Personally identifiable information (PII) is the holy grail when it comes to cybercrime. Hackers know PII can be sold easily on the dark web or used to commit identity theft. Healthcare and tax-related information is particularly valuable as it enables criminals to commit fraud over a long period of time without getting caught. While more [...]
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions such as Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce, Google Suite, Dropbox and QuickBooks have made it easier for small to midsize businesses (SMBs) to adopt cloud services. In fact, Office 365 is by far the most popular cloud platform by user count, with global usage increasing from 34 percent in 2016 to 56 percent [...]
Many organizations, including small to midsize business, have branch and satellite offices spread across a wide geography. That means more and more corporate data is being created outside of company headquarters. Much of this data is mission-critical and must be backed up regularly. However, remote office/branch office (ROBO) backup is much different than data backup [...]
Launching an IT project without a well-developed project plan is like traveling to a strange city without a map — there’s a good chance you’ll get lost, wandering around aimlessly and potentially winding up in a dangerous predicament. As the old saying goes, failing to plan is planning to fail. The Project Management Institute (PMI) [...]
The business case for the cloud has moved well beyond cost savings. Organizations are proceeding with multi-cloud deployments to ensure that each workload and application is in the optimal environment. They’re focusing on making their teams more productive and the organization as a whole more agile. They’re using the cloud to take advantage of artificial [...]
In a recent study conducted by MSI-ACI Europe, 61 percent of IT professionals said senior executives expect more lenient security policies for themselves than everyone else. For 65 percent of study participants, that leniency resulted in more data breaches. The obvious question is, shouldn’t it be the other way around? Given the increasingly perilous threat [...]
In a previous post, we discussed how IT standardization simplifies your IT environment, making it easier to manage, secure and monitor. Less variety also means less risk of performance issues and more predictable budgeting. IT standardization is often needed after years of one-off configurations and adding new tools, applications and services. Similarly, trying to keep up [...]
Ransomware is still a serious problem. But as awareness has increased and security measures have been enhanced, more hackers are turning to cryptojacking to make money. In fact, the number of cryptojacking attacks was nearly double the number of ransomware attacks in 2018, according to a recent report from IBM Security. Cryptojacking is the unauthorized [...]
When you’re constantly scrambling to keep the lights on and serve customers, it can seem expedient to make a user happy by changing a configuration, installing a new application, or adding a new device or service that the user requested. This may put out the fire of the moment, but it can also make your [...]
Since 2005, the number of Americans working remotely has more than doubled to 3.9 million, and more than one-third of employees are expected to work remotely in the next 10 years. Employee demands for greater flexibility and work-life balance, combined with organizational demands to optimize productivity and keep employees happy, are driving this trend. Clearly, [...]
