We thought we would share some work-from-home tech tips recorded by readers of Tech Essentials in the spirit of today’s crisis mindset, which is bringing out the best of people – businesses helping businesses and friends helping friends.

Caution. These three home videos were shot from the home of a business professional – interesting in this new world of video meetings how people are starting to express their personality with their hats and casual clothing styles — and what they (deliberately) are sharing of their room furnishings. We say “caution” not because you will see something scandalous in these home videos (at least in our opinion), but that in this new reality of video meetings, you will be (whether you like it or not) subconsciously expressed by your video meeting background. White wall, lack of personality. Clutter, lack of focus. Elk head on wall, not vegan friendly.

Our favorite Tech Essentials reader for today is Mike, who we call an American heart trapped in London – at least that is what we gleaned from his British accent combined with American-style baseball cap and big American Flag hailing as a backdrop.

American-hearted Mike shares his work-from-home tips in four home recorded (and very well done, by-the-way) minute-long videos for quick and easy e-signing, sending encrypted email in the simplest way possible, sending encrypted email from any mobile phone browser, and sending encrypted with extra passwords to remain private from prying eyes of email and archive admins. (All of the tools to do this are free today through RPost’s E-Sign & E-Security (Free) Work-from-Home Program.)

We hope you enjoy these tips. If you have videos of your work-from-home tech tips, send us a note (contact us), and we might just share it. If you would like to connect with American-hearted Mike, you can connect to one of his posts on LinkedIn. You can also reach out to Mike’s tech company, which is part of RPost’s WFH coalition here.

Get started today with free access to RPost’s E-Sign & E-Security (Free) Work-from-Home Program.

Getting through this health and economic crisis will be one of world’s finest moments with everyone truly working together.

IT Providers Continue to Unite With RPost

On March 16, as the Covid-19 crisis seemed to be spiraling out of control, RPost announced its E-Sign & E-Security (Free) Work-from-Home Program. RPost was among the very first companies to announce a truly free E-Sign and E-Security bundle that seamlessly works within Outlook, Gmail, Zimbra, Salesforce.com, and with mobile devices. Users start with RSign and RMail business licenses for use during the crisis, and they after can continue use free at base service levels.

A little over a week after release, IT providers around the world began to unite with RPost and its initiative so as to bring their clients an e-sign and security work-from-home readiness program that would be as minimally disruptive as possible given the growing crisis.

As of April 9, the list of IT providers keeps growing with participants across the Americas and Europe. This is a testament to the solidarity we are seeing in this exceptional crisis–businesses helping businesses and friends helping friends everywhere.

One of the earliest to embrace this initiative was Frama, an RPost pan-European partner. Since participating in this E-Sign & E-Security (Free) Work-from-Home Program, Frama has enrolled 12,000 of its business customers in the Netherlands and continues to add its customers across Europe.

“Our teams are working in overdrive to help our customers across Europe transition to a work-from-home environment, securely and efficiently,” remarks Volker Sommerfeld of Frama. “Our customers are thankful that we are making RSign and RMail free for them during this transition period; and we think they will continue thereafter as our customers will look for the best and affordable tools ongoing.”

Frama created short 2-minute How-To videos to help their thousands of clients see how to easily e-sign (watch video) and encrypt email (watch video) from home.

“We see RSign in especially high demand with its shared templates that make it easy for home workers to follow centrally managed policies and guidelines,” adds Sommerfeld. “We are helping our larger clients pick and choose the right RSign e-signature features to fit specific requirement, processes, and form complexity.” While RMail and RSign are free and instant to start using, businesses in Europe may connect with Frama experts in the UK, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, or Italy directly (find Frama experts for RMail or Frama experts for RSign).

This health crisis has also spawned a tremendous amount of new correspondence among banks and their clients — most of which must be sent encrypted. Eric Johnson AVP/IT Manager of First National Bank installed RMail into their Exchange email system to automatically convert all customer correspondence related to loans and account information to RMail encrypted email, using RMail Gateway and RMail for Outlook. The key was not only to automate email encryption but also to do so in a way that makes it easy for intended recipients and for our clients to one-click reply and return files encrypted.

Over 40 other companies have joined this RPost WFH coalition, including global technology providers SoftwareOne and Ingram Micro’s partners and industry organizations including the British Insurance Brokers Association, NetVu, and Applied Client Network among many others. (See who has joined the list here and contact us if you or your company are interested in joining this WFH coalition.).

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The Government is Dropping Money from Helicopters.

And every American business is trying to catch some of it, any of it, and fast. Surely there won’t be enough to support payroll for every small business in America for 2-3 months. What then? Two trillion dollars sounds like a lot — but much of it is to support big brands and big business.

Fear of missing out (FOMO) strikes again. What if these government “helicopters” drop money all around us, but we are not fast enough to get what we need to support our employees? Are these Payroll Protection Program (PPP) and disaster relief loans distributed on a first-come, first-served basis until the funds run out?

While there may be (we hope) plenty of money and time, executives everywhere are wondering how fast they need to get their PPP and SBA loan applications in.

Some applications are online forms. Great. Simple and easy.

Some, like the Payroll Protection Program, is a simple three page form to sign and submit to almost any bank. Some of these will require back-and-forth with Federal loan underwriters. All of these will require e-signatures.

And as a side note, while we are all focused on this health and economic crisis, Latin American drug lords are trying to sneak more across our southern border, and Eastern European hackers are trying to sneak more phishing emails across our cyber-systems (click here to read more). The US Navy is coming to the rescue for the Latin American drug issues; but unfortunately, not to protect us from this kind of phishing.

So, most people will now need email encryption plus e-signatures–preferably something free and easy to use. When you work to get these government funds, Tech Essentials recommends ensuring your emails with underwriters and work-from-home staff–all of the XLS files and correspondence back and forth regarding the loans–are sent RMail encrypted. And for e-signing, RMail e-sign or RSign may just be the easiest way to get things signed fast.

Check out the E-Sign & Encryption (Free) Work-from-Home Program for free access to these RMail and RSign tools and for video tips on how to e-sign and encrypt email with a few clicks–no credit card or telephone calls required.

More IT Providers Unite to Bring their Clients Worldwide the E-Sign & E-Security (Free) Work-from-Home Readiness Program

When we announced RPost’s E-Sign & E-Security (Free) Work-from-Home Readiness Program on March 16, we were trying to do our part during this crisis. With this program, RPost aims to donate at no cost, millions of its award winning e-signature, email encryption, file sharing, and e-security software licenses to help our customers, friends, and their friends the world over in this exceptional health and economic crisis.

This is now much bigger than RPost. What started as an initiative for those who we could get the word out to has now become an informal coalition of businesses helping businesses, friends helping friends, and strangers helping strangers in every corner of the world.

We believe this crisis is unlike any we have experienced in modern times. Since we announced this RPost software (free) work-at-home readiness program, our partners — premier technology service providers and software makers the world over — have asked if they can join in this effort. We believe in helping those on the front lines and businesses everywhere of every type who are trying to do more with fewer resources – health care professionals, small companies and large, government staffers, educators, lawyers, investors, bankers, insurers, manufacturers, researchers, among others.

We collectively can help in our own way by providing e-sign and e-security software services at no cost to help those working from home do more with less time and with total security in mind.

Those isolated need tech tools too, some of which we can provide. We can help those who need to sign documents remotely do so with RSign® e-signatures. We can help everyone who needs to easily collaborate back-and-forth with experts, clients and remote staff knowing information privacy is protected with RMail® email encryption – even inter-office email when there is no VPN set up and with file size no worry with RMail large file sharing. We can help deliver required notices with certified proof of delivery using Registered Email™ messages – no need to have your staff risk their health with trips to the post office.

The growth of this informal coalition is representative of all those IT leaders who are inspired by the dedication and courage of the professionals combating the virus on the front lines everywhere. We are empowering those joining to be able to contribute in a tangible way, within their means and community. This ad-hoc collective of leaders is a beacon of hope — hope that this will be the world’s finest moment with everyone working together everywhere. It has to be.

We praise those organizations that have joined this informal RPost coalition. These organizations are helping in a way they can, by contributing (free) work-from-home technology tools (click to access), professional services time, or their network reach to empower remote workers in their efforts to combat this global health and economic crisis. Some of these compassionate organizations are listed below. If you would like to work through one of these entities, let us know or contact them directly and ask about this program.

Industry Groups, including:

—British Insurance Brokers Association

—Association of Professional Compliance Consultants

—Marsh insurance Bluefin network and Purple networks

—NetVu, Vertafore user insurance network

—Applied Client Network, Applied Systems’ user insurance network

—Insurance Agents & Brokers (IA&B) of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware.

—Ten Insurance network

—Bravo Group’s Broker Network UK insurance network

—International Factoring Association

International, Cross Industry, including:

—Ingram Micro partners from the Americas through the UK/Europe to Australia (RMail, RSign)

—SoftwareOne worldwide

—Frama partners in United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg – to work with them directly in these countries with this program, click here: RMail or RSign.

Industry-Focused, including:

—DocsCorp (law firms and corporate law departments) and its cleanDocs

—Fern with their Abacus HUB Cloud platform (banks and credit unions)

—Kesho (banks and credit unions)

—RentMan (real estate)

—VTUK (real estate)

—DMI (medical)

—Dental Technology Group (medical)

Managed Service Providers Everywhere, including:

—Danastar (Denmark)

—Ariston BPS (Germany)

—Mindcentric (US, Zimbra and government focus)

—Certicámara (Colombia)

—Iowa IT Solutions (USA)

–Posture (USA)

—Kennedy Computer Consulting (USA)

—Larry the Computer Guy (USA)

–IT Management and Consulting (USA)

–WTC Services (USA)

—ASG-365 (USA)

—Ezetech (USA)

—Magnolia Business Systems (USA)

—SharkEye Tech (USA)

—Reliant Data Solutions (USA)

—Eastbay IT (USA)

—Servi Asesores (Latin America)

—ISG Software (USA)

—PA Computer Connections (USA)

—New Level Technology Consulting (USA)

—Talon of NC (USA)

—Madeira Networks (USA)

If you would like to join this informal coalition at no cost so as to help your customers, friends, and community fight and beat COVID 19 with the RPost contributed (free) E-Sign and E-Security Work-from-Home Readiness Kit, click here for more information.

Last week everything was as fancy as an iPhone 11. Being on a business conference call with the sounds of a baby happily chirping in the background was distracting. Those good old days (back in February) when anything less than elegance or perfection was disturbing.

With today’s California lock down order of all citizens, the fifth largest economy in the world has nearly ground to a halt. Things will change.

We are entering a time when businesspeople’s expectations will be lower; people will be more accepting of glitches.

Today, web meeting systems are overloaded, phone lines busy or meetings unable to connect. Anger, no. Understanding and acceptance, yes. Your colleague missed a (web) meeting. Anger, no. Just happy to know they got tied up and are still a healthy contributor, yes. Things will change.

We are also eerily lowering our thresholds for the highest levels of security in exchange for more productivity. Today, it must be “secure enough” but also easy enough to use now. Things will change.  (P.S. Hackers are salivating at their newfound work-from-home targets, as inferred by this US Dept. of Homeland Security Alert)

We are entering a time when all businesses may opt for lower cost, perhaps lesser known alternatives, as the future of one’s business opportunities may drastically change. Cost savings are going to be important for the foreseeable future.

But all is better if you can find the best productivity tools that also take security seriously and are low cost. This is today’s “Triple Play”. (Not as fun as peanuts and popcorn at a baseball park on opening day in March.)

Enter RPost’s contribution to the crisis: its donation of millions of business licenses for its RSign and RMail services for its customers and friends everywhere. With its E-Sign & Encryption Work-from-Home Readiness program, it is now easy to get started with e-signatures, secure file sharing, email encryption simple enough for home use, and more — today’s Triple Play — with no cost and just a few clicks.

Click Here for Access: https://www.rpost.com/pandemic

And, as a Tech Essentials reader, now you can also help your friends and colleagues stuck working at home with the distractions of clutter and kids playing. Please let them know about this program. At least with this Work-from-Home toolkit, they can easily e-sign and don’t also have to wrestle with a dusty old home printer, fax, or scanner or try to enter a FedEx center or Post Office holding their breath until they turn green.