SMART Blog

Many organizations that don’t have the same breadth of funding and services might wind up spending more capital in attempts to compete with these larger organizations, but the way forward isn’t always clear. For small businesses that have trouble managing the many moving parts of their business, communication is key--especially in an age where so many businesses have remote employees who are not always in the office to speak to directly. We’ll discuss what the modern face of communications looks like with a particular focus on conferencing services.

Your business seems to be humming along nicely and, BOOM, a disaster hits. Whether this disaster is caused by an act of God, a cybercriminal, or one of your own employees, you have to be ready. Today, we will look at several statistics that show you just how important having a well strategized data backup and disaster recovery plan is.

Ransomware has now been a major threat to businesses and other organizations for a couple of years, and 2018 is no different. For those who don’t know, ransomware is a form of malicious software (malware) that threatens the elimination of hijacked and encrypted data if a user doesn’t pay a ransom. It is known to be one of the most prolific and pervasive threats seen on the Internet today. We will take a look at how ransomware has evolved over the past several years, what the future of ransomware looks like, and what you can do to protect yourself against it.

Phishing scams have one of the most descriptive names in all of computing, mostly because of how similar phishing is with fishing. Just as one does when one goes fishing, bait is dangled in the hopes of getting a bite - but to take the comparison one step further, different types of bait can be used, depending on the catch one is trying to make.

Managing business technology is not easy, especially if your budget doesn’t accommodate an internal IT department. You want professionals who know what they are doing to be the first ones handling your organization’s technology solutions, but sometimes this simply isn’t possible. While the concept of outsourcing technology management and maintenance to a third party sounds strange at first glance, it sure beats just about any other alternative out there--and for good reason.

Email security has suffered in the past several years due to the commoditization of basic email security services. If every spam solution is the same, then they can be changed out to just about any other solution out there, removing quality and replacing it with quantity. We have seen this trend take antivirus--the fact that free antivirus exists and many people prefer it over some paid solutions is a testament to this--but will spam protection move in the same direction?

Businesses need to protect themselves in the modern threat climate. This fact can’t be negotiated, but many organizations have found themselves attempting to get by without protecting their assets or network infrastructure. We’re here to tell you why failing to implement security standards for your business could put its future on the line, as well as what you can do to make sure this doesn’t happen.

The Internet of things can be described simply as devices that have connectivity to the Internet, and thus to a computing network. Many times these connected devices aren’t manufactured with security solutions onboard (or any security-minded foresight at all) so they can be fickle instruments when trying to onerously secure a network that includes numerous IoT devices. Today, we'll go over some of the threats IoT devices pose to your network, and how to reliably secure it from these threats.

It’s not out of the ordinary for a business to sideline communications in favor of getting operations off the ground, but the issue is that communications are supposed to be used for augmenting operations. Therefore, businesses that don’t utilize a unified communications system are doing themselves a disservice in more ways than one.

For a technology that’s so commonplace, Wi-Fi rarely receives an update unless a catastrophic new threat becomes a major issue. Most recently, the KRACK vulnerability exposed serious shortcomings regarding WPA2 connections--a technology that has been in place since 2004. A new version of this technology called WPA3 has been introduced to combat the most recent threats and vulnerabilities, improving security considerably.

In the wake of the countless threats out there that can threaten your business, it’s more important than ever before to think about what your organization is doing to protect its data--and, by extension, its future. Depending on the current data backup solution your organization uses, it might be time to consider a change for the better.

The search for the right technology for your business sometimes becomes problematic because you either don’t have the necessary capital or operational leeway to integrate the latest and greatest solutions. For the company that needs an upgrade, and doesn’t exactly know what the next move is, consulting with an IT professional is a great option, and can turn your entire business around.

It’s important to think about how your organization manages its technology, especially in a world where businesses depend heavily on critical software and hardware solutions to stay functioning. Granted, getting the technology assistance you need can be difficult with a limited budget and workforce. Managed services can be a great alternative to your organization hiring and managing its own IT department, and they can even be used to augment your current IT administrators.

The Internet of Things might be a considerable step up in terms of connectivity for a lot of users and organizations, but this comes at a cost. With more devices accessing connected networks than ever before, security becomes a main focal point of discussion for the Internet of Things. How can you make sure that your network is secure while these devices run rampant all around you?

Starting a business is certainly no easy feat. It was likely a hassle just to get things up and running at a basic level. While most organizations that provide a product likely had to focus on getting that product to market, technology has begun to help aid this endeavor considerably. Unfortunately, it’s easy to fall into the trap that your organization uses too much technology--so much that it negatively affects your bottom line.

It’s not unusual for people to try and predict what the future will look like, but too many times when people try and predict what will happen in the future, the reality of what is happening today isn’t taken into account. Imagining the workplace (and workforce) of the future requires we look at where we are today, the pace of change, and what changes are expected. It may not go the way you envision, but the more empirical data you use to model what the future looks like, the less disappointed you’ll be when your imaginary benchmarks aren’t met.

Technology has changed the way that a lot of different industries approach operations, and academia is no different. Depending on the type of student, however, the use of technology differs and varies considerably. We’ll discuss how those in education take advantage of technology in ways that may have seemed so far away just a few decades ago.

If you think that working with the cloud doesn’t have risks, think again. It’s inevitable that you’ll face security compliance concerns when it comes to your cloud-based data. If your organization has data stored in a cloud-based environment, you’ll want to pay particularly close attention to how compliance laws affect the way that you access and store this information. How can you make sure that your cloud-based data isn’t in violation of some cloud compliance laws?

Data backup is a critical part of any business endeavor, because if you don’t have one all of your hard work could be taken away in an instant. It’s not great to think about, but your business’ infrastructure could be put at risk of sudden annihilation. With so much at risk, what is the best way to approach managing your data? There are a lot of options out there, but there is only one that will allow your organization to get back in action following a crippling data loss incident.

Productivity is a major consideration in any business environment - that’s largely why so many solutions designed for a business’ use focus on increasing productivity as much as possible. One method of doing so that many businesses have found effective is the adoption of Unified Communication and Collaboration solutions.