When people talk about cybersecurity nowadays, there certainly seems to be a lot of emphasis put on phishing attacks and ransomware. This is for good reason. Not only can either of these attack vectors create significant difficulties for a business, they are often used in tandem. Let’s discuss why these threats are so potent, and why they so often show up together.
The office is in itself a tool designed to improve business. Remember the office? Some long for the day when they can get back there, while a majority of remote workers enjoy it. One thing is certain, many people are still working from home, sent home in March. Many, with no return date in sight. Today, we’ll take a look at a couple pieces of technology that are popular with the remote work crowd.
If you have been running a business for any length of time, you definitely don’t need to be told how important risk management is. One problem you see from business owners today is that while they understand just how many problems there are--and which ones they need to find solutions for first--they want to grow their company fast, and as a result, they overlook potential problems and end up hurting their business as a result.
After dealing with months of regrettable news, a lot of businesses are trying to find the right strategy to navigate all the challenges their road ahead presents. With costs rising and revenues shrinking, there needs to be a strategic urgency that will allow your business to sustain operations when other companies are laying off their workers and folding into obscurity. Today, we take a look at some of the technology services that you can use to keep your business afloat during the economic downturn.
When your server experiences an issue, you have to act fast and take care of it before the issue turns into a problem. If a server problem is left unresolved, it can spread across your network and negatively affect operations. This is why it's best to take care of a server issue as soon as it's discovered.
A common server problem is... what was it again? Oh, right. Memory failure!
Small businesses often have to rely on different means to achieve the same level of project management as enterprises. This is due to the demands of project management being significantly different in scope, but also the way that your company implements new technology solutions. Instead of worrying about the specifics of project management, you can outsource these responsibilities to a managed service provider.
A recent surge of hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, and floods have crippled major cities and devastated entire regions all over the world. In the aftermath of these events, business owners are faced with a few glaring truths - one of which is the undeniable vulnerability of their business’ future in the event of a disaster. Most of the major news outlets are reporting this figure: according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 40% of small businesses never recover from a disaster. Despite all the literature and precautionary tales surrounding these catastrophic events, there are still an overwhelming amount of businesses that choose not to prepare for a disaster until it's too late.
“The good old days” usually refer to times long past, where things were more simple. Businesses a few decades ago didn’t have much complex technology in their office, but nowadays organizations have multiple server units and plenty of workstations--all of which need more maintenance than ever before. What’s the best way for your organization to approach IT maintenance?
If you’ve ever managed a major IT project, you’re probably well acquainted with Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Every project is going to have some rough patches. The key to overcoming these challenges lays not with the execution of the plan, but with the preparation. Here are four things to consider when you’re planning your next long-term IT project.
We’ve all seen and heard about companies and government departments that have experienced major security and data loss events. Once the event is made public, there is a media frenzy of coverage disclosing answers to questions like: Were your records compromised? How can you protect nonpublic information in the future? What should you do if you are a victim? However, as the media focus moves to another topic, the breach becomes yesterday’s news - and there is very little coverage of what repercussions and penalties those entities that were breached faced - if any.
The protection of your business includes many facets. Physical security, training, and network security get most of the attention (and rightfully so), but does your business have a plan in place if those strategies fail? For the growing business, understanding that your data is an asset doesn’t have to come after you lose some. If your management team prides itself on taking proactive measures to keep business running smoothly, one element that has to be on the table is the practice of data backup and recovery.
When you delete a file off your PC, or your hard drive becomes corrupted, you just take for granted that the data is gone in perpetuity. That isn’t the case at all, and it can present problems for businesses and individuals alike. The thing is that it’s deleted, it’s gone, it ceases to exist, because you deleted it with your own hands.
Have you ever tried to manage a major IT project yourself? If you have, you know that it’s a huge time sink and that there’s a lot involved with the process. We’ll discuss four of the best ways that you can save time and resources while managing your latest technology implementation project.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a fully-trained and certified staff of IT professionals sitting in the corner of your office, keeping your technology in line? Unfortunately, small businesses often don’t have the budget required to hire an internal IT department filled with security analysts and network technicians. Even if they do, they don’t have the workforce to handle all of the responsibilities of a full IT department. What’s the best way to handle your organization’s IT?
When a hacker tries to infiltrate your network, they are doing so with a purpose in mind. Usually they are looking for specific information, like account credentials, personal information, or files that can be used to blackmail victims. Regardless, we’ll go over what a hacker can do with the information that they collect from you, and how you can best protect it from them.
Your IT is a central part of your organization’s operations, but its role has changed significantly as business processes have grown more streamlined. There are always shifts and changes in the way that businesses function which must be accounted for, especially in the modern office environment. How have these shifts affected your business’s IT management?
Who would you rather hire--an employee who comes in late, after your systems have encountered an issue, and takes twice as long to fix them as he said, or an employee who was ahead of the game, and managed to avoid issues before they influenced your business? This scenario is precisely the same one that you encounter when you weigh a break/fix IT provider against a managed service provider.
Few organizations take business continuity planning as serious as financial organizations do. The Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as well as the organizations they oversee, depend heavily on technology for their daily operations. For these establishments, a severe data loss event or significant downtime has the potential to cripple the economy, depending on the severity. As such, they require all of the institutions that they have jurisdiction over to meet certain business continuity benchmarks.
Technology maintenance and management is one of the major pain points of all businesses, but it comes more easily to large organizations that have large budgets. Unfortunately, small organizations are often left out, placing such an important aspect of managing their business on the back burner. How, then, can you take advantage of proactive IT maintenance without breaking your budget?
Consultation is one of those words that you take for granted because you see it everywhere. Think about it, most businesses that provide a professional service offers some semblance of consultation. For the small business owner, can you really afford to pay premium prices to “experts” for them to give you their so-called professional opinion? Besides, what do service providers mean when they use the term “consultation”?
