Author: admin

If your business hasn’t been the target of malicious intruders or cyber criminals, consider yourself lucky. Hackers are a relentless bunch and they want your information and the ability to access to exploit loopholes in your business’s Internet security. The last few years have been hard on companies all across the globe. These cyber-breaches aren’t going to stop simply because the “damage has been done.” In the US and Canada, reported incidents have affected over 215 million consumers and over 7 million small businesses. That’s only counting the attacks that authorities have uncovered.   For cyber criminals, there is no end game. All too often, small business owners assume they are outside the firing line and hackers aren’t interested in them. While the media focuses on the big cyber-attacks, there are countless other stories playing out at small businesses everywhere. Cyber criminals are constantly in search of loopholes and weak security. Unfortunately, small busine...

Are you thinking about moving all or parts of your computer network “to the cloud” but worried about who can access your data? You’re not alone, but many security experts, software companies and cloud-service providers alike agree that cloud computing offers a MORE secure way to store data. In fact, the US governments cyber security adviser, Howard Schmidt, has said that cloud computing will enable businesses to catch up on security issues. That’s because most small businesses do not have high-security measures in place for their data on-site and lack tight password protection policies, firewall management and backup procedures. The same business owners who verbalize their concern about putting their data in the cloud are backing up their entire network to a tape drive and leaving it in their car overnight – or are using weak passwords for important access points to their network, which are much bigger security risks than storing it in a highly secure, highly redundant cloud platfor...

In today’s fast-paced, data-driven world, backups are mission critical to your company’s survival and success. Yet your data may be just one damaged drive, lost laptop, natural disaster, accidental deletion, malware attack, equipment failure, power spike or petty theft away from a profit-sucking, heartbreaking disaster. So what measures must you take to keep your data safe, secure and where you need it, when you need it? While there’s no one-size-fits-all-guns silver bullet, there are some general principles to be aware of. Image-Based Backups An image-based backup or “clone” serves like the spare tire for your car. If you get a flat, the spare will get you to a tire shop. If the hard drive on any device in the network goes bad and its user is in a time crunch to complete a project, an image-based backup allows them to get right back to where they were. It saves all files, apps and settings that were on that device, exactly the way were at the time of the last backup. Ge...

With winter here, the possible threat of a major blizzard or winter disaster could occur and business still needs to run as usual. Customers need to be kept happy and it is critical to keep data safe. Here are 5 easy steps you can take this winter season to get your office prepared for this winter’s worst. 1. Be ready for power outages. A power outage can hurt your business in more ways than you think. Besides employee downtime, it takes time to safely get everything back up and running. Then you need to make sure no critical files have been damaged or lost. Auto save features can help minimize lost files in a sudden power outage.   2. Keep lines of communication open. Customer frustration due to production delays and not being able to reach key people at your company can be very costly in terms of both revenues and your company’s reputation. Here are three ways to make sure calls to your office don’t get bobbled when a storm rolls in: Create a new au...

In less than 60 seconds, you are about to learn 10 things that could save you days, weeks  of downtime. Not to mention the undue stress on your company, and potentially thousands of dollars lost, due to a data disaster… Use this article as your checklist to assure that your business has the right plan in place to get back up and running quickly if and when disaster strikes. Simply thinking in advance what needs to happen when things go south and documenting it, can go a long way toward getting your network back up and running quickly if it something were to happen. Outline the types of disasters that could happen, and a step-by-step recovery process. Be sure to include a budget, what to do, who should do it and how. Store printed copies along with key contact information and login details for essential credentials. Hire a trusted professional to help you. Trying to recover data after a disaster without professional help is business suicide. One wrong step can result in weeks o...