9 Meeting Tips for Using Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams Meeting

9 Meeting Tips for Using Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a simple, yet effective tool for hosting meetings. It has both audio and video capabilities as well as a chat feature. It can handle conference calls and one on one meetings, with members of your organization as well as guests. Plus, it has a convenient chat feature that can be used to share documents and spreadsheets. Here are a few tips for using Teams effectively in meetings.

Microsoft Teams Meeting

  • Send Invites through E-mail: Anyone in your organization who has access to your company communications can be easily searched and added when you create a new meeting. But if you’d like to add someone from outside of the organization, all you have to do is enter their email when you create an event or add it later on. They will receive an invitation in their inbox that will allow them to enter the meeting when it starts.
  • Admit Guests from the Lobby: Members of your organization who are invited to the meeting will be able to join automatically when it starts. But those who are not must be admitted. When guests enter the meeting, they will be placed in the lobby to await your admittance. You will receive a notification and see them waiting in the lobby – all you have to do is click the checkmark next to their name and they will be able to enter the meeting.
  • Keep the Noise to a Minimum: Conference calls can get noisy. A loud air conditioner or nescient conversations in the background of one guest’s location can disrupt the entire call. Attendees can mute themselves while others are talking to reduce interference. Or if one particular guest is not complying with the request, as the host you can mute them.
  • Make Sure Guests Download Teams: To join a Teams meeting, guests must download the app or browser extension. It’s free to download and doesn’t require any fancy plugins. But guests may be confused if you don’t make them aware that the call is being conducted through an app.
  • Decide on an Audio or Video Call: Teams has video capabilities as well as audio. It may be awkward for some if they are not aware that they will be visible during the meeting if it’s a video call. So, to make things run smoothly decide beforehand whether a video call is necessary and make sure everyone is on the same page.
  • Share Documents in the Chat During a Call: The chat feature allows you to seamlessly share and view documents and text communications while on a call. If you have an important memo or chart you want everyone to see, simply drop it in the chat and participants can view it without leaving the call.
  • Join with Audio Conferencing: Teams is generally run through Wi-Fi, but if you or a guest is in an area with limited internet access, you can always join a call through audio conferencing. Audio conferencing allows members to dial in manually using their phone line. Those who have audio conferencing available will see dial-in instructions provided alongside the meeting info.
  • Record Your Teams Meetings: Teams has a recording function if you want a video of the meeting to reference or transcribe. All you have to do is select the “…” button in the meeting and press record. But keep in mind, you may want to make participants aware that they are being recorded, so no one feels uncomfortable.
  • Share Selected Applications: Teams allows you to share selected applications with meeting participants, rather than your entire desktop. So, if you want to show your browser, but not your email, you can do so with application sharing.

Teams is a powerful app and there are a variety of innovative yet simple features you can play around with. Employ these tips in your next meeting to increase your productivity and efficiency.

What’s New With Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms

What’s New With Microsoft Forms

Microsoft Forms gives you a plethora of features to utilize to your advantage. It easily creates useful documentation for your business and is accessible to virtually everyone in your organization. Forms integrate well with many other Microsoft Office products, including Outlook, and it is completely free to use. Microsoft Forms makes it possible to organize documents, create tracking data, and support large-scale projects — and in today’s dynamic business environment, nothing is more important than data collected and analyzed. Microsoft Forms is an essential piece of software that transforms the way we work by connecting everyone into a collaborative environment.

With its many features, Microsoft Forms makes it easy to visualize real-time data and use an automated form of predictive analytics to capture rapid insight. Customization allows users to create forms that fit their own needs. Businesses use Microsoft Forms for more than just keeping track of data; they use it to implement customer research and manage their various social media presences. Sales teams can collect and organize all of their prospecting surveys and then store and analyze the results of their data collections to the cloud.

Businesses can use Microsoft Forms tools to survey employees, gather feedback, and even ask for advice on projects and other key decisions. Many businesses also use it to share interactive quizzes that allow them to create proprietary data stores, which they can then mine for insights.

Data Visualization

Another great benefit of the Microsoft Forms tool is visualized data. Once the form data has been collected, the online software converts it into graphs and charts that make your data more accessible and easy for others to interpret. Easy data visualization is at the core of Microsoft Forms, and what they have can be seen as an upgrade over other top survey tools.

There are also advanced analytics capabilities along with an impressively professional user interface. With all of these upgrades over other online survey alternatives, it becomes clear why Microsoft Survey has been gaining so much traction. Microsoft Forms allows for handling multiple surveys at a time. This not only makes it easier to gather data, but it also makes it a better tool to manage your surveys. Quizzes can handle complex functionalities, even when built from scratch, due to the modular user interface and extensible components that the software affords.

Microsoft Forms in the Classroom

Forms are set to become a vital, fundamental, and integral tool for ensuring that students are continually up to date with the world around them. Using Microsoft Forms, students can conduct transactions, undertake research, and apply real-time data to various tasks. In addition to taking advantage of all the Office Online tools and bringing with it the power of Office Web Apps, Forms sports new features that help with collecting surveys during specific time periods, retrieving input from third-party software, and integrating it with Microsoft Teams — another platform that is gaining an impressive following from the academic community.

One of the powers of Microsoft Forms lies in its ability to bridge student needs from both web, email, and text, facilitating communication along with the data that drives it. With Microsoft Forms, students can maintain private electronic environments — which comes in handy for classes run by the same institution. The software is slowly becoming the standard for student needs, and as such, it is imperative that students effectively utilize Microsoft Forms when interacting with external and unstructured data sources. By staying synced online in an isolated cloud environment, students can also use Microsoft Forms for composing collaborative survey documents, a practice that students have used as a vital tool for research purposes.

As Microsoft continues to fit their needs, a growing number of students will continue to get the most out of their academic careers by utilizing the platform’s features.

Microsoft Forms

Beware: COVID-19 Vaccine News May Lead to New Wave of Phishing

COVID 19 Vaccine

COVID-19 Vaccine Related Phishing and How You Can Protect Your Organization

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to claim lives across the globe and infection rates continue to soar, scientists are continually looking for a solution to end the world’s suffering. In the past weeks, vaccine manufacturers, such as Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, have published encouraging results from the last stages of their vaccine trials, giving the world a glimpse of hope.

However, with all these vaccines that have been developed and those in their final stages, none has been officially released for mass consumption. As the population continues to get overwhelmed with pandemic fatigue and scientists get closer to developing a real vaccine, cybercriminals are now using the developed vaccines as a ploy in their extortion activities.

COVID 19 Vaccine

What are phishing emails?

Phishing is a form of social engineering often used by cybercriminals to trick their targets into providing them with their personal information and account data. Once this information is obtained, these malicious actors use the targets’ credentials or install malware into their systems to obtain data. Phishing is carried out via text messages, instant messages, social media messaging platforms, phone calls, or email. However, phishing emails are the most common. The recipient of the email is usually tricked into clicking on a malicious link, which may lead to the installation of malware that may obtain sensitive information or freeze the recipient’s system as a way to deny services as part of a cyberattack.

At the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, these emails came in different forms with luring subject lines such as:

  • What to do if you have come into contact with someone with COVID-19.
  • Free COVID-19 testing emails.
  • Advice on what to do if you have violated COVID-19 health protocols.

The main aim of these emails was to exploit the anxiety surrounding the pandemic. With the vaccine in sight and the topic naturally arousing excitement and attention, these emails are now being tailored to announce the promise of COVID-19 vaccines.

How can you identify phishing emails? As an organization, you have probably already started seeing vaccine-themed phishing emails or may expect to start seeing these emails in the next few weeks. But how exactly do you distinguish these fake emails from verified ones to protect your employees and ultimately protect your organization’s systems?

Here are several tips to help you identify phishing emails:

  1. Legitimate companies don’t request sensitive information via email: The chances are that if you receive an email purporting to be from a legitimate institution that provides you with an attachment or link and asks you to provide sensitive data, it’s a scam. Most verified organizations don’t send emails asking for credit card information, account usernames and passwords.
  2. Legitimate companies don’t send unsolicited links or attachments: Unexpected emails that contain links and attachments reek of hackers. Authentic organizations don’t randomly send you emails with links or attachments; they usually direct you to their websites.
  3. Look out for spelling errors: The easiest way to recognize a phishing email is terrible grammar. Emails from a verified organization are usually well-written.
  4. Legitimate companies have domain emails: Don’t only check the name of the person sending you the email, also check the email address. Most companies use their domain email addresses when sending out emails. However, this is not a foolproof method of identifying phishing emails.

How can you protect your organization against phishing attacks?

To protect your organization from phishing attacks, you need to practice vigilance. Training your employees on what to look out for when it comes to distinguishing phishing emails goes a long way toward protecting your organization from malicious attacks.

The following pointers will help to mitigate risks for phishing attacks:

  • Use two-factor or multifactor authentication methods to add an extra verification layer when logging in to sensitive applications.
  • Integrate firewalls to establish a barrier between your internal network and incoming traffic from external sources to block malicious traffic.
  • Keep all your software and applications updated.
  • Install security software such as antivirus, antispyware and anti-malware programs to help detect and remove malicious programs.
  • Enable email filtering to filter out incoming emails for phishing content and automatically move them to a separate folder.

No matter how secure your company’s network is, it only takes one reckless employee to fall victim to a phishing attack and send your company’s data into the hands of cybercriminals. Your employees need to understand and be able to recognize phishing emails to protect your organization.

Microsoft Teams and the Future of Video Calling

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams and the Future of Video Calling

Microsoft Teams is a free cross-platform collaboration software that focuses on users, enabling great collaboration with teammates and customers across any device and empowering customers to work faster. Teams aims to propel traditional productivity experiences to the future, giving all kinds of teams a purpose and a reason to stand alone from other software. Team members set their own notifications based on their roles and priorities, so they never get too few or too many messages in their inbox. This flexibility to prioritize notifications with peers and outside users will be appreciated by anyone on your team, and it encourages trust, collaboration, and increased productivity. The Microsoft Teams alert feature alerts team members when necessary, and you can assign a timer to notifications, helping you better manage the number of people and alerts by priority.

Microsoft Teams

Why Microsoft Teams Integrations

Teams has thought long and hard about their integration with Microsoft Office 365. This implementation is available at no extra cost. Teams also integrates with other popular tools from Microsoft, such as Skype, Slack, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and OneNote. This flexibility helps make collaboration and communication easy and available to everyone on your team that uses other Microsoft products. Team members set their own notifications based on their roles and priorities, and this is a crucial feature to assist in prioritizing notifications with peers. Just like the dial-in phone number in Teams, the notifications now include the message, your team number, and additional information. The call response options are now easier to navigate and make it easier to initiate a group conversation than before. You can call an entire group at the same time to save time when calling similar groups of people. Team members will receive a notification when they get a new call in a conversation screen, so they can respond quickly.

Why Is Microsoft Teams Growing So Fast?

At first, when a topic dominates the news, it is easier to assume that the reality won’t measure up to the hype. But the reason why Microsoft Teams is growing so quickly is because it adds a lot of substance to the hype. All types of teams need this service, so they love that new features are being added at an alarming rate. We’re continuing to see customers and business teams increasing their usage of Microsoft Teams. The stream of good news continues to grow at this time, surrounding the features that make their video collaboration and presentation features rival and exceed competitive online software. Organizations are not just embracing Microsoft Teams; they are making their own success stories. General Mills uses Microsoft Teams to help its broad base of users, along with its IT support team, brand partners, and suppliers on teams worldwide.

More than 500 companies use Microsoft Teams at this time, and big data continues to remain at the heart of every digital transformation project, so Teams has made improvements in facilitating this area as well. Today’s customers expect businesses to leverage the insights provided by big data and to inform decisions for the future – driving better business outcomes. These are never binary decisions: Users want to be part of the conversation. To achieve big data success in partnership with great service that empowers them, IBM collaborates with Microsoft Teams to provide real-time communications, conversational commerce, and customer insights to help understand “what they see, hear and do.” IBM announced a new privacy-focused version of IBM Smart Answer — information about people, tasks, and interests — for Microsoft Teams, giving customers worldwide a secure, central view of their data to learn about their customers, behaviors, and how they choose to interact with their businesses.

Does Your Workforce Create Strong Passwords?

Strong Password

Does Your Workforce Create Strong Passwords & Have a Plan B Cybersecurity Defense?

As the old saying goes, “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” Unfortunately, the new saying is that a business network is only as secure as its employees’ passwords.

Despite widespread knowledge that hackers exploit weak passwords to breach entire systems, trusted workers still use ones that are easy to guess at and repeat them across platforms. If that seems counterintuitive, business leaders may want to consider these statistics.

  • The two most commonly used passwords remain “iloveyou” and “sunshine.”
  • Approximately 23 million people use the password “123456.”
  • More than half of workforces use the same password for personal and business purposes.
  • Upwards of 57 percent of phishing email scam victims do not change their password.
  • One-third of people stop doing business with organizations responsible for compromising their credentials.

What seems stunningly illogical about rampant password protection failures stems from this statistic: Approximately 90 percent of internet users say they are worried about getting hacked due to a compromised password. Industry leaders may be left scratching their heads. But as a decision-maker responsible for ensuring the integrity of digital assets, something needs to be done. You can set company policy that educates team members about how to create and remember strong network passwords. If that doesn’t work, there’s always Plan B.

Strong Password

How To Educate Employees About Strong Passwords

Getting workers to create powerfully secure passwords may not be that difficult. Insisting on a series of unrelated letters, numbers, and characters will fend off most hackers. On the other hand, team members will likely lose productivity, resetting a difficult-to-remember login profile. Fortunately, a happy medium can be achieved without too much difficulty.

Passwords do not necessarily need to be obscure. They just need to be difficult for hackers to unveil. A password employing 8-10 characters can be hard to crack if done cleverly. For example, the too common “iloveyou” can be tweaked to “iLuv2Make$,” which could be a tough one. That’s largely because it uses untraditional “Luv” in place of the spelled-out word, employs uppercase letters, a symbol, and a number. All an employee has to do is remember the phrase “I Love To Make Money” as a trigger.

Repeated passwords also need to be addressed. Consider training those under your leadership to make variations on one primary password. In this case, it could include “uLuv2Make$2” or “iH82owe$.”

It’s also important to share the reason that complex passwords are necessary. Hackers have a toolkit at their disposal that typically includes brute-force and dictionary techniques. When brute-force attacks try to run every conceivable combination of letters and characters possible. This tends to be time-consuming, and digital thieves are likely to give up when faced with strong passwords. Dictionary attacks run common words at the profile. If your worker’s password is “sunshine,” consider your network breached.

How Can Business Leaders Implement a Plan B?

Practical business leaders learn that human error ranks among the top reason things go sideways. Cybercriminals send out thousands of scam emails, knowing someone will open one, download a malicious file, or respond with critical information. Someone will make a mistake. Given that your financial future can be one mistake away from ruin, organizations are using multi-factor authentication as a fallback defense.

Multi-factor authentication requires employees to receive and enter a secondary code before gaining access to the network. This may be sent to another device that hackers cannot access. In some instances, an email alert is sent that must be approved. Even if someone foolishly uses “password123,” a cybercriminal would still need to know the authentication code or approve login access to upend your network.

If you are concerned about password security, consider working with a managed IT professional to educate employees about password protection, and install multi-factor authentication just in case.

What Is PCI Compliance?

PCI Compliance

What Is PCI Compliance?

You’re probably reading this because you looked up information on PCI compliance. This article explores how you can meet PCI requirements and secure your clients’ sensitive cardholder data.

Today’s business world is highly regulated, and while this has its upsides, there is a great deal of pressure on businesses to stay compliant with all the relevant standards. If your business processes, stores, or transmits credit card information, you need to ensure you meet all the PCI requirements.

PCI non-compliance poses a frightening host of risks such as:

  • Compromised data that can harm your clients and business
  • A severely damaged brand image
  • Account data breaches that could result in lower sales, and destroyed relationships
  • Lawsuits, government fines, insurance claims, payment card issuer fines

If you aren’t PCI compliant, don’t panic just yet. Our team has assembled this article to share what you need to start your journey towards PCI compliance. Let’s first define some important terms.

PCI Compliance

What Is PCI Compliance?

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) is a set of requirements designed to create a secure data environment for any business that processes, stores, or transmits credit card information. It’s a legal requirement and assigns two compliance levels for service providers (third-party vendors) and four for merchants (brands). Behind its launch in 2006 was the need to manage PCI security standards and bolster account security throughout the transaction process.

What Is PCI DSS?

The PCI Security Standards Council (PCI DSS) is an independent body that administers and manages the PCI DSS. It was created by Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JCB, and Discover. However, the responsibility of enforcing compliance falls on the payment brands and acquirers.

How Can You Achieve PCI Compliance?

PCI compliance involves consistently adhering to the PCI Security Standards Council’s guidelines (PCI DSS). PCI DSS has the following six major objectives:

  1. Maintain a vulnerability management program
  2. Build and maintain a secure network and systems
  3. Regularly monitor and test networks
  4. Protect cardholder data
  5. Maintain an information security policy
  6. Implement strong access control measures

Apart from 78 base requirements and over 400 test procedures, PCI compliance also has 12 key requirements.

What Are the 12 Key PCI DSS Compliance Requirements?

  1. Use and Maintain Firewalls: Firewalls are highly effective in preventing unauthorized access to private information.
  2. Proper Password Protections: We recommend keeping a secure device/password inventory and implementing basic precautions like regularly changing passwords.
  3. Protect Cardholder Data: By encrypting data and performing regular scans to ensure no unencrypted data exists.
  4. Encrypt Transmitted Data: Even data sent to known locations need to be encrypted.
  5. Use and Maintain Anti-Virus: This is required for all devices that interact with primary account numbers (PAN).
  6. Properly Updated Software: This includes firewalls, antiviruses, and any other piece of software.
  7. Restrict Data Access: Cardholder information should be exclusively “need to know.”
  8. Unique IDs for Access: These enhance security and reduce response time in case data is compromised.
  9. Restrict Physical Access: Cardholder data needs to be kept in a secure physical location and access locked.
  10. Create and Maintain Access Logs: You must document any activity involving cardholder information and PAN.
  11. Scan and Test for Vulnerabilities: This will help you identify potential weaknesses at any stage of your compliance efforts.
  12. Document Policies: Everything needs to be recorded, from equipment to software to authorized employees to access logs, and so on.

Need Reliable IT Support with PCI Compliance?

Our experienced team is eager to help your organization achieve PCI compliance and safeguard your sensitive cardholder data.

Contact us now to schedule your first PCI compliance consultation.

MFA Bug Opens Door For Hackers To Attack Microsoft 365

New and heightened digital threats develop every day, and having standard security software may not be enough to protect your personal data and business from exploitation from malware attacks. Businesses across industries are vulnerable to new attacks, as many security software lags behind. Hackers find ways to work around the most common security platforms to find new ways into systems to gain access to all sorts of information, and the only way to ensure that you are as protected as possible is to work with an IT expert who knows how to take the preventative measures to keep up with the latest malware developments.

Microsoft 365 Bug

One of the latest bugs causing a lot of damage to businesses is a vulnerability to the Microsoft-based cloud office platform, Microsoft 365. This platform allows businesses to push their productivity almost entirely online, giving employees access to their data from literally anywhere in the world while still collaborating in real-time. The use of cloud platforms allowed businesses to stay productive during the 2020 shutdown. The use has grown exponentially in popularity as everything from law firms, doctors’ offices, and schools have shifted as much business as possible over to the virtual platforms.

Hackers recently exploited a bug present in the multi-factor authentication system for access into the Microsoft 365 platform, which meant that there was a somewhat easily accessible back door into the otherwise secure cloud system. There is a lot of damage done when a hacker can get access to your business or personal data. Information can be stolen or deleted, which could lead to costly repairs as you spend time re-collecting data or ensuring that your employees and clients are protected from additional attacks on their finances and identity based on the type of information accessed by the hackers.

System flaws happen, and typically patches are issued to fix bugs that may allow hackers into programs — especially in the case of well-funded, popular programs like those owned by Microsoft. However, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a chance of an attack before that patch being issued. Also, if your employees aren’t receiving guidance on keeping up with regular updates and maintenance on their work computers, they could be putting everyone at risk as those updates are how patches are installed. A single point of access through an outdated computer can allow hackers to access all sorts of data.

In the case of the latest vulnerability that impacted Microsoft 365, the issue was present in the WS-Trust, an OASIS standard that delivers security extensions and is used to renew and validate security tokens, thus ensuring identity. A bug in this system could be disastrous, allowing for the easy manipulation of security tokens and identity, allowing hackers in. The attacker could easily access mail, files, data, contacts, and more — depending on the amount of information stored on the cloud.

Working with a strong IT support team is the best way to ensure that you are protected from the latest developments in malware. Keep your computers up to date and your employees knowledgeable on the best ways to stay protected by having a strong IT support team to rely on.

What Is The Dark Web?

What is the dark web

What Is The Dark Web?

Are your company’s data and network secure? Solidly secure? Or, are you worried you may have been hacked, putting sensitive data at risk? You may be wondering about the latter if you’re looking up information on the dark web and how it may impact your business. Because, indeed, if you were hacked, that information is likely on the dark web and it can deeply and detrimentally impact your business.

An ongoing study series most recently released in 2019, Into the Web of Profit by Dr. Michael McGuire, explored the Dark Web and shed light on just how serious and dangerous it is to businesses throughout the nation and the world. From bespoke malware to hacking services targeted at FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies, the Dark Web has gone deeper underground to thwart law enforcement as much as to share new and advanced ideas with fellow hackers on how to best to hack businesses.

So, if you are thinking that your data and network system aren’t secure enough, or––alternatively––think it is secure enough: (1) you need to get it secure immediately; and (2) you should know that secure enough won’t cut it ever again. Having a comprehensive security plan that evolves with the changes and advancements in security is key to protecting your data, your identity, your company, your company’s brand, your clients, your customers, among other things. Read more to learn about the Dark Web and how to protect yourself.

What is the Dark Web as opposed to the Plain Ole’ Internet?

The internet isn’t plain at all, and it’s made up of three parts:

  1. The surface web, also known as the clear web, which makes up the websites and webpages of the Internet that are indexed by search engines (e.g., Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Wikipedia, etc.);
  2. The deep web, which consists of pages that you can find and access by using login information (e.g., your bank account or medical records); and
  3. The dark web, also referred to as the DarkNet, which is the part of the Internet not indexed by search engines and which cannot be accessed unless done anonymously by using special anonymizing software.

Due to its anonymity, the dark web has been used for good in some respects. Importantly, people who live in countries where access to the internet is restricted can communicate more openly on the dark web. Mostly, however, it has been infiltrated by criminals. They deal in drugs, illicit firearms, and child pornography. They also, however, deal in things like malware, stolen data, and stolen identities.

So, in that respect, the dark web is a source of serious concern for businesses.

What Do We Know About the Dark Web’s Impact on Businesses?

If statistics matter to you, then your business needs to up its game. Below are facts providing an overview of what we know about cybercrime generally and the dark web specifically and its impact on or threats to businesses.

Hackers Attack Businesses

The Consequences of Stolen Data on the Dark Web are Costly

  • Cybercrime on the dark web is incredibly profitable––according to Cybersecurity Ventures, it’s more profitable than even the global illicit drug trade.
  • According to RSA, a consumer account could go for as little as $1.00 on the dark web––this means just about anyone can purchase at least one stolen account; it also means that the hacker needs to obtain a significant amount of your data to reap the benefits, which could be good or bad for you.
  • SecurityIntelligence’s 2019 report on the Cost of a Data Breach Report found that the “global average cost of a data breach … is $3.92 million, a 1.5 percent increase from its 2018 study.
  • According to SeurityIntelligence’s reporting, the average total cost of a data breach for a U.S. business is $3.86 million.
  • Also, according the SecurityIntelligence’s reporting, it takes on average 280 days before a company identifies and contains a breach.
  • What’s probably most troubling is this: according to Fortune, 66% of businesses experiencing a hack lacked the confidence that the company would recover from it.

The Dark Web is Creating the Need for More Cybersecurity Experts

Because the demand is high, the need for cybersecurity experts is high––in 2019 alone, there were more than 715,000 cybersecurity experts as reported by Cyberseek. Meanwhile, Cybersecurityventures estimates that will be more than 3.5 million cybersecurity jobs come 2021.

What Can You Do About the Dark Web’s Threats to Your Business

Many of us have taken for granted network solutions and cybersecurity. Further, many businesses have limited resources to address cybersecurity comprehensively and on an ongoing basis. But this needs to change. Priority must be given to a comprehensive security system that can aptly and proactively protect your business’s data.

So, what can you do about the dark web’s threats to your business? Things like changing passwords regularly, training employees, choosing the right ISP, monitoring spyware, encrypting client and customer data, among other things are necessary. But it all must be included in a customized plan that is always reviewed, updated, and addressed the new concerns of the day.

Remember: hackers are constantly changing and advancing their methods, so your business needs to do the same to stay on top of it. If you don’t have your own team to address these issues specifically, then you may want to consider outsourcing it to a professional group. With 2021 upon us soon and the economy hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, the time is now to ensure the safety and integrity of your data.

What is the dark web

What Exactly Is NIST?

What is NIST

What Exactly Is NIST?

No matter what industry you work in, chances are you’ve encountered the term NIST at one time or another.

It’s most often used in relation to technology and, specifically, in relation to cybersecurity.

Like many things related to these fields, NIST is both complicated and simple. It’s complicated because you have to have a bit of background to fully understand what it represents. It’s simple because once you understand this background, NIST actually makes a lot of sense.

What Is NIST?

NIST is a federal agency within the United States Government (specifically, the U.S. Department of Commerce). The acronym stands for National Institute of Standards and Technology.

As an agency, NIST was founded by Congress in 1901. Basically, it was established as a way to standardize and promote competitiveness within the fields of science and technology in the U.S. A simultaneous mission was to promote the harnessing of science and technology to improve quality of life in the U.S. and protect our economic security.

What Does NIST Have to Do With Cybersecurity?

Essentially, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has its hands in many areas of industry. But more recently — from the late 20th century up until today — it has particularly impacted how we create, use, and disseminate technology.

As computers and the Internet became more ubiquitous in recent decades, it became apparent to the government that some standardized practices needed to be established. NIST became the authoritative body that would create and disseminate these standardized practices.

According to the NIST website, “Congress has given NIST responsibility to disseminate consistent clear, concise, and actionable resources to small businesses.” That goes for all other sizes of businesses too.

In addition, NIST standards generally apply to all industries. Most importantly, where cybersecurity is uniquely concerned, NIST 800-171 was created to control unclassified government information that is being stored and/or handled by non-governmental organizations.

What Is NIST 800-171?

NIST 800-171 is a special publication that was created and is mandated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The goal of this publication is to maintain uniformity in how organizations handle data — especially sensitive government data.

Both small to mid-sized businesses and large enterprises should know about NIST 800-171. As a business owner or C-level executive, it’s important that you, specifically, know about it. And if you work with the federal government — either directly or indirectly — it’s absolutely critical that you know about it.

Essentially, any business that works with the government or with government information needs to be NIST 800-171 compliant. But even companies that don’t work directly or indirectly with government information can find it useful as well.

Here are the basics:

Special publication NIST 800-171 was created to protect something called “Controlled Unclassified Information.”

What is “Controlled Unclassified Information,” you ask?

Controlled Unclassified Information, or CUI, is information that is relevant to the federal government but not necessarily classified. A good example would be legal documents or technical drawings of government projects.

This is important information to keep secure, and though it is not technically “classified” and doesn’t include “state secrets,” the government has an interest in protecting it and making sure it doesn’t fall into sinister hands.

How Does a Business Stay Compliant With NIST 800-171?

We’re not going to tell you that it’s impossible to stay compliant with NIST 800-171 on your own — without the help of a managed service provider.

However … it’s much harder.

NIST compliance is not simple.

First, you have to know which information is CUI and where it is located (all copies). You then have to classify and categorize that information. After that, you have to limit access to the CUI so that only authorized workers can see and use it. You also have to encrypt it.

Once that’s done, you should implement a system of monitoring to ensure that all CUI access dates and times are logged. From there, you need a system of training that can educate your employees on all of this information and how to reduce the risk of CUI access across the board.

Interested in Discovering More About How to Stay NIST Compliant?

As we said, NIST 800-171 compliance is not simple.

It’s far easier to have a managed service provider handle it for you. If you already work with an MSP you trust, talk to them about NIST compliance. If not, get in touch with a reputable MSP in your area today. Managing your NIST compliance is something that shouldn’t wait.

What is NIST

Remote Workers Are Here to Stay! Important Tips

Work At Home Solutions

Exactly a year ago today, no one would’ve thought that this many people would be working from home.

Yet, here we are.

The numbers are truly astounding. In June, the estimate was that 42% of the United States’ labor force had transitioned to full-time at-home work.

For a while, most of us thought it would only last for a few weeks … maybe a few months.

Now, it’s been half a year. And many people are beginning to ask themselves: Is there an end in sight to the working-from-home-economy?

A recent survey of 317 finance leaders and CFOs in the United States says no.

Work At Home Solutions

Will Working From Home Be a Permanent Transition for the Labor Force?

The survey, performed by Gartner Inc., has revealed that 74% of the surveyed leaders intend to permanently shift at least some of their employees to remote work. After all, there are many advantages to employees working at home — both for employers and employees.

Some businesses had already noticed these benefits and were already making a slow transition to this employment style. Google, for example, would often let their employees do some of their work at home. The rise of the gig economy allowed freelancers to essentially start their own businesses by finding clients on their own or going through brokers like Fiverr.

Now, the pro-work-at-home mentality is on fast-forward.

If you’ve been thinking about transitioning some of your employees to permanent at-home work, there are some things you need to know. Most notably, you’re going to need to step up your IT game as you will be relying even heavier on technology and your IT support provider.

Here are several questions you should be sure to ask yourself as you go about this shift.

1. Are we backing up?

Every business needs to back up their data. It needs to be backed up properly, often, and securely. With the proper backup solutions, even if someone accidentally deletes a file, you’ll have it duplicated somewhere else. More importantly, though, you’ll have security knowing that even if a security breach occurs, it can’t break your company entirely.

2. Do our employees know how to avoid a security breach?

Most breaches in security happen through employees. Often, phishing emails are the culprit. Your IT company should help you train your employees so that they know exactly how to avoid falling victim to a phishing email scam. Moreover, you need to teach them what to look out for and where to go if they do see something that makes them suspicious.

3. Who has access to which files?

Often, when employees work in only one area and only access networks and data storage through clean and secure access points, upper management doesn’t really confine file access. Not only should this change even if all of your employees are still working in your brick-and-mortar space, but it should definitely change now that more employees are working at home.

Whether you like it or not, many employees will be using unsecure networks and devices that do not have the proper security to keep your files safe. Therefore, you need to start limiting the number of employees with complete access to all of your data.

4. Do we have multifactor authentication enabled?

Multifactor authentication makes passwords more secure. Inevitably, you and your employees will be using passwords every day, all day. You probably have multiple passwords that you use interchangeably between home and work.

First of all, it’s important not to reuse passwords. You should have a new password for every account that you have. This goes for you, all other upper management employees, and other workers.

Second, multifactor authentication should be enabled wherever possible. This ensures security for all of your accounts and data because it requires that the individual puts both their password and the second proof of identity into the login fields when logging into a given account or device.

Which Is Better: In-House IT or Outsourcing IT to a Managed Service Provider?

All companies will have different needs concerning their IT. For some companies, having in-house IT support has historically been the best option. It allows IT workers to be there on-demand, and in-house relationships can be formed between the IT department, upper management, and workers at large. In some cases, in-house IT is absolutely necessary, even now.

For the vast majority of companies, however, the updated circumstances of 2020 have proven the value of outsourcing IT to a managed service provider. Not only are MSPs already “at-home workers,” in effect, because they aren’t directly in your employ, but they’re also used to working outside of the clients they serve.

They have all of the proper channels set up for you to communicate effectively with them at any time. In some cases, managed service providers can offer even better on-demand service as they are often available 24/7 to answer your questions or address concerns or security breaches.

One thing to keep in mind is that well-managed service providers are being nabbed up fast. Organizations across the U.S. are quickly realizing that they need reliable IT service and enhanced support for the new systems and subsequent risks that have been presented during this time of COVID-19.

Find your reliable and trustworthy managed service provider today, and start building a relationship that you can grow into. Despite these challenging times, your business still has the opportunity to grow and prosper. The right technology and the best IT support will help.