Quercus IT Blog

Quercus IT has been serving the Edmonton area since 2005, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses.

Understanding the Blockchain and Its Business Ramifications

Understanding the Blockchain and Its Business Ramifications

You see the word “blockchain” all the time in relation to cryptocurrencies and NFTs, but do you know what it actually means? This is but a small portion of what a blockchain encompasses, and we’re here to discuss today what this technology is capable of.

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Take Data Breach Seriously Before It’s Too Late

Take Data Breach Seriously Before It’s Too Late

Whenever you see a data breach in the news, it’s never a good thing. Their impact ranges from minor to severe, and depending on the size and scope of the breach, it could even be bad enough to break a business. Let’s go over how you can keep your business from suffering from data leaks.

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Tip of the Week: Use People Graphs in Excel for Data Visualization

Tip of the Week: Use People Graphs in Excel for Data Visualization

With Microsoft Excel, you can use visuals to represent your data, providing greater context for the contents of your spreadsheets and making it easier to communicate what it all means. This week’s tip focuses on People Graphs, a feature that can be powerful when used appropriately.

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Centralized Data Storage is the Better Option. What’s Your Excuse?

Centralized Data Storage is the Better Option. What’s Your Excuse?

Are you sure that your business can control all of its data? Are you absolutely certain that it can be accessed when needed? Can you guarantee that it’s as secure as humanly possible, wherever it happens to be? You should be able to answer these questions with an unequivocal and resounding “yes,” yet central data management is far from a simple task.

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Data Warehousing is a Game Changer for SMBs

Data Warehousing is a Game Changer for SMBs

Most businesses create and hold a lot of data, much of which goes underutilized. Thanks to improved developments in data analytics and business intelligence, more businesses can take advantage of their data to make better decisions and improve operations, thereby increasing profits in the process. At the heart of these developments is data warehousing.

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How to Tell Your Hard Drive is About to Fail

How to Tell Your Hard Drive is About to Fail

Digital storage is one part of computing that has seen astronomical growth over the past several decades, and with the solid state drive (SSD) more affordable than ever, you have to wonder how well your old hard disk drive (HDD) is holding up. Despite the cost difference between the two, the HDD is a viable option, albeit a mechanical one that is prone to breakdown over time.

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What Can Businesses Learn from Schofield’s Laws of Computing?

What Can Businesses Learn from Schofield’s Laws of Computing?

We frequently write about topics in relation to business IT, but one that we have yet to cover is Schofield’s Laws of Computing. What are these laws, and what can businesses learn about them?

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Tip of the Week: How to Turn Your Excel Sheets into Heat Maps

Tip of the Week: How to Turn Your Excel Sheets into Heat Maps

My team and I are big fans of a good spreadsheet, just as a simple way of organizing and contextualizing your data. Therefore, we’re all for sharing some neat ways that you can make these visualizations even easier to communicate your findings through.

Let’s talk about how you can make your Excel spreadsheets into a heat map, giving you this kind of increased visibility.

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All Organizations Need to Take Ransomware Seriously

All Organizations Need to Take Ransomware Seriously

The headlines hyping up ransomware as a dangerous threat are not exaggerating. It really is as bad as it seems, although there is often a fair amount of embellished information on what ransomware exactly is and what it does. Let’s take some time to review what ransomware is and how your business can handle it in an appropriate way.

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Avoid Ransomware at All Costs

Avoid Ransomware at All Costs

It sincerely seems that every other day features news of another cyberattack, and it isn’t uncommon for the word “ransomware" to be tossed around an awful lot. Let’s take a few moments to go over—or review—what ransomware is, and arguably more importantly, how to handle any you or your team encounters.

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What You Need to Do to Better Secure Your Cloud-Hosted Data

What You Need to Do to Better Secure Your Cloud-Hosted Data

The cloud has become a hugely popular resource for businesses of all sizes to lean on for a multitude of needs, many using it for some form of data storage. While using the cloud for this means, however, it is wise for you to do everything available to secure the data you’ve stored there. Let’s go over a few things that we recommend you do to help protect your data.

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How Data Gets Stolen (Even When Security Measures are in Place)

How Data Gets Stolen (Even When Security Measures are in Place)

We talk a lot about best practices that you and your entire workforce need to follow in order to protect yourself, your business, and your customers from data theft. From ensuring that you have strong, unique passwords and making sure two-factor or multi-factor authentication is applied to all of your accounts, to keeping your endpoints updated, a lot of prevention is considered the barest necessities of cybersecurity. It’s worth understanding just how clever cybercriminals are, and just how easy it is to slip up and lose control over your own information.

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How to Properly Test Your Data Migration Processes

How to Properly Test Your Data Migration Processes

Regardless of the business attempting it, data migration (or the process of moving data and systems to a new piece of infrastructure) is critical to get right. One way to improve your chances of success is to create and follow a migration strategy, evaluating it as you go. Let’s walk through some practices involved in doing so.

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Is Data a Commodity? Maybe Not, but It Is an Asset

data-commodity

The late American author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” Written in the 20th century, it has been put in practice by 21st century businesses. As the Internet has grown, the amount of companies expanded, and the amount of data that those companies collect has grown exponentially, especially now that there is a market for such data.

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Quercus IT strives to provide the best comprehensive IT, Computer, and Networking services to small businesses. We can handle all of your organization's technology challenges.

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2-15015 123 Ave NW,
Edmonton, Alberta T5V 1J7

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