 Alrighty, again, welcome everybody super excited that you guys are here. Welcome to the ones that are joining us. We're just getting started. So the ones are talking with us in the chat. Thank you for being here. I do see a few people that are coming back and a few new members. So thank you so much for joining us. And what are we going to talk today? So today we're going to talk about is actually your tag up today. We're going to find out today would add an Eric, and then we're going to learn about a few tips and tricks. So it's going to be very excited to tune in. We're going to do next slide. Alrighty, let's see how it's keeping items before we start. If you have any questions, you can use the chat function to type in your comments, or you can also use a Q&A function if you would like to. Just a quick reminder, this video, sorry, this event is being recorded. We're going to email you the recording and the slides after the session. It might take a few business days, so probably no longer than three, the three business days where you're going to get an email with the recording and the slides for you to review them later on. We're going to slide. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about Quad. So what is Quad? So Quad is the brand new community platform that takes it together for nonprofits. You're going to be able to see a peer to peer community, you're going to have exclusive events, expert technical support, you're going to get access to an entire text of courses catalog, as well as different additional discounts and more. And you're going to be able to have 10 members in your organization that you're able to maybe get to know other organizations in your area as well. I will drop a link on Quad in the chat so you're able to check it out for yourself. Next slide. So onto these agendas, they're very briefly but very packed with a lot of good information. So we're going to introduce ourselves. We're going to overview about, we're going to learn about overview about BASC. We're going to learn the technology life cycle for your products and services. We're going to talk about best practices and how to update your tech stack. We're going to know the solutions the BASC provides for your nonprofit and also we're going to do a very packed Q&A session. So if you have any questions, please feel free to send those questions our way. Alrighty, so basically every single month we meet every last Tuesday of the month and we talk about basically anything tech related. So the customer success team is the one that is able to do this event for you guys. So here probably you already have talked with a few of us, but if not briefly, here's our team. Myself, I am Vanessa and I am the Program Manager for Digital Customer Success. So super excited to be here to learn about all of you and to give you a lot of good info. And with that, I'm going to leave you with probably the people that I talked to most also in TechSoup. We're going to take the best. Perfect. Yeah, thank you so much, Vanessa. I want to thank everyone for taking the time out of your day to be here with us and taking this opportunity to maximize the potential of your IT solutions. My name is Ed Boem. I'm the Account Manager with BASC. I'm here in Orem, Utah, and I've been here for just over nine years with the company. Five of those consist of this role here. So I am typically having the initial conversation with nonprofits about what to expect with our services and how we play a role in your organization. So I'm going to let Eric Wheeler introduce himself. He is our Managed Service Supervisor and very passionate about IT, just to give you a heads up there. Both of us will be leading this conversation to help you gauge where you're at with your IT. Eric? Thanks, Ed. I'll try to keep it at about a seven for us. Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Eric Wheeler. I'm the Managed Services Supervisor here at BASC, like Ed said. I live here in Georgia, or as I like to call it, the land of peaches and pollen. I've been in the world of technology formally for about 17 years now. My focus in school other than parties and extended gaming sessions, of course, was software engineering. I went into advanced software development and information assurance and security. So I've always had an interest in the high tech world, finding ways to make it work for us rather than the other way around. That's why my current role, I had a team that focuses on taking a preventative approach to IT rather than a reactive one. And we'll actually talk about that a little bit later. Yeah, and just a little bit about BASC. We've been a proud partner of TechSoup for just over six years now, so going on seven. It's been a great partnership and we enjoy helping and working with a lot of nonprofits all across the country. We've been in business since about 2004, so about 20 years now. We're headquartered in Orm, Utah, so about 40 minutes south of Salt Lake City. If some of y'all know where that is, we started and we still do actually work with for profits, including small law firms, medical practices, small financial firms, so small businesses across the point or across the whole basis there. My team, it's a small team, but we combine about 45 years of working in the MSP space. I want to just touch on that acronym that we have with MSP. You'll hear that within the webinar. It's an acronym for Managed Service Provider. So practically a fancy way of saying you're in-house IT service. It's your IT guy without him being actually there. And since our partnership with TechSoup, we've helped over 11,000 nonprofits and have solved over about over a million cases since then. So this experience has led us to be more conscious and empathetic towards nonprofits and their pain points along with helping them with their mission. So we're going to move along with a quote, one of my favorite quotes here from Steve Job. It's about pretty much innovating and innovation with IT. So it's the saying of innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity, not a threat. So essentially the objective here with this webinar is to help facilitate change. The context of this quote evolves around embracing the evolution of technology because we all know those who don't adapt to external changes often fall behind. So one thing I would like the audience to be conscious of during this webinar is to evaluate your current IT infrastructure and needs. You have to ask yourself, you know, are you going to be ready with the evolution of technology because things are moving really fast all around us in the digital world that we live in? Or is your organization going to properly equip themselves when technology evolves again, especially with the adoption of AI and we'll touch on that later. So essentially is your IT infrastructure set up to be an asset or a liability? You have to be honest with yourself with that. Because in my experience, you know, with talking so many nonprofits is, you know, I've witnessed that a lot of nonprofits are reluctant to change. And some of that, of course, is due to budget limitation, but also because they fallen into the trap of being in the comfort zone. So a lot of nonprofits that we speak to have prolonged the necessary changes. However, the pain of change, you know, we know throughout life is never dodged as they think instead it accrues over time. So by the time they get to us here at BASC, the changes that are needed sometimes can be pretty overwhelming, right, because it comes all at once. Instead of the little increments as it should be. So keep that in mind. So I like to everyone to be cognitive of those aspects and the importance of it. While encouraging the audience or at least making them aware to leverage their nonprofit status and how to leverage TechSoup for resources. So we are, we want to engage with the audience and get this on a personal level. All right, I also want to, you know, well, I actually don't want to hear myself talk. But I want to gauge the audience and where do you stand currently. Because a common grievance that I have concluded through my own personal litmus test here is that, you know, I'm talking to people who are handling their IT without actually being the IT person. So that's not their title. That's not their priority. So I always speak with hiring executives with their directors, presidents, pastors, project managers, you name them. I've spoken with them and they often tell me that everyone goes to them with their problems and they have to put time aside to fix them. So I want to ask the audience of who are you out there that they could feel or they feel that they could relate to this grievance. I'm going to give you guys some time to answer that as we know before we move along. Okay. Yeah, we got a big vast majority. So yeah, right now we have about 70 to 30 say yes that's me that's actually a pretty good ratio. Usually what I do is is probably 80 to 20. That's a little bit less than I expected but that's still a lot right. So as we are wrapping up the poll question I want to show an example of a client of ours for several years now. I want to make sure everyone's aware that you're not alone. This is Jim Kilgore, the executive director of full life of Hawaii. They empower people with disabilities both mental and physical. When he first came to us back in spring of 2019, he was not fully HIPAA compliant as he was needed to be. So when I spoke with him he had a law on his plate. Not only did he need to be HIPAA compliant of course but he needed somebody to take the load the IT load off of his shoulders. And we did a technical assessment with him. And during that technical assistant on an assessment of course it's on the phone. We had to encrypt his laptops enable admin users manage his data it or manage his backup do poorly tune into checkups. So, you know at the time by the way he wasn't very big he had a staff around 13 people, but they commonly had technical limitations that the staff would constantly take up the gym. By joining tech supermass we were able to create or at the very least increase his downtime to where he was able to focus more on the organization, more the growth aspect right and the mission as a nonprofit that who was trying to fulfill so we've been scaling with him for the past five years and he's grown to about 25 staff members. So it's been a successful relationship. So at this point when we bring up the technology lifecycle I'm going to introduce Eric, like I implied to earlier, we want to help you implement some solutions and take advantage of what I personally call smart IT. And what that, what that means, I mean with, of course, through my projection is you are condensed condensing and simplifying your IT infrastructure. In the meantime, you're maximizing your potential while minimizing costs. I know that takes, you know, that's a lot to take in but that is possible. And this is where I bring Eric to discuss more about the technology lifecycle. He is our IT specialist. Just, again, like I said he's very passionate so he's going to try to limit and dumb down the tech jargon to make it easier for everyone to audience to follow so Eric. Thanks so much Ed. So when we're talking about the technology lifecycle we're talking about the phenomenon that exists everywhere else in the world, all things that live die. And they go through different phases as they move through that cycle. Technology is no different. So we break down the technology lifecycle into four different phases the introduction phase the growth phase maturity and then decline. So to briefly touch on each of those we start with the introduction phase. And so this is where the technology lifecycle begins. And it's when a new technology or product is introduced to the market. It's typically going to be characterized by high innovation rapid advancements and companies are going to be adopting these new technologies during this phase to gain a competitive edge over others. So this is when the new technology, the new software, the new hardware, you know, they're the new toys on the market. So everyone's trying to get their hands on them. As the introduction phase, you know, phases out, if you'll excuse that term. We go into what's called the growth phase. That's when technology starts to gain acceptance. And it is being adopted more by companies. So the adoption rate increases the technology becomes more standardized. You're going to see it more often in your trading programs and it's become it's going to become more common on all of your platforms. During this time businesses are going to start investing in scaling and optimizing technology for their specific needs. So a really good example of this is the cell phone that's probably on your desk or in your pocket right now. Most of them are going to work off of an operating system that's either based on Apple iOS or Android. But when you first turn on your phone, it's going to have the logo or the emblem of the cell phone provider that you have. So that is a representation of that company adopting that operating system or that technology during its growth phase to fit their specific needs. Now, once we move out of the growth phase, we move into the maturity phase. So this is when the technology has become standard and competition is going to increase. So innovations are going to continue. They're going to become more incremental. And this is when organizations start to stabilize their use of the technology. So this is when everything has become the standard and you start seeing the other phases start to drop off from the previous technologies that were in place beforehand. And then of course, following that maturity phase is the decline phase. So in this phase, newer and more advanced technologies are going to become available. Older technologies are going to be entering their own introduction phases as these older technologies are gradually phased out. And this is where your technologies that are already in the system in the market are going to lead to increased maintenance costs, security risks and potential obsolescence. Because at that point they're moving towards their end of support or end of life periods. So I really feel it's important to understand these phases. It's crucial for making informed decisions about your IT assets. Because you want to be able to anticipate trajectory of technologies and develop proactive strategies to maximize the life span of your IT infrastructure. Right. It's fascinating that you brought up the decline phase because a lot of nonprofits by the time they have come to me, their IT infrastructure is already in the decline phase, right? So they come to us want to catapult themselves to become relevant, but you know, I know you're going to discuss a little bit about the ancient world and the digital world there to where they have some compare and contrast, right? Right. Right. Yeah. So I like to break it down into the ancient and digital worlds just to kind of give you an illustration of how quickly and how dramatically technology changes. So in the ancient world of technology, as we'll call it, you have a lot of on premise hardware. You had the mail servers and the shared servers that were in those dusty old technology closets that no one wants to go into with the flashing lights in the cobwebs. So you run into a lot of unsupported infrastructures, unsupported hardware. You know, as those technologies start to move into the decline phases and newer technologies are emerging in entering their own introduction phases. These older infrastructures, these older pieces of hardware are no longer supported. So that's where a lot of your maintenance costs are going to come from. And then in the digital age or the new age, you're looking at a cloud first approach to things. So you're wanting to move as much to the cloud as possible because with the cloud you are scalable and it's much more cost effective than having to replace those, you know, old pieces of hardware. And this is paramount for everyone in the audience or anyone who hears this. This is the gap to where nonprofits can make up or could fill. I have, it's so painful when a lot of them come to me and they're a lot of them are still in the ancient, of course, they're still within the Windows seven. So, you know, there's no non-premise server for email or for even file storage or sometimes there's over complicated where they're, let's say their file storage is spread across several different platforms. So, you know, there's so many ways that you could leverage tech soup and move to the digital age and of course you get a pretty good discount, not just with, you know, let's say email hosting, email migration, but also within the SharePoint and OneDrive that you could consolidate all of your files or all your storage to one place. And I'm still, you know, often on a common basis, you know, talking to people are still using pop three emails. I mean, that's ancient. It's been a decade or so and people have gone out of that environment, but it just goes to shows and even with on-premise server, that last week someone came and, you know, someone's talking to me and, you know, this is a true story and they say, hey, we need to purchase a new server, but we want to know what we should get and like, hey, what's the purpose of the server, right? And a lot of it, the only thing they needed was just active directory for Azure. And it's like, all right, well, how many people do you have? I mean, how big is your nonprofit? Oh, we only have like four of us. Like, why is that even necessary? You're going to spend $3,000 on a new server. Right. You have active directory for such a small organization that's not needed. So that's just one of the examples I have, and especially everyone in the audience that you can make up a lot of ground, again, by just going to TechSoup and seeing what you can leverage off of their website, or even have a consultation with us to see what you can do to elevate yourself to the digital age or the modern age. But, you know, let me ask, you know, Eric, what are certain examples of, let's say, on-premise infrastructures or even platforms or software that are outdated and no longer supported? So essentially, how does one know where they stand within the ancient or digital world? Gotcha. So there's actually a few different signs that you can base that off of. And before I get into that, I kind of want to explain the difference between two very important terms here. So you've got end of life and then you've got end of support. And those describe two very, very different phases. So you've got end of life, which refers to the point where a product such as software or hardware reaches the end of its effective and supported lifespan. So at this stage, the product is no longer actively developed and new updates, new features are discontinued. So at this point, you know, users are generally encouraged to migrate to a newer version or transition to an alternative product altogether if that particular developer is no longer, you know, doing anything for that particular piece of software or hardware. So that's end of life. Now, end of support is the specific date when the manufacturer or developer stops providing official support for that product. So that includes updates, patches, technical assistance, and that can be for a project altogether, or I'm sorry, a product altogether, or for a specific version of that product. So if you continue using a product after EOS, it becomes a lot riskier because you've got security vulnerabilities that may go unaddressed, and then you of course have compatibility issues. So I just wanted to kind of touch on the difference between EOS and EOL, because it's a very distinctive difference. But I've got a little table here that has actually a few common things that we still see in production that are very well past end of life or end of support. So as far as operating systems, Windows 7, Windows XP, we've actually just recently seen a client that had Windows Server 2012 that is still in production. These are well past their end of life and end of support. And then as far as software is concerned, we've got Adobe Creative Suite 6, QuickBooks desktop. Microsoft Office 2013 is another good example. It's the one that was downloaded locally on the system rather than through the application suite for Microsoft Office 365. And then it's also important to note that, you know, with Apple devices, the hardware themselves, anything prior to 2016 is out of support at this point in time. So, you know, the life cycle of these technologies, with how quickly technology is advancing and evolving these days, their lifespan is getting shorter and shorter. So, I'm trying to cut you off. This is improv. Hey, you know, somebody, Jennifer has a question. Maybe we should save a Q&A, but this is probably more relevant right here. She asked, I don't see any Mac or Apple products in here. Is there a reason for that? That's a great question. Yeah, absolutely. It's simply because of the advent of those Apple products. Essentially, the support for Apple lasts about seven years. So, you know, with each phase of the Apple device, that's both operating system for the iOS and for the hardware itself. Yeah, it's going to be seven years from release. So that's just how quickly Apple products come in and then fall out of support is because they are rapidly developing those products. They do move fast. So thank you for illustrating ways to examine if you're, you know, the current hardware is nearing the end of its life cycle for everyone in the audience. You know, since we've been talking about the antiquated aspect of IT, along with the most current and common IT infrastructures, right? Can you touch base on the future of internal IT or where it's heading, notably AI? I know you're very passionate about AI. Absolutely. And this is my absolute favorite part. So, AI is absolutely where the future is. So when we're talking about AI, we're talking about artificial intelligence. Now, we're not going quite as far as, you know, Judgment Day, Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger style, artificial intelligence, not quite. But we are talking about machine learning and automation. Yeah, right, right. So, you know, when we're looking at, you know, today's use of AI, we're looking at more LLMs than anything else. And that's large language models, which is a type of artificial intelligence model that's designed to understand and generate human like text. So instead of communicating with a computer through command line or feeling like you're in the 1980s movie, The Computer Who Wore Tennis Shoes, you can actually speak to a computer. You can speak to these large language models the same way that you and I are conversing right now. And not only will it understand you and be able to carry out tasks based on your input, but it will be able to respond to you in kind. So it'll be like you're having a conversation with a sentient being. Can you share an example of what AI will look like from a customer point of view for everyone in the audience? Or if somebody wanted to adopt AI in their current IT environment right now, what are the first steps that you would advise them to take here? Sure, sure. So when it comes to AI, it is a broad spectrum of things that you're looking at because the possibilities are quite literally limitless. So when you're looking at just things like large language models, which is generative artificial intelligence, you're looking at an AI that can automate repetitive tasks and analyze data and identify patterns. So that's going to improve decision making, optimize workflows. You can implement it as AI-powered chatbots that can answer customer questions 24-7 can improve customer satisfaction, personalize customer experiences. These AIs can even analyze customer data to identify and target potential customers with greater accuracy. So this is going to lead to an increased ROI or a return on investment on marketing campaigns. Decreased are time a lot though. There's a lot of ways to fix some issues before they arise. Absolutely. Yeah, AI is also being integrated into a lot of antivirus solutions as well. And then also into financial institutions as well because AI can analyze financial transactions to identify suspicious activity, prevent fraud, and it protects both businesses and their customers right there at the computer level. Interesting. So currently in the market, what AI softwares would you advise for both nonprofits in the audience or who are big and small, who aren't very comfortable with this technology? Essentially, where would you guide someone, Eric, to go to get their hands on this type of technology to experiment with? I know somebody in the chat here earlier brought up Co-Pilot. I mean, I know that's one of them, but can you kind of touch on that and dive either? Yeah, absolutely. So Co-Pilot is actually a fantastic one to start with because it is integrated into systems that a lot of people are already very familiar with. Co-Pilot is Microsoft's answer to generative AI based on an LLM or that large language model. So Co-Pilot has been integrated into a lot of the Microsoft Office 365 suite of applications. So things like your Power Automate that's built into your SharePoint, Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, any of those things can have Co-Pilot integration built in. So essentially what Co-Pilot is going to allow you to do is describe to the AI what you're trying to accomplish and then the AI then takes that human speech and it translates it into the code version of what you're trying to accomplish. So for example, on Power Automate, if you want to have an alert sent to your team's channel every time that you have an email come in that has the word alert in the subject header, you just tell Co-Pilot that that's what you want to happen and it's going to give you a cloud flow generated with those parameters already filled in based on what you described to it. So that's one way that you can kind of play with AI and get used to it. Another really good way is to go into something like ChatGPT or even Google Bard. These are all free to access right now. Most of them are still in beta. They're in what's called open beta, which, okay, sure, that kind of turns all of us into the test rats there, but it also gives us some hands on opportunities to really see what generative AI can really do for us. So, you know, when you're wanting to get into AI for your business, you know, the very first step is to assess your business needs. So you want to identify your specific challenges or opportunities within the business where AI can make that positive impact. So you want to look at your repetitive tasks. You want to look at things that are the same generated every single time. You want to look at things where data can be analyzed and quantified and then just tell AI what you want it to do. And there's several resources out there that are just a web search away that could help you with education, awareness, data evaluation, budget planning, all kinds of things. So sometimes I need to remind myself to use Chat, you know, something as simple as ChatGTP. I'm still in the world where anytime I need something, I just YouTube it. YouTube, you know, I'm a visual learner. Right. But, you know, sometimes I have used ChatGTP a few times, like, this is amazing. But, you know, at what point does it take all of our jobs, right. While we are discussing about modifying your IT infrastructure, can you explain why one would want to revamp their IT environment? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So there are several problems and really huge impacts that retaining legacy systems can, you know, kind of affect your business with. In fact, Microsoft actually did a poll. They polled over a thousand customers and a staggering 91% of them said that they would actually stop doing business with the company because of its outdated technology. And 91% is a huge, huge, huge trunk, especially since regardless of what kind of business you have, you're in the business of keeping your customers happy. So, you know, maintaining those legacy systems, that that's actually not a good way to do it. Now on the other side of it, 62% of respondents said that they were more likely to become repeat customers if businesses used modern technology. So simply by taking those small incremental steps, you can improve that customer viewpoint on your business. Right. And, you know, the numbers are right there. Now, as far as, you know, those problems going to an impact, you know, what it can actually do to your business. So when you have those outdated systems, those legacy systems, you retain those. You've got reduced efficiency, increased downtime. You've got security risks and inefficient data management and overall decreased customer satisfaction. So when you're keeping those legacy systems, they're not getting their patch updates, they're out of service end of life. You've got a lot of security vulnerabilities. So they're more susceptible to cyber attacks and data breaches. You've got lack of compatibility with emerging technologies on the market. So if you have older operating systems or older hardware, then newer emerging technologies aren't going to be compatible because they simply can't keep up. And then, of course, you've got the lack of support, increased costs and overall reduced productivity because of those systems. Hmm. Yeah, this reminds me of a client we have a success story about revamping their IT infrastructure. They're out of New York City. They felt they needed to make some changes internally. So when we did a technical assessment with the phone, they were still on the on-premise environment, right? They had a server that they were hosting their email internally and they were storing their data through, of course. It was kind of getting a little bit old, but a lot of this was enabled by their MSP at the time. That was encouraging it. But this nonprofit was also questioning the quality that was also being provided in the meantime. So what we eventually did was we have to migrate their email from on-premise to Microsoft Exchange. That was a big jump. And we also helped consolidate their data to SharePoint or from their server to SharePoint and OneDrive. Right? So when they switched over, you know, made that switch and took advantage of Tech Super in Bask, I mean, we were able to save them $12,000 just their first year. Now, you know, keep in mind, this is an organization with 10 people, not very big, but they were paying Manhattan prices. So there's some context there. But it goes to show why revamping your IT, you know, what it could do for somebody, especially the savings and what you could gain. Whereas initially for taking advantage of your nonprofit status. So we are going to move forward. So hopefully we haven't lost the audience too much with all the touchy. We want to have another poll question. I'm going to hand this back off to Eric because he has a really cool superhero motif that he's excited to share, Eric. Yeah, absolutely. So just keep things interesting. Kind of went like Ed said with the superhero motif here, and we're going to put up another poll for you. And we're asking how ready you are to move forward, how ready you are to level up. So we want to know which superhero best represents your organization's readiness for proactive IT management. So are you just getting capes fitted? So you're the novice, you're ready to start the journey and embrace on your proactive measures. Are you the rising hero in training where you're plotting a course? But now the super suit still needs some adjustments. Or are you the IT galactic hero where you've mastered it all the Kate, the shield, the proactive IT management. So we're going to ask you to, you know, pick the superhero that matches your organization's proactive mojo. And then your choice there is going to set the tone for our discussions and remember every superhero has its origin story. You know, it's given the audience some time there to answer it. It looks like somebody can't see it. Is anyone else having that problem where they can't see the poll questions? Oh, there we go. Oh, there we go. Thank you, Frank. Frank L. I wouldn't ask you guys a question. Well, that everybody is chiming in with their answer. Which one is the most common scenario that you guys see? As far as the common scenario in this aspect, I don't need to be specified. No, I think it doesn't. In general, it's kind of like the first poll poll question where, you know, they are taking the load on their own, and they are looking elsewhere to take advantage of it. But of course they want to do everything the right way with the limited budget they have. So we in TechSoup offers a lot of different solutions that fits best for them. We typically see a lot of people, even if they're not on the, let's say on-premise, we will still see them where they're hosting their email through a different vendor that they are paying through. Where hey, we want to switch to TechSoup where we could get these licenses for free, right, with Microsoft Exchange. Another one is, well, our data is in a few places and everyone's working remotely. Everybody has their own thing. We need to get everything in one place. How do we do that? And that's where the SharePoint environment comes. So there's a lot of like more basic, more L1 issues that we typically see that typically that people will come to us for. But a lot of that, yeah, you know, they don't have the resources in-house, especially if you're small. Even the bigger ones, you know, they still feel the need that they need an expert to contact. So hopefully that answers the question. Yes, it did. I believe that we already have some results there, guys. We got a lot of rising heroes in training. Let's go. Room for you. So, you know, before we wrap up, of course, with this, Eric, is there someone, you know, if there is somebody in the audience that wants to do it themselves, how would you advise for them to go about that? Well, first of all, they're going to want to make sure that their coffee pot is really full because it's a process. Are you projecting yourself? A little bit. You and your coffee addiction? So, well, you know, for a programmer, you know, programming is just converting caffeine into code. But no, so, you know, if you're wanting to do it yourself, you know, it's a continuous process. So it's more like a cycle than anything else. But these four main areas are what you're going to want to focus on. So updates, antivirus patches and backup. So, you know, at the very top there, if you have outdated software, update it. So you're going to want to regularly update your software to patch security vulnerabilities, because like I mentioned before, outdated software, prime target for cyber attacks. So you're going to want to enable automatic updates whenever possible to ensure that those patches are timely. As far as OEM or original equipment manufacturer patches, those are absolutely crucial for system stability and security. So you're going to want to schedule regular maintenance windows for applying patches. And you're going to want to prioritize the critical patches to address high risk vulnerabilities promptly. So beyond, sorry. So beyond that, you know, you're going to want to employ an antivirus. So when you're choosing an antivirus, there's a lot of options out there and there's a lot of free options out there. But unfortunately, with antivirus, you do get what you pay for. And what I mean by that is the antivirus companies that put out these free options, they also have paid subscriptions, they have paid versions of those antiviruses. And when new definitions come out, the paid versions of those antiviruses are going to get those new definitions first. So it's really hard to guard against those zero day attacks with the freer options. So you want to install a reputable antivirus software from a reputable company to detect and neutralize that malware. And then you're going to want to make sure to keep those antivirus definitions up to date. If there's an option for, you know, keeping those definitions updated automatically, you definitely want to go with that. And you want to configure real time scanning to proactively prevent those infections. And then, you know, that kind of goes into patches as well. Patches are generally going to be software level. So any of the software that you're working with those developers are going to put out those patches that are going to take care of vulnerabilities as they come up. And then backups are your friend. Especially redundant backups are your friend. So, you know, we like to follow what's called the three to one rule. And the three to one is you want three total copies of your backup data on two different forms of media, one of them offsite. So that's how you keep those, you know, really good and safe. And we're talking about your actual backups here immutable backups, not just data storage. So there's a difference between your data storage and backups. So you want to make sure that you regularly test and verify those backups to ensure that the data's, you know, integrity is in place. And that critical data, you want to back that up frequently and always think how much is this data worth to me. You know, how much would it set me back how much downtime would I experience if the drive that this data is stored on where to go down today. You have any antivirus is right now in the market that somebody could get a hold of that AI generated. Oh, absolutely. So one of the big things with antivirus is actually let me take a step back real quick. So the way that a normal AI works is based off of what are called definitions. So a definition is basically a, you know, list or a database that is generated by an analyst based off of signatures of existing programs existing malware and existing behaviors system behaviors from malware infections. And the antivirus software is going to compare, you know, programs that it sees and it's going to compare behaviors that it sees in your system with that list of known definitions. And how it is going to work as far as a legacy, you know, on market AI system is or sorry, AV system antivirus. AI powered antivirus systems actually respond to threats a lot faster and they can analyze behavior based off of what's happening, rather than just definitions. You know, one of the things that you can look at as far as your AI powered antivirus is machine learning and behavioral analysis to identify threats, even if they're new or completely unknown. So, you know, that versus the traditional antivirus, you know, the traditional antivirus, like I said, it relies on those signatures and heuristics to identify the threats that have been known and analyzed already. So it can only detect threats that it's already seen before. So the solutions that we have on screen here, Norton Abast of, you know, Bitdefender, they actually have different aspects of it, they employ AI in different ways to, you know, hit those zero day threats and be more proactive and effective in protect protecting against emerging threats rather than the ones that have already been seen. Well, that's incredible and if someone out there is not in a position to do it yourself, or just not interested in doing so, we have some solutions here at BASC. I want to let you guys know, most nonprofits are doing the preventative package, but we also can tailor it to your needs and budget of course but also down below there are some cloud platforms that TechSoup offers that of course you could take advantage of. We also have an installation, we have an installation service, if you need help installing some of the programs, especially with like Office 2021. Microsoft made it pretty, pretty complicated or pretty tricky for people to install it. So that is a common call driver as well. So ultimately goes back to take an advantage of your status of being a nonprofit and leveraging TechSoup. Yeah, I mean that's, we're wrapping up there and we're gonna move forward to a Q&A. I know I'm not sure if Vanessa you want to facilitate it, I know there's already a couple of questions. I know Jerry is coming out, he's coming out about AI, he's shooting out of the holsters there. Erica, I'm not sure if you see that in the Q&A session there. Can I answer Jerry's question? Or even, yeah, both of them. He has two of them. Yeah, I think one of the questions from Jerry says, AI is currently under strain in the wild, wild west, which is true. I am a 50 year consumer of tech and see the warning signs of bad data results from regenerative AI. The results are only as good as the filters that the user asks for time source sensitive data. How much you like the transition for dark internet to WUWUWU and how do we address the light of the video for this bad data. Right. So, a lot of the tech companies right now, you know, such as open AI, for example, they are constantly analyzing the test data that's coming back from these generative AI systems. So, when they're putting these AI systems on the market, they are using, like I mentioned before an LLM, which is that, you know, large language sample where they are getting a lot of data from the internet from user input. And then when they are, you know, putting the AIs out there as the betas, they're collecting that data as well. So it's not really possible, unfortunately, to completely eliminate all bad data, but also bad data is part of the data set. So the, you know, generative AI, the computer machine learning has to see that bad data to be able to, you know, filter out the garbage. You know, one of the old technology idioms is garbage in garbage out. Well, that's not necessarily true anymore because now we're teaching the computers how to identify that garbage. If that makes sense there. Let us know Jerry that if you need a little bit more. He did respond. Okay, got it. This is there's no source data verification. Example footnoting. Now, with source data verification, are you referring to the actual data sets that are being analyzed for those AI systems? Because if so, that information would be available through the independent researchers that are putting out those AI systems. So you just have to get them from, you know, because, for example, open AI, I believe that you can access there. You can't have access their LLM, of course, but you can access the data sets that they're pulling as far as the test data is concerned. While we wait for Jerry, we have another question from Wayne saying was, was the difference between cloud storage of data and backup. So with cloud storage, that is just you are storing your data on the cloud. So it allows you to access that data from anywhere. And you're always accessing the same data instead of it being stored on a local machine. Whereas when we're talking about a backup. We're talking about a set of data snapshot of your system that cannot be changed. And it's going to be exactly the same as when the snapshot was taken. So, you know, that cloud storage, you're able to get in modify your documents, save new things to it, delete things from it. But your backup, you're not going to be deleting anything from because you want that backup to be exactly what the state of the system was when that backup was taken. We have another question from Patricia saying, did you talk call definitely has advantages, but we are a nonprofit of work in different offices, and also work remotely, where there's no coverage and no access to cloud services. So not very particularly particularly useful. What do you guys suggest for this case. When you're saying no coverage or you're talking about no, you know, reliable internet coverage. Let's go without one just in case. Yeah, so that that one unfortunately is tough, because you have to have some sort of network connection for any type of shared drive or cloud solution or anything like that to operate. So it's really difficult if you're in different remote offices where there's not a reliable internet connection. But there are a lot of internet opportunities that are or network opportunities rather that are emerging onto the market now that are trying to get internet coverage to those remote locations to broaden those networks. Okay, so she looks like she verified no reliable internet or cell coverage. Oof. Yeah, so that wonder how they function the first place. Yeah, that. So that one. Yeah, I would explore those options of, you know, those emerging networks that are trying to reach out to. Oh, we're talking outdoors. So, okay. Got it. Got it. So you're out in remote locations where there's no cell coverage, no internet. Gotcha. So, again, that's a difficult one, because you would have to go to something like, you know, mobile hotspots but that of course relies on cell coverage. And yeah, there are satellite up links that you can get that might cover that. But if you would have to be looking at some. Yeah, some network providers. Yeah, yeah, cellular gateway or Starlink Starlink is actually one of the ones that I was talking about where they're trying to get those networks out to remote areas. We have another question here in the chat where it says, can one trust AI to really protect couldn't those be full. What is your opinion on that guys. So, I can be full. Absolutely. Because it's still a computer system and computers. Yeah, I'm probably going to catch some slack about saying this but computers are done. They really are. They can only do what we tell them to. So, regardless of how simple or how complex those instructions may be, they can still only do what we tell them to and we can't plan for every single instance every variable, because, you know, it's simply not possible the number of variables are, you know, infinitely many. But emerging AI is getting better at being able to recognize these things and to be able to respond appropriately. When the bad data is put in. So, while it is getting more difficult to trick AI. It is still possible to trick AI and unfortunately what bad actors are doing now. And when I say bad bad actors, I mean, you know, hackers cyber criminals, you know, people with bad intentions with a keyboard. They're actually using AI to fool AI. So they're, you know, a lot of the new emerging threats in the cybersecurity world are actually generated by AI by bad actors. And I guess we're actually closer to the terminator thing than I admitted earlier. I'm joking. I'm joking. Don't take that seriously. No. If you go missing, we know what happened. You're on to them. At least we have somebody to blame. I have somebody here which is a very, very good question because we do have a lot of libraries that actually work with tablets. So many other organizations that work with tablets as well and mobile devices to do their daily job and then this is somebody here organization uses windows for PCs with anti virus and iOS for tablet without anti viruses. Can you touch on the anti virus need for tablets? Absolutely. So, as far as the antivirus need. It is pretty common that any device that accesses private data, especially customer data or financial data should have some level of antivirus on it or anti malware. I should be a little bit more broad with that. So the common kind of misconception is that if you have an Apple device, you don't need an antivirus because apples don't get viruses. They do. They just get different types. They get fewer viruses simply because, you know, windows is more widespread. And honestly, the way that Apple kind of keeps their code closer to their chest and, you know, Microsoft is more of an open development platform. There's more opportunity to develop malware for Windows devices, but Apple devices are still, you know, still threatened by them. And then it's not necessarily the device itself that is in danger, but the passing of information from the Apple device to the system, or, you know, to the cloud system or vice versa from the cloud to the device. So, you know, that's where you get into things like man in the middle attacks, where someone will hijack a network connection. So, you know, you want to be able to make sure that the devices that you're using whether they're, you know, Android, Apple, Windows, what have you. They're, you know, able to properly facilitate encryption, you know, end to end encryption, so that, you know, your data is safe. So, yeah, antiviruses for Apple devices. They do exist. And in my opinion, they are absolutely necessary. And then we had a follow up question on that for Apple specific antiviruses. Is it the same as door to address Xera or there's one is specific one that you guys recommend for Apple. Yeah, so, you know, most of your bigger antivirus companies do provide platforms for, you know, Apple Mac as well. I'm not part of the package here, but one of the big ones that is supported by or that's powered by AI is Sentinel one that's more for enterprise level. But it's just an example of one that has AI powered generative protections that cover, you know, Linux, Windows, Apple devices, but you can look at any of the bigger companies and just look at the packages that they have. And the package will tell you whether or not it's for, you know, Linux, Apple, Windows. But yeah, most of the bigger companies support all platforms. We have one question from Tiff asking about security measurements like MFA and how to be more aware of certain types of attacks when working remotely. You speak about a little bit about that. Yeah, so MFA is that's always one of the difficult things to discuss with clients because no one likes it. It's annoying, but it's supposed to be annoying. Right. It's supposed to be that extra level of annoyance that keeps someone out of your, you know, out of your sensitive information. So having a, you know, MFA or 2FA, which for anyone that's not familiar MFA is multi-factor authentication. And then 2FA of course is two factor authentication. So when you have a username and a password that is a single factor. So that password is a factor. And then when you get into the multi factor, you have something like an authentication app or it sends you an email or a text message or it calls you or sends up smoke signals or you have to do a specific dance. Yeah, anything else can be a factor, you know, biometrics. And, you know, that other factor is something that is specific to you. So hopefully no one else has your cell phone. So, you know, you can use an app and, you know, get a six digit code from your app or use biometrics. No one else has your thumbprint unless you're in a James Bond movie. So, you know, those other factors are really good ways to secure your information and secure your data. It is actually highly recommended that anything that you access remotely, email, you know, any of your cloud storage that you haven't protected behind multi factor authentication. Absolutely. I think we're at time, but I wanted to to give you guys the option to share how people can contact you guys because I do see a few questions over there that we're not going to be able to to get them. But I want to know how people can contact you guys. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, I guess type it here in the chat. I'll do that. Yeah, there's that one with my email. I'll type it in the chat as well. Well, there's a dot before the column of course there. And there's Eric's information and email. And then of course you can also visit business.bask.com and that has all of the information there for the service offerings and how to contact our departments here as well. I think we do have one more slide just to wrap up everything we're running right now and it's very special promotion. We have a one year subscription on limited tech support that we actually have one free month is so you guys do you want to talk more about that and then how can people get this a specific offering and then get a contact with you guys if they would like to get help on this crazy word of tech. Well, I would say the 350 amount is already discounted your are already seven $70 from the monthly model that it's compared to. So with that 320 you're saving $100 right off the bat. So this is per device. We got like four devices each one applies to per device. And we also got other, you know, solutions as well other packages. If it doesn't fit your budget or it's just not as needed you don't expect to call too much but you want the peace of mind or a second mind when somebody or if you do need it or you could contact me got other ways to go about it as well. So it's not just one, you know, one product and that's it. We do got other options so we'll free to send it to an email, or give me a call, and we'll, you know, do the best we can to consult with you as far as what you need. And we'll just take it from there. Absolutely. You're needed there Vanessa. I know I needed myself. I'm so sorry. Thank you so much guys for joining us. It has been a pleasure to be again in another month with the all of you, and thank you to the best team to be here with us. And super super excited for this promotion. If you guys want to take a look at it, please feel free to click on that link on the on the chat. And send you the link also as well with this amazing slice of basket together, the recording of this of this webinar, and then I will see you all next month, and we're going to talk about AI so please don't miss it I know that we talked today about AI but please don't miss it. We're going to talk about chat GPT so feel free to send us an email if you guys if you guys have any questions and see you all next month. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Have a great day guys. Thank you.