You Can’t Flub Your Cybersecurity Awareness Cybersecurity is something that you can’t just ignore. It’s not going to ignore you—cybercriminals target the people who think they aren’t a target in the first place. Most businesses these days have at least some level of cybersecurity-based compliance regulations to meet and follow. Some can come from the state, some can come from the industry you are in, some apply based on the type of information you work with, and some can come directly from your business insurance provider. One of the biggest mistakes I see business owners and C-levels make is that they have overconfidence in their own cybersecurity. Most business owners are the least secure people I know (and I don’t mean that in an insulting way; CEOs and entrepreneurs, in general, are just wired to be efficient, and cybersecurity practices can feel like a big roadblock to efficiency.) Heck, I lose sleep at night when I suspect that the owner of a company we work with refuses to use multi-factor authentication, but I catch myself longing to turn that feature off because of the extra couple of seconds it adds to getting into an account every day. The point is, even as a leader, you can’t skimp on security. In fact, you should be the shining example of it in your organization. You Have to Know If You Are Compliant or Not Depending on the regulations your organization needs to meet, you likely have a laundry list of tasks to check off quarterly or yearly. For many organizations, a part of that might include a regular penetration test. A penetration test is a very specific set of tasks that involve an ethical hacker attempting to break into your business network using a variety of different ways. There are multiple phases that include reconnaissance, scanning for vulnerabilities and other weaknesses, getting in and attempting to steal, change or delete data, staying within the network undetected for a period of time, and looking for non-technical ways to exploit your organization, such as social engineering. It’s not a small feat, and it’s far from the typical quick network audit or port sniffer scan and things that a technician might do to solve a problem or investigate an issue. Don’t confuse the small stuff with a penetration test. I’ve talked to business owners in the past who were convinced their network was secure because a third-party ran some network audit tools that came back with devices that were out of date and fixed them. While that’s important to do, and something we do regularly, and maintain for our clients, it’s a long way from an actual penetration test. Let’s Make Sense of Your Cybersecurity, Together Protecting your business from modern-day threats and meeting regulatory requirements is a challenge if you try to do it by yourself. Let GeekBox IT be your trusted IT partner and keep your business operating smoothly. Get started today by calling (336) 790-1000.
In recent years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as a game-changer across various industries. One way that businesses can utilize these technologies is to understand how their businesses use their utilities as well as automate the control of some of them to cut costs and utilize these resources more efficiently. Let’s look at how businesses are using IoT tools to stabilize utility costs.
In business, organizations that are able to automate processes have a leg up on organizations that rely on humans to do everything. Not only does it cost a lot less to run a business that has automated processes, it also helps improve organizational focus and efficiency by streamlining processes and removing the moving parts that can sometimes hinder operational progress. That’s not to say that there aren’t some places that a business can greatly benefit from a human touch. Let’s take a look at both sides of the argument.
Without hardware, where would your business be right now? You can’t run your mission-critical applications and software without devices to host them on. You need to do all you can to ensure it stays in a proper state, but there will always eventually come a time when you cannot sustain it any longer and need to upgrade. Here’s what you need to know about your hardware refresh cycle, including what it is, what you can do with one, and how to plan it out.
Managing your technology infrastructure can be challenging, but virtualized computing presents an opportunity for you to make considerable changes and progress to a more efficient way of doing so. With the right technology and the right solutions, you can break through barriers previously in place and do some remarkable things with virtualized technology.
If you recently set up a new Internet service account with your provider, they may have hooked you up with a two-in-one modem and router device. Is this modem/router combo the appropriate device for your business, though? The answer is no, for many reasons.
The modern business creates and deals with a lot of data, and has for some time. For most of that time, this data has just been ignored, but recent developments in analytics and business intelligence has made this data extremely valuable. In order for your analysts to make accurate determinations they’ll need access to a wide variety of data from a myriad of sources. This is where data warehousing comes in.
The word “bandwidth” is thrown around a lot in business technology, but what does it really mean? Today, we wanted to cover some of the frequently asked questions business owners have about network bandwidth and what it specifically means for business technology infrastructures and data management as a whole.
The growth that digital storage has seen over the past several decades is immense. In that time most data has been stored on hard disk drives (HDD). Now with solid-state drives (SSD) being more affordable than ever, it’s no surprise that most computers are preferring this faster and less fragile model. Today, we wanted to highlight that fragility and try to expose some variables that help you tell if your HDD is about to fail.
Your business uses software to function, but we would like you to consider the role that each of your applications fulfills for your business. Do you have the right amount of software for your company’s needs, or do you have a lot of redundant solutions that only complicate your infrastructure and operations? Today, we’ll discuss the different types of software your company might use so you can make educated decisions about applications you might implement for your needs.