you’ll be working directly with clients, either over the phone, using remote screen sharing, or email.  You may not know all of the answers, but you're resourceful, calm, and enjoy finding the solution. Over the past fourteen years we’ve streamlined every single app we use, and we’ll train you on all of them. Most of our clients use the exact same set of apps, networking equipment, and cloud services to make troubleshooting consistent. (CrashPlan, Watchman Monitoring, Kandji, Meraki, Google Workspace, and Office 365 just to name a few.)

We've got an interesting balance of solo work and team work. Much of your work will be independent, and that's why we are looking for someone who is comfortable with a good degree of autonomy and responsibility. Having said that, our team is pretty spectacular. We know that we are better together, so we're always helping each other problem solve and improve. Iron sharpens iron. You'll meet at least once a week for our virtual team meeting, and likely collaborate on tickets with the Delivery team throughout the week. Yes you have your individual career aspirations and responsibilities, but we’re all here for each other to help achieve a common goal: to design a better future for small business.


Compensation And Benefits

  • $50,000 Full Time or more depending on experience.

  • $40/mo iPhone reimbursement

  • $60/mo Mac reimbursement

  • 65¢ per mile (gov't standard) monthly travel reimbursement.

  • 37.5 hours a week. We’re trying to trim the fat at work so we can go play.

  • 3% matching retirement plan.

  • Partial reimbursement for health insurance.

  • $100/mo wellness stipend. You solve client challenges for a living, so we think it’s important to take care of yourself on a regular basis: gym membership, massage, any wellness service.

  • Work from home and client offices.

  • A calm work environment where productivity is protected.

  • No useless meetings. Time is too precious. Let’s do meaningful work, and then let’s rest with friends and family.

Apply

Our deadline for applying is very soon: March 20, 2023. To apply, just shoot us an email at jobs@foojee.com with the following (we don’t read resumes):

  • Why you'd like to work at Foojee.

  • An example of a recent Apple-based solution you provided or recommended to someone.

  • A mock email reply to a client that sent a request. Feel free to ask for clarifying questions and then either offer a solution via email or offer a time to have a remote or on site appointment:

"Hi Foojee! I've noticed for the last couple of weeks that my calendars are broken. Calendars from my Mac go to my phone, but when I make an appointment on my phone, they don't go to my Mac. Can you please help? I'm going out of town in two days and I need this to work!"


We look forward to reading your email!

Email Hacks are Growing, and Six Ways We Can Help

Email Hacks are Growing, and Six Ways We Can Help

There's no need to elaborate on the risk of email hacking. Without question it's the fastest growing type of threat Foojee has witnessed across our client base in the past few years. Needless to say, regardless if you’re using an Apple or Microsoft product, this threat affects everyone. What's worse, email hacks are just the beginning of the attack. Typically the email hack leads the hacker to your address book, financial information, or bank information, and further uses these assets to hack others in your circle, like employees, vendors, or clients.

While the tools below are often brought up in 1-on-1 conversations with you, I thought it would be good to write a succinct outline to share how we're addressing these risks. Not all of these are free or included with your Foojee Service Plan, so if you're unsure which of these protections you have for your organization, just schedule a call with your City Leader, and we'll take a look.

As with many security threats, the act of hacking an email account can involve multiple steps, via multiple vectors, and protections exist for each. Some of these are included in the Foojee Service Plan.

  1. Foojee Phishing Training mitigates the biggest risk of all: user awareness.
    Our security awareness training uses video lessons and online quizzes to keep everyone informed of the latest tactics. In addition to training, we send phishing simulation campaigns to help reinforce their lessons.

  2. Multi-factor Authentication (MFA or 2FA) to prevent unauthorized access, even if your password is stolen. We've likely enforced this on your entire organization's email accounts. It's free, and just takes some coordination with your team to implement. Doing this properly addresses 95% of the risk.

  3. Foojee Web Security protects your devices from visiting fraudulent websites that are masquerading as real login websites. Many hacks begin with an invitation to login to a fake website, and these fake websites are getting better at looking real. However if you have Foojee Web Security, which is based on a Cisco product called Umbrella, your web browsing is being protected by a state-of-the-art safety filter.

  4. Foojee Dark Web monitors the dark web for compromised credentials. In the event an employee enters a password into a fraudulent website, or a company like T-Mobile or Equifax gets compromised, Foojee's Dark Web service will notify us if that data appears in public, so we can help your employee reset any accounts that have been compromised.

  5. Foojee Spam Filter uses machine learning and custom filters that go beyond your email company's built in spam protection. If you want to batten down the hatches, or if your organization has already experienced phishing, we recommend going a step further beyond traditional spam protection, and implementing a third party spam protection. It's just a few dollars per month per person, and adds a significantly stronger layer of customizable protection.

  6. Local antivirus / EDR protection for your Mac. While malware and ransomware is far less prevalent on the Mac, it does exist. Some malware is used to track keystrokes, and allow an attacker to learn your login passwords for multiple accounts. So having a proper EDR protection (which is the latest generation of anti-virus protection) is our tool to mitigate risks that could be running on your Mac.

These six tools are part of our vision. We spend countless hours testing the right approach to each risk, and we're honored to show up everyday to make your IT better, and to reduce your risks. If you're unsure of which of these tools you have, just schedule a quick 15 minute call with your City Leader, and we’ll take a look.

-Lucas

How to Update Your Mac Running macOS 11 Big Sur

How to Update Your Mac Running macOS 11 Big Sur

On September 13, 2021 Apple announced that many of its operating systems contain a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to run software on your device. Apple has fixed the vulnerability, and to protect your devices you must update each of them to the latest available software.

How To Resolve

In order to protect your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, you must update its software. However, the specific steps will vary depending on your operating system version. Here’s how you can identify your version of macOS.

If Your Mac Is Running Big Sur, Follow The Steps Below

If your Mac is running Catalina, read our other blog article for updating Catalina

step1

Step 1

Click on the Apple logo in the top left of the Menu Bar and select “System Preferences”.

Screen Shot 2021-09-15 at 12.05.48 PM.png

Step 2

Select “Software Update”.

step3

Step 3

You will see “An update is available for your Mac”. Select “Update Now”.

step4

Step 4

A Terms and Conditions window will appear, click “Agree”

Screen Shot 2021-09-15 at 12.07.30 PM.png

Step 5

The download will start. Wait for the progress bar to finish. After the download completes, you will be prompted to restart your computer for the update to install. Once your Mac restarts, you will see another progress bar as the update is installed. This process may take 30 minutes to complete.

Once the update is completed, your Mac will restart back to the login screen. This means the install has completed and the security patch has been applied.

How to Update Your Mac Running macOS 10.15 Catalina

How to Update Your Mac Running macOS 10.15 Catalina

On September 13, 2021 Apple announced that many of its operating systems contain a vulnerability that could allow an attacker to run software on your device. Apple has fixed the vulnerability, and to protect your devices you must update each of them to the latest available software.

How to Resolve

In order to protect your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, you must update its software. However, the specific steps will vary depending on your operating system version. Here’s how you can identify your version of macOS.

If Your Mac is running Catalina, follow the steps below

If your Mac is running Big Sur, read our other blog article for updating Big Sur.

Screen Shot 2021-09-15 at 3.43.56 PM.png

Step 1

Click the Apple logo in the top left corner of the Menu Bar and select “System Preferences”.

Screen Shot 2021-09-15 at 11.58.26 AM.png

Step 2

Select “Software Update”.

step3

Step 3

Select “More Info” underneath the text that says “Another Update is Available”.

step4

Step 4

A window will appear with the macOS Catalina 10.15.7 update, click “Install Now”. You may install other updates if they appear as well.

step5

Step 5

A window will appear that says you must restart your computer, click “Restart”. Once your Mac restarts, you will see another progress bar as the update is installed. This process may take 30 minutes to complete.

The computer will restart and the download and install will commence. Once completed, your device will restart back to the login screen. This means the install has completed and the security patch has been applied.