As a business owner, I am constantly putting a magnifying glass to all of our expenses, trying to see if we really need something or if there’s something better worth investing in. Many people may think “I don’t need a new computer” even if their machine is getting hard to work with. What I want to underscore today is that you really need to know when to invest in new hardware because old machines may be costing you more money than you’d ever suspect!
When should I replace an old machine?
Generally, our rule of thumb is that after 3 years, technology has evolved to the point that any hardware older than 3 years will leave your business at a disadvantage. The cost of ownership on that machine grows to the point that it’s really not a feasible option to hang on to the old dated hardware anymore. Today I want to walk through why using old machines for business work can be a liability.
Below are 5 costs to consider when thinking about investing in hardware.
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Business Backing Up Their Data To Backup Servers On Their Network Should Realize Their Backups Can Be Completely Destroyed.
The headlines keep coming in—reports of business large and small—hospitals, police departments, doctor’s offices, restaurants—all fall victim to ransomware and cybercrime. And the majority of these organizations failed to recover their data because they didn’t have a solid backup strategy.
While having a protected network should be part of any IT Support Team’s on-going security strategy, relying solely on a first line of defense to protect your business continuity has left businesses in ruin. Over 85% of businesses experiencing a data breach fail within two years of a cyberattack.
And of those businesses, nearly all (93%!) assumed that simply having a backup server on their network would protect them from disaster.
The problem with making an assumption that your backups are safe is that your backup server can be easily destroyed by a Crypto attack.
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One Word: Discipline.
What most offices lack when they experience a data breach or cyberattack is a lack of discipline guiding and enforcing their security standards.
Let me give you two quick stories of where a lack of discipline hurt offices and end with one concrete example of how discipline helps save lives.
Example 1: Backups are On, but Not Working!
One of the most common things I find when auditing a prospective client is that the entire office thinks that their backups are working. Their IT guys tell them that they are getting backups and the majority their IT guys for their word (not that all IT guys are trustworthy, unfortunately).
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Why the Equifax Data Breach Could Be Draining Your Business Accounts (And Why You Might Not Even Notice!)
Last week’s Equifax announcement of 143 million people affected by one of the most sweeping data breaches (and likely the most danger) attacks ever may be more worrisome than you may suspect. Since Equifax validates credit scores for virtually everyone, they hold in their disposal millions upon millions of records of personally identifiable information—much of which if not locked under key day in and day out could easily allow criminals to steal your identity.
Last week, one of my colleagues had the misfortune of having his identity stolen. The timing and circumstances aligned perfectly with the Equifax data breach as the most parsimonious way his identity could have been stolen (he is a IT Security expert that is especially careful with disclosing sensitive personal information). If identity theft happened to him, it could easily happen to any of you—and with big data breaches of completely sensitive information, you should be more vigilant than ever with both your personal AND business identity and footprints.
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Earlier last month researcher identified a new ransomware attack that has already targeted and infected tens of thousands of businesses.
The new attack is a modification of the Locky malware that had infected businesses worldwide earlier this summer.
Massive New ‘Locky’-Variant Ransomware Is Attacking Businesses Across The US
IT Security experts are saying that the files containing the new “IKARUSdilapidated” strain of the Locky virus is able to move through endpoint defenses undetected.
The attack begins with an email attachment.
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Hurricanes are not that easy to predict. Will Hurricane Harvey strike Houston or 50 miles East? Will it start as a Category 1 or 5? Thanks to evolving meteorological technology, including better satellites and faster computers, scientists are able to model and make predictions on natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes with much more confidence than ever before.
But with more sophisticated and accurate models, hurricanes predictions are NOT guaranteed 100% accurate.
The devastation that Hurricane Harvey amassed this week has been hard to watch. And what’s harder for me is that officials and residents around Houston could not predict and hadn’t adequate planning to prepare for such a massive storm. The headlines tell this all-too-often story:
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