Work from home is the new normal. For many, it is likely to continue to some degree long after the COVID-19 crisis. Here are 8 cybersecurity work from home tips to protect yourself digitally. Feel free to download and distribute this infographic. Click to Download
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COVID-19 has presented your IT department with a great opportunity After spending the last few weeks managing work-from-home requests, it is time for IT departments to take advantage of empty offices and quiet networks. Often times, important items are overlooked or put off, because of concerns over user impact. Here are 5 things your IT department should be doing right now. 1. Virtual Cleanup Review user accounts, group policy objects and Active Directory. Get current on all software, firmware, and bios technologies. Perform any maintenance that was postponed because it would require a device to be rebooted. Review configurations. Test […]
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COVID-19 is now a global pandemic. Millions of people are affected as countries go on lockdown to halt the spread of the disease. Many employees are forced to work from home. That’s why there’s a sudden surge in demand for cloud services worldwide. Can the web infrastructure survive this pandemic, too? Even before the pandemic, many companies were already turning to online productivity and collaboration tools for their business. While projections on how long this pandemic will force people to stay in their homes vary, it is certain that for the next month or so, cloud usage will continue to […]
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Version 1 of the much anticipated Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) framework was release by the Pentagon on January 31. Many news outlets are reporting that, “All DoD contractors must be certified by 2025.” This is a correct statement, but a misleading timeline. Starting in June of 2020, all newly issued RFQs will require CMMC compliance (likely level 1 or 2) in order to receive the Federal Contract Information required to participate in the bidding process. Since multi-year Federal contracts are limited to 5 years, by 2025 all DoD contracts will have cycled through under the new rules, making this […]
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Do you need it and, if so, what kind? I am not a cyber insurance expert, nor am I qualified to give legal advice, but as someone who thinks a lot about IT vulnerabilities and threats, I believe that every business should evaluate the cost-benefit of cyber insurance to help protect from cyber risk. Such an evaluation starts with a careful consideration of the business’ true exposure to the negative impact of cyber incidents. The next step is to review your current insurance policy to understand any deficiencies in coverage. If unacceptable gaps become apparent, you can likely find a […]
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Like much of IT, cybersecurity is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. The comprehensive approach that large enterprises should employ to identify and address risks and detect and respond to attacks is often out of reach for small businesses. Yet as the frequency and impact of cyberattacks on businesses of all sizes continues to grow, the typical small-business approach of taking the usual precautions and hoping for the best is proving to be inadequate. Many small-business owners are willing to do more to improve their cybersecurity but don’t know what else to do. The number of options — whether products or services […]
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Demands have changed in this cloud-based world. As the cloud and other developments continue to change the ways small businesses deploy and use technology, IT departments must adapt. Long gone are the days when most IT environments looked the same — a few Windows servers in a closet and a Windows PC on every desk — when all the IT department had to worry about managing core networks. Now we see a variety of different approaches and an overwhelming number of available applications. As a firm believer in technology’s ability to make a meaningful difference in a typical small business’s […]
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Now’s the time to review your DR plan. Much has changed with disaster recovery in the 10-plus years since we got a firsthand lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Server virtualization now makes recovery of many systems much easier and faster than it was, and the rise of the cloud puts more options at our disposal than we could have previously imagined. Hurricane season is officially here, making it a good time to review the current state of disaster recovery solutions. What is Disaster Recovery? First, a bit of terminology; This article is about disaster recovery, which for our purposes deals with […]
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What’s your business’ policy for dealing with mobile device security? The immense popularity of mobile devices is inescapable, yet most small businesses have given little real thought to how best to manage them. Until recently, I shared the opinion that there often isn’t much to worry about. The amount of corporate data on mobile devices was limited (most of it to email) and we can usually remotely erase a lost device, thereby dealing with the most obvious threat. But as the usage of mobile devices has grown, so have the amount and types of sensitive information that they contain. Cloud-file […]
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Cybersecurity awareness is key for business. From a cybersecurity standpoint, the one behavior that leads to more headaches than any other for small or midsize businesses is people clicking (or otherwise acting) on things in emails that they shouldn’t. The IT team can help: Certainly scanning email for malware or signs of phishing is a must. Other techniques that detect and take action on the presence of malware on a computer or network have also proved effective, but there is only so much that anyone can do technically to mitigate the potential impact of email attacks. Cybersecurity Threats are more […]
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