I recently talked with a potential client who had gotten hacked and was looking for help. What he didn’t realize is that by not having a full time IT support team, he was actually outside of government compliance standards. Because he got help ONLY when he noticed symptoms to a problem, his networks were not backed up, patches were not maintained and virus prevention not up to date.
Why?
Because break-fix IT support doesn’t make sure all of your security t’s are crossed. They simply are paid when you really have a problem. And when you are having viruses or hacks on computers on your network, you are actually in violation of compliance!
It doesn’t matter if you’re business relies on HIPAA, PCI or FIRPA (or any other flavor of) compliance. If you’re trying to keep sensitive data safe, you need a dedicated IT team to make sure that ALL security issues are being taken care of.
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CNN has been buzzing all day on the 24 hour news cycle of cyber attacks on Dyn—a company that provides DNS services for many of America’s largest companies and biggest websites. What I wanted to discuss this week is reflect on what happened last week and inform you on how to respond—to protect your business interests from cyber attacks—both directly toward you and your interests.
But First, what the heck is DNS?
DNS stands for domain name system. Essentially, it is the phone book of the internet. For instance, when you type google.com into your browser, the google.com address you type in is actually translated into an IP address (generally having an xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, where each ‘xxx’ is a number between 0 and 255). DNS helps us all out by letting us typing in human-readable URLs rather than strings of meaningless numbers.
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How social media use has blurred the line between business and pleasure and what it means for your business.
Do you know if your employees are using LinkedIn with their business email addresses?
A lot of stories focus on how to avoid risking personal reputation on social media platforms, but what does it mean for your business? I think a more important reason to make sure your team is keeping business and pleasure separate (especially when it comes to social media!) is the increased cyber threat your business faces when credentials from social media are compromised.
Nowadays, we see database leaks day in and day out. Stole records are shuffled about—sometimes sold to the highest bidder— and we’re all getting so desensitized that cybercrime has lost its urgency among us as business leaders. Granted, credential compromise is not a new topic, but often when a business’ credentials have been compromised—users often are to blame (most unsuspectingly). And social media doesn’t help matters!
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What I really want to know is, are your business network, systems, computers ALL backed up and current with patches?
This week a situation arose at a potential client site that caused a lot of trouble. Enough so that I thought I needed to tell the story to get folks aware of the real implications behind not backing your computers up.
I got a call on Monday from a business that had just been locked up by ransomware. Even though everyone had been warned ad nauseam about phishing expeditions and ransomware, warnings did not stick. If you’re like many of us, we are aware of the dangers, but don’t understand the implications of them until we get bit, stung or poked.
When it comes to risks of infections, users understand why backups are important. The problem is that they don’t realize their work isn’t getting backed up.
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Will Section 179 might give your business an even bigger tax break than ever before?
What I’ve learned: Section 179 can save your business (and mine) a lot of money. It lets you deduct full purchase price of qualifying equipment—computers and software—that were purchased during the tax year.
What this means for your business? If you buy qualified equipment and software, you’re able to deduct THE FULL PURCHASE PRICE from your gross income.
Why does the government do this? To encourage economic growth in American business, by getting companies to invest in their businesses.
The bottom line: It’s important that you understand and know about what this specific code can do for your business to avoid missing out on major deductions.
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DE’s preventative security process keeps students’ computers headache free across Maine
Schools understand the value in prevention. I’m sure you recall fire drills and (depending where you grew up) drills for tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes. Equally important, they want to make sure their students are learning in a productive environment—where technology works and where teachers can leverage it to create prepared and enabled students to meet modern job market demands.
One fundamental way schools prevent errors and problems is by having technology that not only is easy to use, but that is error-free. They make sure students are focused on learning and not stuck riddled with errors and computer problems. (I’m sure we all can relate to this dilemma!)
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