Tag Archives: business

Managed Services For Cybersecurity

Posted on by

What’s the best defense against cyber attacks? As the summer continues, the abundance of employees traveling for work can cause vulnerabilities that can be exploited by criminals. Even a single misclick can cause a far-reaching disaster that can cost a company thousands of dollars.

What many enterprises don’t know about cyberattacks is that the effects are frequently not seen right away. When responding to a breach or incursion, it is important to catch it during what’s called “dwell time”. Dwell time is the period after which a cybercriminal has gained limited access to a system as they try to figure out additional vulnerabilities and the best soft target for a coordinated attack.

If a cybercriminal is successful at gaining elevated privilege on a system, they may wait days, weeks, or even months before launching a large scale attack. During this time, they may take the opportunity to drizzle in a payload, which could be a system exploit, a virus, or some other piece of malicious software.

When it comes to responding during this dwell time, it’s important to act as soon as possible. Even wasting minutes can be disastrous. For that matter, many people that work in IT may have some basic cybersecurity tools, but not the expertise necessary to react in a proper manner. This is why the best course of action to handle cyber threats is to hire a qualified managed services company.

Using an external managed services company is much more scalable and cost-efficient than hiring a full time cybersecurity expert. These firms can provide services that match an enterprise’s needs and monitor their infrastructure for potential problems.

That said, enterprises need firms that are able to do one task very well. While a Swiss army knife can be useful in a pinch, it pales compared to an actual knife when it comes to tasks like cooking. Ergo, specialization is important. Enterprises shouldn’t just be looking for a company that hardens security, as this is frequently ineffective. Instead, they should find a firm that knows the security space of their industry and can identify anomalies at a glance. They should also be poised to scale in the event of organizational changes.

When hiring an external firm, a company should be aware of the services that they are gaining. While all companies strive to provide an impeccable image to potential clients, thoroughly vetting possible cybersecurity firms is important. Know the services you will need and ensure they have professionals able to both implement and update them over time. They should also come equipped with the most up to date tools that can monitor activity and deploy solutions on a moment’s notice. This is why dwell time can be problematic for unprepared organizations—if it continues long enough, getting a sense of the timeline and the origin of the incursion becomes difficult, if not impossible.

An external firm is the best way for a company to monitor and shut down incursions. In these cases, it pays to do research and find a firm that provides a managed services package specific to your industry and your organization’s needs. Breaches can happen, but with the right people and the right tools, they don’t have to be large scale disasters.

Teaching Employees Cybersecurity

Posted on by

As the weather gets warmer and employees start looking forward to their vacations, enterprises should be wary. While the summer is seen as a time to be outside and active, many cybercriminals are waiting to take advantage of an unwary organization and steal sensitive information.

This is in part because employees on the move are more likely to access unsecured wifi networks. Public wifi may be convenient, but it can risk the compromise of sensitive data. For organizations, it may be difficult to respond. Not only is it nigh-impossible to track wifi usage outside of the office, but having fewer staff during the summer months can reduce response time in the event of a breach.

Some companies may invest in full time staff meant to screen against a breach. However, this is often not effective, especially if the staff are not specialized in cybersecurity. Combined with the cost of labor, maintaining a defense in this way is not cost-effective.

The solution lies in stopping the problem at its source—the people that can cause a breach. Many employees may not even be aware of the problematic conduct that can lead to a cyberattack, and awareness goes a long way. Paying to train employees against a cyberattack may be a more effective use of revenue than paying full time IT staff to hedge against breaches.

Of course, teaching employees the principles of cybersecurity is something worth spending time on and executing correctly. In many cases, enterprises may have security training in place due to compliance laws. This is often done as a way of checking boxes rather than providing any meaningful education.

For instance, some types of training may be entirely online, with employees required to read a short pamphlet and complete a test verifying that they understand its contents. This approach, though simple for management, does not foster good retention and may not adequately cover the types of threats an organization might experience. It’s all too easy to grow complacent with training, even as its limitations open up new attack surfaces for cybercriminals.

Generally, the best way to train involves small groups of five to ten employees. Training should involve roleplaying several common scenarios and teach employees how to spot red flags and respond to potential problems. Threat assessment should be the priority for training, as many may not know what a potential cyberattack looks like.

Threats can take many forms, both digitally and physically. Phishing schemes are the most common, with an innocuous-looking emails downloading a payload that can sit on an employee’s computer for some time, compromising the machine and even spreading to others. Other red flags can happen in a workspace, such as an individual masquerading as an IT professional and planting problem files on a computer under the guise of performing work.

Whatever the nature of an attack, employees should feel empowered to not only detect these red flags, but report on them as well. It does an organization no good to criticize an employee that raises a false alarm, as this can discourage them from speaking up in the event of an actual problem.

When it comes to dealing with cyberattacks, preventing them is vastly better than containing them once they’ve started. Because of this, it’s worth examining an employee training program geared toward an enterprise’s needs. New attack surfaces mean new issues, and training that starts before cybersecurity becomes a problem can pay dividends—even if an organization doesn’t know it.

Gartner’s Guesses—Predictions for IT in 2018

Posted on by

As another year begins to draw to a close, industry experts are already looking to the future. The IT industry has been dynamic over the past few years, with innovations such as improvements in cloud computing, machine learning, and even IT management propelling it forward. At the recent Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2017 in Orlando, FL, Gartner took a shot at the future of IT, painting a picture of the industry as being more integrated with business than ever. IT is now so central to operations that businesses can no longer afford to isolate their departments, and Gartner knows this.

Since IT is often a means of improving products/services and generating additional revenue, Gartner’s central point was that professionals in the industry will need to have a working grasp of business tactics and company goals. From there, they can set up IT departments that maximize technology usage to meet these goals. CIOs, Gartner believes, will become more integrated than ever into business operations and become important collaborators for the companies they work for.

One trend that Gartner discussed was cryptocurrency. Starting as a technological curiosity, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have since attracted significant interest for their value in facilitating swift and secure transactions. While working cryptocurrency into business models has proved to be slow going, Gartner predicts that over $1 billion in business value will be derived from it by 2020. They were also optimistic about the future of IoT-enabled devices, predicting an upsurge in these products with smartphone integration.

However, there were other trends that Gartner was less bullish about. The aforementioned prediction of IoT devices came with the caveat that that billions of dollars will be necessary for companies to safely harness this technology. IoT devices are almost famously difficult to completely secure given network decentralization, and their usage would divert funds that would otherwise be spent to improve cybersecurity.

The use of AI was also the subject of controversy for Gartner, with the company citing it as a potential contributor toward a future age of digital mistrust. While they praised the ability of AI to help inform business decisions, they also believe that its use on the web will hasten the spread of false information. This has social and financial implications, with Gartner stating that a major fraud as a result of these prolific falsehoods will occur by 2020. Commercial projects to detect and halt fake news have already begun, and a tenfold increase in these projects is predicted in the coming years.

Still, IT is slated to prosper. As its role in business changes and it becomes more integral to operations, the industry is expected to grow, with a predicted 2.3 million jobs being created as opposed to 1.8 eliminated. Early adoption is, as always, important in the IT sector, and one of the latest trends, visual and voice search, may be the next big investment. Both are growing quickly, and large tech companies are expected to invest in improving their visual and voice query offering through the use of AI.

There is a lot on the horizon for IT. While these improvements will undoubtedly be a boon for the companies and individuals that harness them, a level of caution is necessary. Much of this technology is relatively untested, posing security and operational concerns for businesses. Now more than ever, a need for skilled professionals is arising to ensure that companies are able to adopt in an efficient and safe manner.

Best Cloud-Based Apps for Business

Posted on by

I spend a lot of time talking about applications of the cloud, so I figured I’d dedicate myself now to discussing some applications for the cloud. If you’re the owner of a small-to-medium sized business (often colloquially referred to as an SMB), then you’ll be happy to know that, even without cloud services, it’s still possible to leverage this technology to work for you and improve productivity. Thousands of applications exist on the web, and now, some recent additions are using the cloud to better manage their resources.

Have a look at some of the best services available now.

Intuit Quickbooks Online Plus

For under $40 per month, you can use cloud-based accounting to get a better handle on company finances. From its modest beginning, Intuit has since expanded its services and created a simple, user-friendly UI that caters specifically to SMB needs. It even includes a flexible payroll management service to make it your one-stop shop for dealing with finance.

IDrive

For the business with a minimal web presence looking for a hassle-free way to protect its data, IDrive is ideal. It’s inexpensive and boasts an easy setup that offers businesses disk image backups, folder syncing, and a hard drive for physical data security.

The downside? It only offers a terabyte of storage, which some smaller businesses may not mind, given IDrive’s ease of use.

Carbonite

For slightly larger businesses, Carbonite offers a more robust backup option for businesses looking to protect their data in case of disaster for a reasonable price. However, it does nothing to protect or back up virtual infrastructures or cloud-based data centers, making it so that businesses that are more digitally involved will have to look elsewhere for answers.

MailChimp

Even if your budget for email marketing is low, MailChimp delivers (pun intended) with a level of customization that’ll keep anybody happy regardless of their level of technological expertise. It’s also capable of integrating third party tools, and includes templates to get a new user off and running as fast as possible.

Hootsuite

If you’re interested in easily managing multiple social media platforms from one place, then consider Hootsuite. It starts off free, but an interested user can scale up and add more socials if they decide that the like the service.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer all-in-one analytics; though most social platforms have their own free services if you’d like to really track engagement.

Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus

For a little bit of money (around $20, to be precise), you can protect your devices from viruses and ensure recovery of files encrypted by ransomware. It doesn’t take up a lot of space on your device, scans rapidly, and offers a protective firewall. Plus, Webroot is constantly updating its database of programs and potential threats, and is willing to respond and adapt to any attack by an unknown software.

Ascencio System OnlyOffice

It’s a lot like Google Docs, but OnlyOffice offers a few more options that make it worth the higher price point. It provides additional features that can aid in productivity, including task, project, and customer relationship management tools. Plus, its myriad of functions are all cleanly integrated together in a way that makes it easy to shift from task to task.

Its main drawback is its lack of included storage, but this is offset by the fact that OnlyOffice plays nicely with other third-party storage providers for your convenience.

Transcendent Transparency—How to Win Customers And Keep Employees Happy

Posted on by

Transparency in Business

Transparency is a buzzword that has been thrown around in the business world for years. Frequently, “transparency” initiatives have amounted to simple ploys designed to capture an audience’s attention through honesty. While it’s true that honesty is certainly an excellent business practice, genuine transparency goes beyond coming clean about shortcomings; it is about building a relationship with both employee and customer to the benefit of all involved.

In a world where branding shapes the way consumers shop and perceive businesses, it is more important than ever for companies to actively cultivate their reputations. Additionally, the plethora of information available online means that businesses are often at the mercy of those they serve, potentially laid low by customer disgruntlement.

Now, building a brand means also building a relationship with stakeholders, be they investors or customers. Withholding information is largely no longer viable, and may in fact earn a business the ire of those that believe it has something to hide. To thrive, companies must recognize that public opinion of themselves will be easily accessible through the Internet and adapt accordingly.

Often, transparency is used in a reconciliatory fashion—in the wake of a scandal or crisis. However, if a business only starts being transparent at this point, they have lost much of their advantage. Businesses should be open about all of their dealings, from the good to the bad. This has obvious advantages when combatting negative propaganda, but can foster internal loyalty as well. Any employee that feels as if their company is forthcoming about their work is generally happier and more satisfied with their job.

And this honesty is not limited to within the business—supply chain and external labor transparency can go a long way to giving a company credibility. This is the first step to creating a relationship with stakeholders. Businesses should give any interested individual the opportunity to speak about their concerns and listen to what they have to say. There is, of course, a lot to address here, but social media presences are a good place to start to cultivate two-way communication.

The great part about transparent relationships is that it makes a company more forgivable—even if the company in question is always morally upstanding, mistakes can happen, and effective communication can help limit the damage that any sort of incident can cause. This sort of behavior is increasingly becoming an expectation for modern businesses; to the point where a lack of communication can be more damning for them than any mistakes they have actually made.

Additionally, communication methods can be just as important as the message itself. Reports shouldn’t be mired in fluff and jargon; they should be simple, straightforward, and informative. Communications can also take unconventional forms; businesses can potentially encourage face-to-face visits in their offices or participate in community events. Social media is also helpful when it comes to keeping an audience updated; even if a company posts a mix of business updates and relevant content, they are still informing their subscribers that they are keeping abreast of the industry.

And, perhaps most important, companies should not hesitate to expand relationships whenever possible, in keeping with the needs of the audience or target market. The concept of transparency is often associated with rectifying mistakes, but in reality, that’s just a fortunate side effect—it’s about positioning a business in a way that empowers others to participate in the process.