Why CEOs Must See Information Technology As Strategic

CEO Information Technology Strategy

For far too long, CEOs have seen information technology as a sunken cost that needs to be absorbed and reluctantly accepted. New platforms, upgrades, platform conversions, hardware, software and other technologies are a financial pain point that needs to be endured.

CEO Information Technology Strategy

However, for success today, company leaders need to take a completely different approach. Information technology should be viewed as essential for companies wanting to achieve their strategic goals. The premise that technology teams should just “keep the lights on,” upgrade the software and support the other business units is an outdated approach.

Who Is Responsible for Changing the CEO Mindset?

Some companies may have a CEO who profoundly understands the nuanced approach to technology that is imperative to achieve digital transformation. However, such leadership is rare today despite the growing reliance on disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning data analytics, automation and the Internet of Things.

That’s why the chief information officer’s role is increasingly critical. The CIO needs to be included in high-level strategic conversations to help shape the needs (for financial resources, technologies, systems and people), opportunities and desired outcomes. It’s also incumbent on the CIO to play an important role in educating, influencing and empowering the CEO.

According to a recent CIO.com article, CIOs need to help CEOs and other senior leaders in the following ways:

  • Having a keen understanding of new technologies, innovation trends and strategic opportunities
  • Working with leadership in tandem with vendors to co-create innovative solutions
  • Educating C-suite executives and board members about disruptive industry trends and possibilities
  • Introducing collaborative tools and self-service portals to reduce human capital costs.
  • Building innovation hubs that benefit the business
  • Championing digital business strategies at the industrial and organizational levels
  • Promoting a lean approach a la a start-up for fostering new products, services and ideas

What Work Should the CIOs Focus On To Change a CEO’s Mindset about Technology?

One of the most important tasks the CIO should focus on is understanding customers. Learning more about their needs, challenges, interactions and preferences will inform the CIO’s insights shared with the CEO. The CIO has to spend more time with customer-facing units, such as sales and marketing, learning about their needs and how the most effective salespeople and campaigns are built.

The key is getting out of the office. Yes, a CIO, especially of a small company, may be pulled into the weeds more often than they want, but time needs to be made for this outreach,

Why is it so important? The next time the CIO is in a strategy meeting or 1:1 with the CEO, they can provide insights on what directly impacts customers, backed up by data and IT knowledge.

CIOs should champion teams focused on innovation, development of new products and services and leveraging collected data.

CEOs are paying attention too.

“The proliferation of digital technology has given IT the ability to directly impact an organization’s bottom line,” said GE Digital CEO Bill Ruh.

“Smart CEOs now see IT not as a cost center but as a differentiator, a source of innovation, and an enabler of revenue growth and market differentiation,” notes a recent article. “As CEOs increasingly turn their attention to digital innovation as a top priority, they are counting on CIOs to drive it.”

What Are CEOs Asking of their CIOs?

“CEOs need CIOs to be more than service-oriented order takers. They expect IT leaders to work with business leaders to co-develop technology-related capabilities that will enable the business to innovate and grow,” notes Gartner in its 2019 CEO survey. A look at key data from that report shows just how much CEOs are starting to recognize the importance of IT. Consider:

  • A third of CEOs ranked IT-related priorities in their top 3
  • 49 percent of CEOs believe the business and technology sides of the business are equally responsible for the performance and quality of digital products and services
  • 47 percent of CEOs saw technology enablement as one of the top two ways to improve productivity

Korn Ferry survey of corporate technology offices illustrates the shift of roles and how CEOs value CIOs differently today. Among the findings:

  • 83 percent say their role is perceived as more strategic than it was 4 years ago
  • 81 percent say they have more exposure and play a more significant role with customers, products and services
  • 55 percent believe the CEO and board see the lead technology officer’s role as a revenue generator and not a cost center

The data are clear about the changing role. In a 2017 Harvey Nash/KPMG CIO survey, 62 percent of CIOs said they are a part of the executive team, compared to 38 percent in 2005. The likelihood that a CIO reports to the CEO rather than the CFO or someone else is increasing 10 percent annually.

CEOs today have an incredible opportunity to use ever-evolving technologies to change business models, introduce new products and services and deliver what customers crave. How? By understanding these technologies, elevating the CIO’s role and seeing IT as a revenue-generating part of the business.

What Are the Benefits of SD-WAN for Today’s Businesses?

SDWAN Technology

SDWAN Technology

Ensuring that you have a high-speed, highly reliable digital connection to the world is crucial for today’s technology leaders. Business professionals are now accustomed to near-instant access to the information and platforms that they need and are increasingly unwilling to accept less than perfection when it comes to infrastructure. Unfortunately, infrastructure can be extremely expensive to rework and often needs to be modified over time or as funds allow. When you make an upfront investment in technology such as SD-WAN (Software-Driven WAN) you can make significant gains in terms of deployment time as well as the appreciation of your business peers. These benefits will help describe why SD-WAN is increasingly the choice of organizations of all sizes who need to quickly, securely and reliably connect to the internet — and each other.

SD-WAN is Scalable and Flexible

Traditional networking infrastructure is considered extremely stable, but that stability could also be considered a downside when it is time to move or scale your organization. The high upfront cost of implementing MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) networking is primarily due to the hardware that is involved in creating an efficient flow of information between two or more locations. Data forwarding decisions with MPLS are made according to more rigid rules that drive packet-forwarding technology. Sure, MPLS is quite reliable with exceptionally low packet loss, but that efficiency is balanced with a relatively high bandwidth cost — a big problem considering today’s multimedia content, massive downloads and telecommunications needs.

By contrast, SD-WAN offers the potential of dramatically decreasing your ongoing operating costs in terms of bandwidth while also blurring the hard edges of your networking to allow for more flexible applications. Software-driven networking allows you to quickly and easily add new links without expensive changes to your hardware. Lower-priority traffic can be assigned to broadband internet to reduce the load on any legacy (and more expensive!) MPLS connections.

SD-WAN Offers Cloud-Level Security

Connecting remote offices securely with a fast connection has been difficult in the past, but SD-WAN is challenging that paradigm. Since the connections are cloud-based, this protocol easily supports SaaS applications — which are in increasing use in business today. Temporary work locations are more easily configured with added security that would have been quite challenging with aging, hardwired technology. Providing this type of unified communications platform provides for increased efficiency across the organization while providing employees with the geographic flexibility that they need to be successful. Users demand access to applications that network administrators would prefer to keep within their walled gardens, especially with the recent rise in cybercrime. Security spending is expected to top $113 billion by 2020, showing the ongoing commitment of technology teams to creating a secure and accessible infrastructure for the modern organization. SD-WAN has security baked right in, providing end-to-end encryption that requires all endpoints and devices to be fully authenticated before they are able to access the secure network.

SD-WAN Improves Branch Uptime

Network infrastructure has traditionally been more structured and mechanical, often requiring expert technicians to schedule downtime for the organization in order to make necessary updates. That means that unscheduled downtime is much more prevalent than with a software-based solution for packet routing. Human error is easily the top cause due to manual configuration errors according to a study from Avaya, often resulting in revenue loss and even the loss of jobs. SD-WAN implementations are considered less brittle due to the availability of zero-touch provisioning that reduces the costly manual touchpoints. The reduction in moving parts and touchpoints not only saves expensive technician time for reconfiguration but reduces the possibility of outages and the need for break-fix solutions.

SD-WAN Improves Network Automation

Technology leaders are always on the search for better-faster-cheaper: the trifecta that always seems to be out of reach. However, SD-WAN provides a much more attractive layer for network automation than the more rigid structures of the past. Creating an overlay allows IT network administrators to enhance productivity by automating tasks such as monitoring for the optimal connection for each portion of network traffic. Any changes to the network configuration can be centralized and easily distributed — adding to the overall performance of the system. This allows the network to be adaptable in the utilization of expensive resources. Through overlay networking, you’re able to create a discrete, virtualized trust overlay network by creating a virtual tunnel between two points that runs through the network. Each point in the network is tagged, allowing two trusted points to recognize each other and create that virtual connection that speeds data along the path without the need to physically create a connection.

With technology spending on security on the rise and the added need for high-speed connectivity, SD-WAN seems to step into the void left by high-end physical networks by providing a more flexible, scalable — and affordable — connection option for businesses today.

Top Questions CFOs Have Regarding Backup & Business Continuity

CFO Disaster Recovery

If your organization is large enough to have a CFO, it surely has some kind of backup and business continuity plan in place. Do you understand how this system works? More importantly, is the system your business has in place actually sufficient to protect you in the event of a disaster? These are questions every business needs to ask, and you as the CFO need to be a part of that conversation. To get prepared, here are a few of the top questions CFOs have regarding backup and business continuity, answered.

CFO Disaster Recovery

 

Aren’t Backups Enough?

The short answer is no. The longer answer gets into the wide range of backup formats. On-site backups are a part of the solution, but they don’t protect against natural disasters or physical site breaches. Off-site backups have their limitations, too. The farther away the site, the more logistically challenging data transfer and physical storage can become. On the other hand, if the off-site backup is just down the street, it may be just as vulnerable to the natural disaster that hit your business.

Is the Cloud the Answer?

Cloud backups are a great new innovation in the industry, but they alone won’t save your business, either. Restoring from a cloud backup takes serious bandwidth, and bandwidth could be an issue following a catastrophe. Consider that not all business disasters are natural. If your business suffers a crippling cyber attack, cloud backups may complicate the restoration process.

What is Backup and Disaster Recovery?

Backup and disaster recovery, sometimes shortened to just backup disaster recovery or BDR, is the term for a comprehensive system that includes both data backup and a disaster recovery plan. These two components are designed to work in tandem, allowing a business to remain operational through or quickly restart operations following a disaster. Having a strong BDR plan is the real solution for backups and business continuity.

Backups in BDR

The backup component of your BDR plan should be multifaceted. Most companies benefit from having at least two forms of backup: on- or off-site as well as cloud backup. With backups, redundancy is a desirable feature, not a place to cut costs. Storage drives (whether at your location or in some server farm far away) can fail without warning.

Disaster Recovery in BDR

The disaster recovery component is just as crucial as the backup component. This is security planning, in a nutshell. If your physical office building gets wiped out by a natural disaster, you need more than your data. You need replacement computers, servers, and networks to use that data on, not to mention a place to do that work. Your disaster recovery plan finds the solution to these problems. Develop a recovery time objective, a measurement of the amount of time you’ll need to resume operations. From there, build out a plan for sourcing equipment and facilities.

Your disaster recovery plan is closely tied to your business continuity plan, which outlines how essential functions will keep running or be restored.

What Does a BDR System Accomplish for the Business?

Implementing an effective BDR system has many advantages for your business, including faster recovery time, lower risk, and lower costs.

Faster Recovery

Your business’s recovery time will be much shorter if you have both a detailed plan for what to do in the event of a disaster and a complete, usable backup of all critical systems. There’s no real way to put an exact figure on it, but working a plan is always going to turn out better than winging it, especially when in disaster mode.

Lower Risk

Every step you take toward a well-planned BDR system lowers your business risk. Having an on-site backup is safer than having none. Having on-site paired with off-site is safer still. Adding cloud backup to the mix does the same. Similarly, the more thorough your disaster recovery plan, the lower your risk.

It may sound overly simple, but “be prepared” is a pretty great motto. No business can completely mitigate all risk, but implementing a BDR system lowers your business’s risk profile greatly.

Lower Costs

Companies implementing BDR systems often contract with managed services firms to create and/or execute those systems. It’s worth taking a look at what’s available. You may find that your costs with a managed service provider are lower than the costs of building a BDR in-house.

Even if you determine monetary costs aren’t lower, there’s also an opportunity cost to consider. How confident are you in your in-house plan (or the team that built it)? Is that team made up of dedicated experts, or is everyone involved working just a bit outside their expertise? There is a real opportunity cost to not getting this right. Contracting with a quality MSP reduces the risk of missed opportunities due to an overly long outage or recovery.

Conclusion

If you haven’t yet implemented a BDR system, it’s time to do so. If you need help developing or implementing a BDR at your firm, contact us to get started.

How to Share Screens with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams

 

Microsoft Teams is an amazingly powerful collaboration tool that’s available as a part of the Microsoft Office suite.
At its core, it’s kind of like Slack on steroids, but that core functionality is just the tip of the iceberg. Because it’s integrated with the rest of Microsoft Office, it has so many powerful features.

One feature area in Microsoft Teams is the ability to host and join virtual meetings. Users can join or host meetings from desktop or mobile. Mobile users can share files with the group, and we covered that in a previous post. Desktop users can share screens with other users, and with a surprising degree of control. Here’s how to take advantage of this feature.

Step 1: Create a Meeting

The Share Screens feature works from within the Meetings function, so the first step is to create or join a meeting. Locate the tabs bar (usually on the left side), where you’ll see icons like Activity, Chat, Teams, Meetings, and Files. Select Meetings, and then create a meeting (or join a meeting that someone else is hosting). The Meetings tab is tied into your Outlook calendar, allowing you to see potential conflicts.

Quick note: Teams features can be enabled or disabled at the enterprise level. If you don’t see a Meetings tab at all, your IT department hasn’t enabled it yet. Contact IT and plead your case for enabling this awesome feature.

Step 2: Click the Share Button

Once the meeting is in progress, you’ll see a series of buttons in the bottom middle of your screen. If you don’t see them, move your mouse to that location to make them show up. You’ll see buttons for video (if enabled), microphone (for muting yourself), ending the call, and more. The one you want looks like a rectangle with an upward arrow. This button, aptly named the Share button, represents screen sharing. Click it to continue.

Step 3: Choose What to Share

Screen sharing isn’t exactly new technology, but the implementation here is particularly well done. When you click the Share button, Teams doesn’t immediately share your entire screen. Instead, you have options. “Desktop” allows you to share one of your desktops. “Window” lets you choose a single window or app to share. “PowerPoint” shares the presentation you choose. There are even more options available under “Browse”.

Conclusion

This level of granular control makes screen sharing in Teams a killer feature, and there’s so much more that Teams can do for you. Team-based chat, productivity tools, and real-time collaboration on nearly any Office file are a few more ways it can help. If you’re ready to keep exploring, contact us to keep learning.

Microsoft Teams

Is The CFO Today’s Technology Champion?

CFO Tech Champion

CFO Tech Champion

It’s always been important for the C-suite to understand the cost benefits and value associated with technology projects, but today’s complex infrastructure needs are requiring greater levels of input from financial executives, in particular. Technology spends are increasing dramatically, and there’s a need to balance the shorter-term benefits of specific tactics with the long-term strategies that will help move the organization forward. The days of technology teams making do with the funding that they are allowed are over, as technology becomes more tightly intertwined with business strategy. It is crucial that the big dollars invested in technology and innovation are tied to true business value in a way that can be communicated throughout the organization — making the CFO an integral part of the decision-making when it comes to determining the IT spend.

Funding Sustainable Growth

Technology is advancing at an unbelievable rate, with new software applications and methods of reaching customers coming at breakneck speed. Making several poor decisions around technology can create a miasma of problems that can take years to resolve, but that risk is mitigated when financial leaders work closely with technology teams to ensure that there are adequate measures and milestones in place. CFOs must ensure that the organization has the funds available to budget for items that are critical for continued business operations that support corporate strategy and sustainable growth initiatives. This has to be balanced with the additional risk that can be assumed by waiting for “something better” (an application, a way of controlling data or reduced legislation) to come along. According to Gartner, worldwide IT spending is set to reach $3.8 trillion this year, with ongoing increases in spending attributed to IoT, shifting on-premise computing to the cloud, software applications and maintenance fees. With this shift comes a fundamental change in the way technology dollars are budgeted: from capital expenditures to a SaaS model that is billed as an operating expense.

Aligning Technology Spend with Strategic Initiatives

Starting with the strategic initiatives of the business and slotting in technology where needed may be the way CIOs and CTOs are familiar with budgeting, but the new paradigm requires additional work. The risk potential of having business systems vulnerable to a cyberattack is an ongoing concern and one that can require a significant amount of spending in any given year. Data silos are being broken down and consolidated as older legacy systems reach their sunset years. This tension between supporting an often-aging infrastructure and providing a stable base for the future creates a need for creative budgeting throughout the organization. Having the CFO work with technology executives can help bring greater visibility to the IT needs of the organization and how they align with specific strategic initiatives.

Constantly Examining Technology ROI

Part of the budgeting process involves being intentional about determining business ROI for the various technology initiatives and being unafraid to boldly cut or fund projects based on the changing needs of the business. New threats occur on a regular basis — as well as new opportunities to seize dominance in a particular market. Having the flexibility to pivot and create revenue may require a continual review of the various projects as well as a fundamentally different approach to what have traditionally been multi-year IT projects. Vigorously defending projects that no longer provide business ROI can put a major drain on limited organizational resources, especially in light of changing features and functionality for even the most stable business platforms.

Now more than ever, CFOs must have a solid understanding of the business value that IT projects plan to deliver and a solid review of milestones. This shared responsibility with CIOs and CTOs creates not only a greater accord in financial decisions but also a deeper understanding of the value that various projects have for the entire business.

What Role Must The CMO Play In Technology Decisions?

CMO Technology

CMO Technology

The role of the CMO has been evolving at a rapid pace in recent years due to the constant addition of new marketing technologies or martech. You only have to compare the tech budgets of marketing departments today to those five years ago to see a drastic increase in spending.

Companies know that they need to embrace and leverage the right martech to remain competitive, and they are willing to invest substantial sums to do so. That leaves companies and key decision makers with a challenging question: What kind of role should the CMO play in tech decisions? The answer depends on the industry vertical, but there is an overall trend that is worth paying attention to. With each passing year, CMOs are becoming more and more involved in tech decisions.

How Involved Should CMOs Be in Tech Decisions?

To understand the answer to this question, we need to look at a few different factors. These include:

The Changing Role of CMOs

The traditional CMO role was already filled with important decisions. Chief Marketing Officers have always been responsible for things like brand management, communications, campaigns and advertising. But today, with the rise of data-driven decisions—which offer more predictability and accuracy than opinions ever could—the role of the CMO has had to evolve to encompass more and more tech.

Consider the options for understanding the customer experience available to marketing teams today:

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • Big Data
  • Marketing Automation
  • Internet of Things (IoT)
  • And more…

Incorporating these tools into the company’s marketing mission requires a whole new skillset that includes customer service, data analysis, user experience (UX) and more. Of course, not all CMOs need to be experts in any one of these particular areas, but they do need to know how to manage and organize professionals who do understand these areas to fully realize the potential of their marketing efforts.

The Importance of Company Objectives

If you have recently found yourself feeling overwhelmed with the number of tech tools available, you have some idea of what it feels like to be a CMO in today’s tech-heavy environment. A visit to your favorite app store will give you the opportunity to pick from sometimes thousands of apps to accomplish the same goal, whatever that goal may be. And while the martech options available to CMOs are perhaps less numerous, they are also being pushed by sales people on a daily basis—so CMOs are being constantly bombarded with new “solutions” that are touted as the newest answer to common problems. Even more confusing, there are plenty of martech offerings that are more like solutions looking for problems than the other way around.

One of the key ways that CMOs can avoid overwhelm when it comes to martech is to always keep company objectives at the forefront of their minds. The company objectives can vary by organization, but most marketing organizations are focused on things like Market Presence, Revenue Growth and Efficiency. These goals can be more easily achieved using the right martech, but not all tech tools are going to offer significant benefit in the seeking of such goals.

Company objectives offer a guiding light in the complex world of martech. CMOs, above all others in the marketing organization, need to remain aware of company objectives and ensure that the tech budget is utilized as efficiently as possible—on technologies that will achieve measurable progress towards the achievement of the goals of the company.

CMOs Can Use Data to Drive Tech Decisions—Especially if They Ask Questions

One of the best ways CMOs can target the tech that is right for their organization is to utilize data in the decision making process. And that does not mean the CMO needs to be an expert in data analysis, either. They just need a team that can help them understand the data that they are looking at. Subjective decisions are not necessary—at least not in most cases—with the use of the right data.

The secret to utilizing data is to ask questions, as many questions as necessary to gain an understanding of what you are looking at. Over time, a CMO can come to understand quite complex concepts as he or she repeatedly comes into contact with them. But as with any new information, the fastest way to gain an understanding is to ask questions. It can be difficult at first for someone in a position of authority to admit that they do not know something right off the bat, but eventually asking questions becomes easy.

While it may not be apparent initially, employees will feel respect for the leader that is willing to admit a lack of understanding and ask for help. After all, the employee gains a sense of value when they can help higher-ups and the company as a whole with their knowledge.

CMOs Should Be an Integral Part of Tech Decisions

Ultimately, CMOs should strive to be an integral part of tech decisions in the company. They should work with their team, as well as with other key decision makers like the CIO and CTO, to guide the company in the right direction.

Pick the Perfect Meeting Location Using Outlook Mobile

Microsoft Outlook Mobile

 

Microsoft’s Office suite makes it easy to schedule meetings, reserving the right room and inviting all the right people. Many people think they can only use these powerful features from their office computer, because Exchange calendar integration in iOS doesn’t support these features. In reality, mobile users can still access these powerful scheduling features using Outlook Mobile. Here’s how.

Step 1: Create a New Event

Open your Outlook Mobile and create a new event. To do this, tap on the calendar tab along the bottom of the app. Next, press the big plus sign in the lower right corner. (As always, locations can change over time and depending on device. You’re likely to find a calendar page and a plus sign somewhere, though—use them.)

Step 2: Name Event, Add Attendees, and Set Date and Time

Choose a name for your meeting in the first field, and add all the people you want to attend the meeting in the second one. For the latter, just start typing names. Outlook Mobile will pull up relevant contact information. Click on the contacts you want to include.

Note: Depending on your configuration settings, Outlook Mobile may offer you multiple options for some contacts. If you have a personal and a work version of a contact, for example, be sure you choose the right one. Do the same if you have a single contact with multiple email addresses associated.

Before moving to step 3, check that the date and time information is set correctly. You can change this later, but setting it up now allows the magic below to work properly.

Step 3: Click Location

Next, tap the “location” field a little bit lower on the screen. This is where the magic happens. Outlook Mobile will intelligently suggest connected meeting rooms that you use frequently and that are free for your selected time. It will also suggest places nearby, which is useful if you’re calling an off-site meeting. Outlook Mobile learns from you, too: the more you use it, the smarter its suggestions become.

If you don’t see a suitable location listed, you can search for a better one. This can be an on-site meeting room or any mappable location.

If you and your meeting attendees have “Time to Leave” enabled in settings, Outlook Mobile will even notify you a few minutes before you need to leave your current location to get to the meeting on time. One-touch directions are available directly in the calendar event, too.

Wrap Up

This is just one of many powerful yet overlooked features in Outlook Mobile. To learn more or for help with other IT questions, contact us today.

Microsoft Outlook Mobile

5 Crucial Elements to Training Your Employees in Optimal Cyber Security

Cyber Security Training

Cyber Security Training

Cyber attackers are highly motivated to obtain or corrupt your company’s data. But whether their motivation is to steal your funds outright, hold your data for ransom, practice espionage, or simply disrupt your business, most hackers cannot access your network without an “in.”

In other words, they require a login, personal access codes, or network access through malware to initialize their breach. Unfortunately, a recent report released by Verizon has concluded that 93% of the time, a cyber attacker’s “in” comes to them in the form of a social engineering attack on your employees.

The only way to prevent such breaches in your security is with proper cybersecurity training.

What is a social engineering attack?

Social engineering attacks are frankly less high-tech than traditional cyber attacks by highly knowledgeable tech criminals. In other words, they don’t require the extensive knowledge and tools needed to directly hack a highly protected computer system out of nowhere.

Social engineering attacks are more like street scams — only they’re usually done online or sometimes, over the phone. These scams use human psychology to fool individuals into willingly giving up sensitive information. In the case of your business, the targets are your employees.

There are several types of these attacks, including “phishing” and “pretexting,” which are quite similar and often go hand-in-hand. Phishing emails, however, remain the most common type of social engineering scam.

What are phishing emails?

In short, a phishing scam might be an email sent to the employees of your company that looks legitimate. It might (appear to) be from the employee’s bank, for example. It might request that your employee “click here” and login to (what looks like) the bank website so that the bank can “update your information” or “confirm your identity.”

A phishing email might also promise something to the recipient: “Here’s your free 50% off coupon! Click here!” or use a so-called emergency to illicit fear: “Someone has hacked your account. Click here to get it back.”

If your employee does indeed click on the malicious link of a phishing email, they will likely be taken to a blank or uninteresting page. In the meantime, however, the link click will have initiated the installation of malware onto the employee’s computer. This malware then enables the hacker to obtain sensitive information or disrupt or damage your company’s data.

How can company’s prevent phishing scams?

The reputational implications of any type of security breach — even one that doesn’t actually corrupt or steal your data or funds — can be enormous. Of course, it goes without saying that if you are caught in the crosshairs of a data ransom or cyber theft, the financial implications will be equally devastating.

As we’ve learned from the Verizon report, most security breaches are linked with phishing. Therefore, cybersecurity training for your employees is the best preventive solution you have for stopping security breaches before they start.

Employee training is not expensive, yet it is highly effective. Your employees should learn the following throughout their ongoing training:

  • How to identify a range of phishing and pretexting scams
  • How to proceed should they find an email, phone call, or social request suspicious
  • Your company’s strict policies and procedures for communication (for example, “We would never send emails requesting personal information from our employees as this would only be done in person.”)
  • Notice of increased risks for phishing scams around the holidays
  • Notice of the most recent and common scams currently trending

Cybersecurity training should be frequent and come at regular intervals throughout the year as attack strategies often come randomly in spurts and habitually change tactics.

While cybersecurity training is your best line of defense when it comes to phishing and security breaches, it’s also important to hire a reputable IT managed service provider (MSP) to handle your network and security. Your MSP should have experience and broad skill in protecting their clients from network breaches. Contact qualified MSPs in your area today to learn more about protecting your business from cyber attacks.

Here’s What You Need to Know About SD-WAN Technology

SDWAN

SDWAN

Moving from hardware solutions to software solutions isn’t a new concept for technology professionals, but network infrastructure has traditionally been a hardware-focused world even as applications move to the cloud. With the introduction of SD-WAN, or Software-Defined Wide Area Networks, IT professionals find themselves needing to retool their understanding of flexible networks and security. The MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) has been in use for decades and is an extremely reliable — yet pricey — option for connectivity. Today’s SD-WAN provides the modern organization with the flexibility, scalability, security and efficiency needed to stay competitive in a fast-changing world.

The Basics of SD-WAN

At its most basic, you can think of SD-WAN as a way to tie together a variety of disparate networks as it is equally efficient with internal as well as external internet and even cloud-based applications. Instead of a more rigid WAN network, SD-WAN allows you to configure your network quickly from a centralized location, reducing the potential of human error that can bring your network to its knees and productivity to a screeching halt. Since all variables are driven by software that you configure, this structure can be quickly scaled and new remote locations added without requiring an intense investment in time and physical hardware or redesign.

How Do You Manage a Software-Defined Network?

A key value that you gain when you shift to an SD-WAN is the ability to make shifts locally as well as globally from a centralized dashboard. This makes changes swifter, but also helps protect your network by ensuring that universal security standards are applied at all locations equally. Using an SD-WAN configuration gives you the added benefit of consolidated troubleshooting and error reporting so you can quickly identify any trouble spots or network hotspots and shift resources as needed to add speed and efficiency to your network — something that users are sure to appreciate, even if they never realize it is happening.

What Are the Business Benefits of SD-WAN?

Upgrading your network from a more restrictive model to SD-WAN has a variety of benefits for your organization. While some of these gains are realized upfront, others will continue to add value to your organization over time.

  • The cost of connectivity using an SD-WAN is less expensive than traditional MPLS, an especially important point when you consider the bandwidth-heavy applications that business users require.
  • While there is a high level of expertise required for upfront configuration of a software-defined network, ongoing changes are less intensive and can potentially save you consulting fees in the future.
  • Your business users will appreciate that network availability is high because there is no need to take the network down to make configuration changes or upgrades.
  • Your technology team is able to define networking rules in the language of business — SLAs, security restraints, apps and users — making the network easier to understand and maintain in the future.
  • With Gartner noting that nearly 25% of businesses will utilize SD-WAN in 2019, there is a growing body of knowledge within the IT community that makes it easier to find resources to support your network infrastructure. The SD-WAN market is expected to grow to $1.3 billion by 2020.
  • Cloud-based applications continue to emerge in all sectors of business, and it can be challenging to protect these applications without a consolidated hub of security rules. SD-WAN allows everything from SaaS to traditional connections to be covered under the same business rules.
  • Branches and remote workers will appreciate having access to the same high quality of connection that they enjoy at the office, instead of having to deal with restrictive security procedures and application latency.

Instead of relying on the hardware to make decisions about connections speed and connections as with MPLS, SD-WAN makes agile decisions about the best way to connect users and the data or applications that they need to access.

What Type of Business Benefits from SD-WAN?

While there are many benefits of SD-WAN, there is one downside that can be a deal-breaker for certain organizations. Software-Defined WAN does provide extremely reliable uptime, but there can be more packet loss than you would see with a hardware-based network. In this case, you may want to consider a hybrid infrastructure that lets you gain the benefits of SD-WAN for the majority of your applications yet maintains any heavy applications that simply cannot abide packet loss on a more traditional MPLS. The majority of organizations are looking for ways to reduce their cost of connectivity and have very heavy use of their internet or intranet connections — making SD-WAN ideal. Businesses that are growing quickly or expanding into new regions are also likely to see gains from making the switch.

Many organizations are seeing that shifting to an SD-WAN model may help them future-proof their business by creating a flexible, scalable and secure model that can grow with their business. From the reduced cost of connections to the high availability environment, it’s clear that the conversation around SD-WAN will not be going away in technology groups around the world.

Small Business Guide to Protecting Critical Data

Small Business data protection guide

Small businesses technology and business leaders may feel as though their data is safe, but nothing could be further from the truth. According to SmallBizTrends.com, nearly 43% of phishing campaigns are targeted specifically at small businesses, a dramatic increase from 18% in 2011. Unfortunately, a 2017 report from Keeper Security also shows that the greatest cybersecurity threat to small businesses is their employees, with more than 54% of data breaches caused by employee or contractor negligence. Protecting the data within your organization is crucial, and the costs that are associated with a data breach continue to rise. Small businesses are increasingly focused on ways to mitigate the risk associated with data storage and use and that often starts with having a comprehensive backup and data recovery process in place. Here are some suggestions from industry leaders on how to protect your critical small business data from a cyber attack or other loss of access.

Importance of Immediate Data Access

Your business data is arguably your most important digital asset and one that is accessed hundreds or even thousands of times each day. Your employees utilize business data from a variety of systems to look up customer orders, create POs and track shipments while consumers are online placing orders and tracking status. Until you truly experience a major loss of data access, you may not realize the crippling effect that it would have on your organization’s operations.

Dangers of Data Loss

The first hit that you would feel with the loss of access to your data is in the productivity of your teams. Workflows grind to a halt as employees scramble to figure out how to perform their daily activities without access to the information that they take for granted. In many businesses, the data stored within your CRM or other data repository is driving your website, meaning ordering comes to a crashing halt should the secure connection to your data falter. Technology teams scramble to figure out where the problem lies, putting all other IT needs on the back burner for the foreseeable future. Plus, your team may need to call in consultants to help identify a breach and begin remediation as quickly as possible. If your team identifies that a breach has occurred, you may have to report to customers and stakeholders that sensitive data has been accessed by unauthorized parties. This can devolve into trust issues with your business, negative publicity and ongoing loss of revenue even while you’re attempting to return to operational readiness.

Data Consolidation Makes Protection Easier

Business data structures often grow organically, with additional databases and information structures added over time. While this may make sense as you’re bolting systems together, eventually it can become an unruly tangle of disparate systems that makes security and data integrity more challenging for your teams. A regular review of business systems with an eye towards data consolidation is a project well worth considering as your timeline permits. It’s often helpful to work with a trusted technology partner to ensure that you are considering all the options that are available for the security of your data both in transit and at rest.

Protecting Business-Critical Data

There are a variety of protections that you can put in place to maintain both access to your data as well as its integrity. Creating a robust backup and disaster recovery process allows your team to define the best case scenario for data backups — local only, short-term local with a regional cloud-based backup or cloud only. There are dozens of different ways you can configure your backup process, but what’s important is that it meets the needs of your business both now and in the future. When you have a documented backup and disaster recovery process in place and test it on a regular basis, you have added peace of mind that your small business data is protected and quickly accessible in the event of a cyberattack or natural disaster.

Assessing and Managing Cybersecurity Risks

As your business matures, it’s imperative that you create a review schedule to assess and manage your cybersecurity risks. This includes everything from monitoring employee activity logs to protecting passwords to educating staff members and contractors against tapping, clicking or interacting with suspicious website content or email attachments. Data encryption, email and web filters and the regular application of patches to your servers and applications can also help reduce the risk of a cyberattack on your small business. Sometimes, the challenge is as simple as assuring that you have redundancies on your power supply so you don’t run the risk of losing servers during a power surge. Other remediation issues can be much more intensive, but putting together a full list of options helps you understand and ultimately reduce the risk to your organization.

Your data is being bombarded with threats on all sides, and it’s up to your technology team to help protect your organization. Creating a robust backup and disaster recovery plan with a trusted technology partner can help you walk through an audit of all pertinent systems and quickly identify problems that can be resolved quickly and define a strategy for ongoing review and support. Without access to your data and business information systems, you can quickly find that your organization is grinding to a slow and painful halt.