BaaS Lets You Take Decentralization for a Test Drive
One of the biggest problems with emerging technologies is the fact that it can be very hard to tell if they will actually provide any benefit to a business without taking the risk of implementing it. This leaves many businesses in a catch-22 of sorts: they lose money by not implementing a new solution, or they lose money because the new solution wasn’t a good fit.
Take These Steps to Make IT Security Top of Mind
Here’s the thing about IT security: it requires a little more than a decent firewall and a reasonably-strong password. We talk a lot about how to ensure that your business’ network stays a top priority, and the best way to do that is to implement what we call a Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution. An enterprise security system like a UTM can provide a considerable improvement for the way you protect your organization, but even something as simple as a little bit of user error could bypass these protocols.
Hackers and cyber criminals have a lot of tricks up their sleeves, and it’s easy to forget that they can be extremely crafty with how they use threats like malware and phishing scams. The past few years have shown that hackers are doing much more than just infecting computers with threats. Instead, they are turning to social engineering and phishing tactics that are designed to weasel their way past even the most experienced workers. They know how to look legitimate and genuinely fool someone into handing over everything they need to succeed. Therefore, there’s only one way to make sure that your company stays safe from these hackers: stay alert and watch out for threats.
But How Do You Stay Cautious?
The best way to stay safe is to make sure everyone is looped in on what’s needed to keep your business secure. To get to this level, it’s best to start with management and administration to ensure that even those at the top of the ladder are taking security seriously. Be sure to keep your C-suite employees looped in on any major security advancements, as well as your HR office to give security the sense of importance that it deserves.
Security Shouldn’t Be a Hassle
Policies such as two-factor authentication or password protection can often be seen as an unnecessary way of making things more difficult for employees to do their jobs as efficiently as possible. You’ll likely get a lot of pushback, even if it’s meant to be a good thing for the company. Instead of lashing out and telling them to do what they’re told, try to get them to understand why the measures are necessary in the first place. The best employees are always the ones that care the most, so do your best to make them care not just on a corporate level, but on an individual level.
Implement Regular IT Check-Ups
Once you’ve figured out the best way to maintain IT security, you should do your part in keeping everyone up to date by holding regular meetings regarding security. It’s important that you make sure to stick to this schedule, as the higher priority your company places on security meetings, the more urgency will be associated with it by default.
Carefully Reinforce Security Measures
It’s imperative that your employees not only understand the importance of security, but that they understand why these processes and procedures are important in the first place. Be sure to document your business’ security best practices in a way which is easy to access, like in the company handbook. Follow this up with training videos, security handouts, or posters around the office. They should also be ready and willing to adapt to change, as the same threats that are a danger to your business now may not be so in the future.
Once most of your team understands that security is crucial, you should establish repercussions for failing to adhere to company security policies. It’s important to remember that most issues can easily be solved, so a first-time offender shouldn’t have their head bit off for forgetting something related to security. Of course, recurring offenses or blatant disregard to company policies should be treated with requisite severity, as all it takes is one unaware employee to completely cripple your organization’s security.
Encourage Reporting and Support Requests
One of the greatest benefits of working with technology is that you can easily put in a support request or report suspicious behavior. However, if an employee isn’t comfortable with doing this, they might not report something important that could have prevented a considerable amount of pain. Furthermore, if they make a mistake, they might be reticent to report it for fear of being punished. Therefore, you should make it clear that you not only encourage reporting issues, but that you expect it.
Catalyst Technology Group wants to be the organization that your business turns to for reinforcement of your company security policies. We can help enforce, audit, and support your business in a way which your internal IT department simply doesn’t have time for. If you don’t have an in-house IT department, we would be happy to act as one for you. To learn more, reach out to us at (317) 705-0333.
Take Advantage of Comprehensive Network Security with UTM
Network security is one thing that rarely stays the same for any business–especially with the ever-changing threat landscape on the Internet. No matter how much time you spend preparing for security troubles, you’ll always be caught unawares if you never assume that the worst will happen. You should be taking advantage of both traditional security solutions, as well as new and emerging tools that help you keep advanced threats at bay.
Regardless of how much your business’ technology grows, there is always going to be the possibility that even some basic threats could cause trouble for your organization. For example, your workstation will be vulnerable to threats like viruses, malware, spam, and many others if you choose to forego traditional protection solutions like an antivirus or firewall. Furthermore, even consumer-grade protections are often not enough to keep more advanced threats at bay.
It’s all a matter of cost. Managed service providers make these services more affordable for small businesses. A Unified Threat Management (UTM) tool is the ideal solution for many SMB security woes. A UTM includes enterprise-class solutions like a firewall and antivirus that keep threats from making an impact against your business, as well as spam protection and content filtering to keep issues out of your infrastructure in the first place. This saves you a considerable amount of time and money, as eliminating threats after the fact can be both wasteful and risky.
There are also other security solutions that you’ll want to consider, namely two-factor authentication and biometrics. Two-factor authentication allows your organization to add a secondary credential to any login portal so that hackers have more trouble accessing sensitive information. An example of a two-factor authentication system is having a code sent to your smart device, which would then be input following your password. Hackers don’t want to do more work than necessary, so if you make accessing your account challenging, they are less likely to pursue the opportunity.
Biometrics make things more complicated for hackers as well. Biometric technology uses your body’s natural identification systems to ensure that only you are accessing your accounts. Scanning your iris or fingerprints are two examples of biometrics that keep hackers from cracking your security protocol. Unless a hacker has a picture-perfect copy of your eyes or fingers, they’ll have a difficult time stealing anything from your accounts.
How does your business keep itself safe from hacking attacks? Regardless, Catalyst Technology Group can help. To learn more, reach out to us at (317) 705-0333.
How Easily Could A Freak Event Take Down Your Business?
Your business is much more vulnerable to dangerous entities than you’d care to admit. Think about it–all it takes is one unexpected event to cause untold amounts of chaos for your business. To make matters worse, these events are often outside of your control. Data loss incidents might be unpredictable, but they can be soothed thanks to a little bit of preventative management.
It’s one thing protecting yourself from cyber security threats (which you definitely need to be concerned with) but there are other types of unplanned disasters that can show up without warning. We’re talking about acts of nature and misfortune, which are certainly much more difficult to prevent than a hacking attack–there’s little you can do to stop the weather.
The only way to guarantee your business’s future is to think of your organization like you would an egg. An egg could crack at any time unless you take preventative measures to keep it safe. For example, you’d keep it in the carton in the refrigerator, safe from any external elements. This is the way that you want to preserve your business’s data–in a safe, controlled environment that is free of external troubles.
This type of data isolation is generally not possible with traditional tape backup solutions. Your organization would take one backup a day after your office has closed, and this backup would be stored on a tape, which is either stored off-site or in-house. This presents potential problems for your organization in the fact that the tapes could be lost, misplaced, stolen, or destroyed while being stored in-house. Furthermore, since they are only being taken once a day, you run the risk of a data loss incident derailing operations during the middle of the workday. You could potentially lose up to an entire day’s worth of progress that could make all the difference when finishing a crucial project and meeting a deadline.
Plus, nobody wants to think about the downtime that comes from restoring data to your infrastructure. With traditional tape backup, restoring data could take anywhere from several hours to days, depending on the amount of data that’s being restored. Furthermore, your operations will be halted during this process. When no work is being done, you’ll only get further and further behind.
Cloud-based backup allows for much more dynamic data preservation techniques that utilize the virtual environment of the cloud. You can take multiple backups as often as every fifteen minutes, allowing for minimal data loss. Furthermore, your data can be restored directly to the BDR device itself, allowing for near-instantaneous recovery and minimal downtime. It’s just one way that planning for the worst can help you avoid it.
Does your organization need comprehensive data backup and disaster recovery? We can equip your business with BDR so that you’ll never have to be concerned with data loss again. To learn more, reach out to us at (317) 705-0333.
Take Advantage of Big Data to One-Up the Competition
Your business’s IT strategy is of incredible importance, especially when you consider how much your operations stand to benefit from a functional infrastructure. More than anything, though, IT can ensure that your business remains competitive in a world where the slightest advantage can mean all the difference.
With big data on the rise, let’s take a look at how it can help your business stand out amongst the crowd.
Big Data Changes the Rules
Big data is capable of affecting an industry on a large scale. Let’s say that one business starts to look at the way in which data trends affect the way that they approach their services and business model. They will start to see ways in which they can improve the way they do business. In turn, more and more businesses will look toward implementing big data, which makes it a new industry standard, completely changing the way that the industry operates.
Big Data Allows Businesses to Outperform Rivals
Being “in-the-know” is of the utmost importance in the business world, and the more data that you collect, the more information you have at your disposal. It’s as simple as this; big data allows businesses to gain a competitive advantage against their rivals. Being able to strategically look at statistics and analytics helps businesses to make better, more educated decisions about how to move forward.
Big Data Can Outright Create New Businesses
Big data has the opportunity to change business models so drastically that some organizations may split themselves up to create new business opportunities. Alternatively, businesses may create new departments within their organizations that focus on the analysis of this data. These departments can then deploy the data for a number of functions, including improving operations as a whole internally, or looking at external factors that could bring in more revenue, such as consumer behavior patterns.
Does your business leverage big data to its advantage? It could be just the thing you need to get a leg up on the competition. Catalyst Technology Group can consult you on how best to take advantage of data collection and delegation within your business and consumer base. To learn more, reach out to us at (317) 705-0333.
3 Significant Ways Your Business Can Take Advantage of Virtualization
With cloud computing on the rise, more businesses than ever before are taking advantage of great new tools that allow them to get the leg up on the competition. With virtual technology services at their disposal, they are completely changing the way that they approach computing, and the best part is that these services are affordable even for smaller organizations with limited budgets. Here are three of the best ways your organization can implement virtualization solutions.
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Cloud-hosted software is part of a trend that is increasing the accessibility of applications designed to improve the way you do business. Thanks to this type of software, SMBs are able to grow more dynamically and achieve more flexibility in the way that they function. Examples of Software as a Service include well-known solutions such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google’s G-Suite, but just about any software that is offered through the cloud on a subscription basis can be deemed Software as a Service. The main attraction of SaaS is that businesses make smaller monthly payments to use the same software that would otherwise require a full-fledged license purchase. If you’ve ever had to purchase multiple licenses for multiple users, you know how this can be a great way to save money for any small business.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
Virtual telephone solutions like VoIP are actively replacing the traditional telephony infrastructure in the office environment. This is mainly due to the fact that they decrease costs overall and provide a level of flexibility that’s never been seen before, both in and out of the workplace. Since you use the Internet to make and receive calls, you’re using something that you already pay for to eliminate an unnecessary expense. Plus, you can use VoIP apps on a traditional handset, a desktop or laptop, and even your smartphone, allowing you to take your office phone number on the go.
Hardware Virtualization
If you have been managing an entire in-house IT infrastructure on your own, you know how challenging it can be to manage servers and other networking components. Due to this immense responsibility, many organizations are choosing to outsource the care of their networking components through a hardware virtualization vendor. This allows companies to consolidate their servers to make better use of their resources, as well as save on energy costs, like air conditioning and electricity. Plus, you’ll be able to access any of these resources through the cloud, and you’ll be able to simplify your in-house network considerably.
If your business is ready to take the next step toward technological advancement, reach out to Catalyst Technology Group at (317) 705-0333. Our trusted technicians are happy to discuss what we can do for your business.