“Scream now, while there’s still room to breathe.” That’s an advertising tagline from “The Blob,” an old sci-fi movie about an alien ball of gelatinous goo that consumes everything in its path as it grows uncontrollably larger and larger. That sounds a bit like the data storage environment in most organizations today, doesn’t it? Data [...]
In 1978, a marketing manager with Digital Equipment Corporation sent an unsolicited electronic message to hundreds of ARPANET users promoting the company’s new mainframe computers. It is the first known instance of spam, and it kicked off four decades worth of unwelcome, unwanted and unrelenting email abuses. Email has since become the de facto standard [...]
Ransomware attacks are up sharply during the coronavirus pandemic, with researchers identifying nearly 80 million such attacks during the first half of 2020 — a 109 percent increase from 2019’s midyear total. In a particularly concerning trend, many of these attacks are now targeting backup data in addition to primary data. Robust backup practices have [...]
There has been a long-running debate regarding the relative benefits of in-house IT vs. managed services for user support. While there continue to be pros and cons on both sides, the growth of remote work and changes in the way IT services are delivered have put more “pros” in the managed services column. Organizations with [...]
Few organizations would give every employee access to HR and accounting systems. But an astonishing number of organizations fail to control access to other sensitive information. A 2019 study by Varonis Data Lab found that 53 percent of companies had at least 1,000 sensitive files that could be accessed by all employees. Almost one-quarter (22 [...]
There’s no question that organizations are migrating more workloads to the cloud in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The reasons vary, however. A global LogicMonitor study of 500 IT decision-makers conducted in May and June 2020 found that organizations are moving to the cloud to enable remote operations and gain access to IT services that [...]
Annual MSP 501 Identifies Best-in-Class Global MSP Businesses & Leading Trends in Managed Services JULY 28, 2020:SSD Technology Partners has been named as one of the world’s premier managed service providers and one of the top MSPs in Delaware on the prestigious 2020 annual Channel Futures MSP 501 rankings. For the 13thyear, MSPs from around the [...]
Cybersecurity has never been more difficult. Threats are growing more frequent, sophisticated and costly. Data, devices and other assets keep moving beyond the reach of network perimeter defenses. Increasing government and industry regulations keep adding layers of complexity. If only there was an instruction manual that explained how to deal with it all. Turns out, [...]
Many organizations have done a remarkable job of transitioning to remote work — virtually overnight. IT teams who may have had limited experience working with remote workers found themselves grappling with virtual private networks (VPNs), collaboration platforms, and cloud-based applications and data storage. They deserve a giant pat on the back for keeping their organizations [...]
The University of California at San Francisco announced recently that it paid a $1.14 million ransom to regain access to medical school data that was encrypted during a ransomware attack. The incident illustrates a disturbing trend — ransomware attacks are steadily increasing, as are the ransom amounts being demanded. The average ransom demanded in attacks [...]
