1. How often is employee productivity and customer accessibility or service stalled each day from a downed network or system? 2. How much downtime can your business truly afford and what kind of backup or recovery solutions are in effect when systems are unavailable? 3. What level of IT support can be accessed? Can it be accessed quickly enough to minimize damage? Are you confident that your business can either be back online or be able to access lost data with minimal disruption, no matter what? 4. Is your most critical data frequently backed up? Is the data on the personal laptops, iPads or Blackberrys of employees backed up? Are all backups stored in a location off-site and quickly accessible in the event of theft, fire or flooding? Are you using any custom installed software and is the supplier still in business should this software need to be re-installed or updated? Are account details, licensing agreements, and security settings somewhere on record, and is it duplicated off-site? 5. Are your systems truly protected from theft, hackers, and viruses? Are passwords to sensitive data changed whenever employees leave the company or business unit? 6. When was the last time you tested backup processes to ensure they are working properly? How quick were your back ups? Answering these questions will help you understand if you are needlessly bleeding money every day by subjecting your business to the high hourly rates, service charges, trip fees and wait times of on-call IT support. If you are an SMB, you don’t have to fear technology failure. A trusted MSP can help you resolve these challenges in a more effective and efficient manner.
As of today, we know that some companies did opt to pay the ransom while others wait for a decrypter to recover their encrypted files. The process has been slow, and some offices are finding it isn’t working at all.REvil (Sodinokibi) ransomware is one of the most active and widespread ransomware strains seen this year, and this is the second time it has happened this summer. Earlier in June, a group yet to be named, was breached using the same strain. Follow Up While Digital Dental Record learned of the breach on August 26th, and immediate action was taken, even a quick response couldn’t save the offices that were already infected. This means that those offices are unable to run effectively while this situation is remedied, and some may run the risk of never fully recovering. The Wisconsin Dental Association issued a statement confirming that DDS Safe remains a “WDA endorsed product” and that they are aware of the breach. This likely isn’t the last story we’ll hear about a medical breach this week. Numbers continue to rise, including the risk percentage that all providers face. We must continue to educate ourselves on how to be proactive and not reactive as cybercrime is now an ongoing occurrence. And above all, we need to acknowledge that even our best efforts do not remove the risk of others being less diligent in their practice of cybersecurity.
Don’t Share Confidential Information Don’t provide sensitive company or customer information in unsolicited emails or phone calls. It’s important to remember that the bad guys can be very convincing and what they do tricks a lot of users. Being on the lookout for anything suspicious will help protect confidential information. Emailing usernames and passwords is never a good idea. Be especially cautious of suspicious emails that look like they are from PayPal or a bank. Use Strong Passwords Don’t reuse the same password for multiple accounts. Passwords should contain capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Passwords should not contain personally identifiable information like social security numbers or dates of birth. Avoid Accessing Sensitive Information on Unprotected Computers Hotel business centers and Internet cafes typically aren’t regulated or secure. Accessing sensitive information on public devices could allow others to access it as well. Malicious software could allow others to snoop on what you are doing, and gather usernames, passwords, and credit card information. Ask your IT department about establishing a VPN to allow safe access while traveling. Avoid Leaving Sensitive Information Lying Around Don’t keep passwords on sticky notes. Shred documents that contain confidential information. Don’t leave mobile devices, laptops, or desktops unlocked when you aren’t at them. Use Windows key + L to quickly lock your computer when stepping away. Small devices like phones, portable hard drives, and flash drives are easy to lose or steal. Be wary of this while traveling. Report Anything Suspicious to IT If we know about it, we can fix it quickly before it becomes a bigger problem. If you’ve lost your smartphone or another device, report it immediately.
Experience and Qualification Don’t Always Go together consider the regular duties of an internal IT department. Unless the business in question is doing a few things very wrong, the IT department probably isn’t putting out major fires on a regular basis, either literally or figuratively. Furthermore, consider the possibility that, while your internal resource is experienced in a particular version of some process or solution, what about the new versions that they have yet to encounter? When the time comes to implement these later versions out of necessity, your internal IT resources will be unfamiliar with them, essentially starting at square one. On the other hand, an MSP is much more likely to have dealt with major issues more often than an internal resource may have. This is because they will have been monitoring the network systems of numerous clients in order to protect them, rather than monitoring a single organization’s resources. This means that they are statistically more likely to have to deal with new issues than a single internal team might. For similar reasons, they are much more likely to be educated in more up-to-date solutions, as their variety of clients are more likely to have different versions of a wider range of programs put into place. An MSP Allows Their Clients to Be More Competitive One of the most clear benefits of outsourcing is the fact that it frees your internal employees to accomplish other things that will advance your business. This doubled productivity can have a few effects on the SMB in question. First, outsourcing allows much of the same progress to be made on a project for comparable, if not lower, costs than it would take for an internal team to dedicate their time to the same project. As a result, the SMB can become more competitive by offering their clients a relief from these costs. Plus, by utilizing an MSP, an SMB can often take advantage of technology services that would otherwise only be available to large corporations. In doing so, that business can leverage the same tools to provide comparable services on a more personal level, encouraging their prospects to go to them first. Security, Risk Management, and Compliance are MSP Priorities A business could be very easily crippled if they experienced a data leak that allowed their customers’ data to fall into the wrong hands. In response to this, businesses are held to a variety of standards that they must be faithful to in order to accept digital forms of payment. An MSP’s services include ensuring that a business is fully secured and in compliance with these mandated requirements. Additionally, a managed service provider can help protect a business from internal risks as well. Through the monitoring of the business’ systems, an MSP can identify potential issues and resolve them before they negatively impact the business. These were just a few brief examples of how outsourcing some IT responsibilities to a managed service provider can benefit your business in the short and long term. For more information, reach out to us at (831) 758-3636 to talk about solutions for your Business.
SRS Networks is proud to announce the launch of our new website at www.srsnetworks.us. The goal of the new website is to make it easier for our existing clients to submit and manage support requests, and provide more information about our services for prospective clients. We’d also like to welcome everybody to our blog, and we encourage you to leave comments.
Email is (and has been) a prime method of communication for businesses of all sizes. With email comes a whole slew of issues that are essentially synonymous with the technology; spam, information overload, phishing, and information privacy. Even California small businesses that only do business locally are at risk of these issues. Personal email accounts are equally at risk. Employing proper precautions and practices whenever communicating via email is very important to prevent the risk of security compromises, monetary loss, and even legality issues.
Your identity has quite a lot of value, especially in the wrong hands. Security firm ZoneAlarm put together some numbers in 2011 concerning identity fraud, and it even shocked us. Let’s talk about a few of these statistics and what it means.
When you mention the term ‘disaster recovery,’ most people think about the big ground-shattering events like earthquakes, fires, floods, tropical storms, etc. While these natural events are certainly disasters and devastating in their own right, smaller things can constitute as a disaster for your business, and they aren’t seasonal.
Saving a little on your technology can go a long ways, but cutting too many corners can lead to additional problems and expensive downtime. Here are a few ways you can cut costs without creating long term issues.
Sometimes when your workstation feels bogged down, a relatively cheap and simply hardware update can make a huge difference in performance. Adding more RAM (Random Access Memory, often just referred to as memory) can be a game changer for your bogged down PC.