As 2025 gets under way, it’s a good time to think about how we can optimise our business efficiency whilst staying cyber safe. This month we look at how AI can help you with day-to-day office tasks along with some reminders of how cyber security depends not only on having the right preventative software and set up, but also the very vital human element.
Practical AI office tools
The term “AI” has become ever more prevalent in our daily lives from your smartphone text suggestions, voicemail transcriptions and photo editing to “bigger” applications including medical diagnostics, online shopping and web searches. It might not always be obvious how AI can help you in your day-to-day business tasks so here are some suggestions:
- Smart calendars to manage your schedule.
- Task managers ordering your tasks by deadline or urgency
- Email assistants to filter important emails, even drafting your replies
- Virtual meeting assistants to transcribe meetings in real time
- Data visualisation tools to create simple, readily understandable charts
- Predictive analytics that use past data to help forecast future requirements
- Writing assistants to check grammar and provide content ideas
- Design tools to swiftly create stunning visuals
- Chat bots to manage online customer requirements
- Sentiment analysis tools to evaluate customer feedback
Microsoft Teams ransomware attacks
We’re hopefully now all aware of the multitudinous routes that hackers will use to steal our data, extract money by ransomware and/or disrupt normal day-to-day businesses. We have warned before how creative the bad actors can be and Sophos recently revealed the hackers have been seen posing as tech support to gain access via Teams to steal data and plant ransomware. This article by TechTarget provides more detail. What this demonstrates is the importance of the human element of your cyber protection – we need to be sure we know exactly who we are conversing with to help avoid becoming a victim.
2025 IS HERE!