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By the DynaSis Team

The approach of a new year always brings a bevy of predictions for what will happen in IT, many of which fit our idea of “pie in the sky.” This year, however, two in particular caught our eye.

1. Managed service providers (MSPs) and co-location providers will flourish with hybrid IT offerings.

This prediction, from Lazarus Vekiarides, CTO of ClearSky Data (an early-stage enterprise infrastructure firm), gave us a sense of accomplishment. Hybrid IT offerings are those that have a cloud component and an on-premise component, for example, a data server at the office with hosted Microsoft Exchange in the cloud. DynaSis has been promoting hybrid IT solutions for years, including our Ascend offering, so we read this with a sense of real satisfaction. Remember folks; you heard it here, first.

On a more serious note, hybrid offerings give companies the best of both worlds, allowing them to enjoy the security of retaining storage and control of their primary data, at their location, but allowing cloud-based delivery, retrieval and often backup of as much data as makes them comfortable. On a related note, Vekiarides also predicted that the Hybrid Internet (an approach that uses both the Internet and local networks, both wired and wireless, for data and solution delivery and exchange) will support more hybrid cloud deployments, bridging the gap between public and private clouds.

2. Corporate IT silos will disappear.

This one, from Gaurav Rewari, CEO and co-founder of business analytics firm Numerify, Inc., caught us a bit by surprise. It’s not that we think IT silos are a good thing (we don’t). Rather, we don’t think they will go away, that quickly. IT silos are individual, often departmentally aligned data stores, applications and functions in enterprises that are not accessible or interconnected for the benefit of the entire business. They make it difficult for a business to work in the most productive manner, possible, let alone to attain any level of agility.

Rewari predicts that in 2015, solutions and platforms will help businesses achieve better integration of their data in numerous ways, breaking down those silos. He specifically cited customer relations management (CRM) software and IT system data collection and analysis.

We have helped some of our customers select advanced CRM tools with business analytics, but for many, the daily grind of producing still gets in the way, hence our skepticism here.

In the area of IT system data, however, we see a very bright future. For more than a decade, DynaSis has been providing its customers with significant value through our Digital Veins service, monitoring data collected from myriad customer systems to identify and resolve issues.

Recent developments in the technologies that surround this effort are giving us more ways to help those customers than ever before. These customers stand as living proof that this approach saves money, reduces downtime and increases productivity and security.

A final prediction that interested us, also from Rewari, was that IT will shed its “Department of No” image demonstrating the value of IT to the C-suite. Every day, we hear from firms whose IT Managers need our help to accomplish their tasks, but executive management doesn’t see the value. We look forward to seeing that dynamic change, so we can help those folks be more productive.

Do these predictions interest you? Would you like to learn more? To explore the possibilities or see how DynaSis is already achieving both predictions for its customers, please give us a call.

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By the DynaSis Team

For the final article of 2014, we thought it would be interesting to share some thoughts on leadership. A few decades ago, a major component of being a great leader was leading in your physical space―being in touch not only with your employees but also their work environments and activities. IBM CEO John Akers was praised for the way he left the executive office and walked around his company’s facility, connecting with workers in their own spaces.

With the advent of the digital era, leaders must deal with a new dimension in “connection”―the digital one. Many business experts conjecture that great leaders now must also be champions of the digital world, and some of the most respected, beloved CEOs are doing just that.

Following are a few ideas to help business owners expand their reputation for leadership and engender loyalty, respect and admiration among their employees, peers and customers.

Be Social

No one expects or wants a company owner or president to post on Facebook all day long, but having a social media strategy is an important part of leadership. Despite this fact, CEO.com reported in 2013 that 68% of Fortune 500 Company CEOs have no social media presence.

On the flip side, Virgin CEO Sir Richard Branson, who has been named Britain’s most admired business leader of the past 50 years, has 4.5 million Twitter followers. The brand value of his social media following is incalculable, and the “cool” factor he has garnered from his efforts isn’t hurting, either.

In January 2013, an Economist article asked the question, “How can you be a leader if you don’t have followers?” Branson’s success certainly offers solid support for this argument.

Treat Digital Communication as a Gift that Comes with Strings

Digital communications such as email, the Internet and social media have empowered businesses and connected them with their customers in ways never before possible. Great leaders in the digital era recognize this fact and direct their outcomes in an honest but thoughtful manner.

The digital world makes it easy for CEOs and other business owners/leaders to connect with their employees, vendors and customers, sharing professional insights, thanking them for their support and more. The double-edged sword of this reach is that an ill-timed or inappropriate comment, even in a “private” forum such as a closed Facebook group, can leak out to the world.

The potential to cause damage or spark controversy is likely what keeps CEOs and other leaders off social media. That’s unfortunate, because the good that can be done though digital communication is undeniable. Genuine, well-considered, respectful communications won’t offend anyone. Try a few, and see.

Speak in Your Own Voice

For leaders to garner respect and love from their customers and employees, their blogs must be authentic expressions from their own perspective. This doesn’t mean they have to write them with no help. Some leaders simply are not good writers.

However, blogs, social media posts and other communications shouldn’t be left solely to a communications team, either. The business owner/CEO should at the minimum approve topics as well as the “tone” that any series of communications will reflect.

The reality is that digital communication is unavoidable, and leaders can show their fearlessness by conquering this space with composure and poise. Ownership of the digital world will become more important with every passing year, as the upcoming Millennial generation enters its prime work years. Millennials are intimately connected and in tune with all things digital―and they want their leaders to be, as well.

DynaSis recently authored a white paper about the challenges of attracting the new generation of workers, which involves not only having leadership that appreciates digital communications, but also taking a proactive approach to technology, mobile device usage and management, and other imperatives for this group. The white paper is complimentary; to request the download please give us a call.

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By the DynaSis Team

For more than a decade, virtualization has been a well-promoted solution for achieving flexibility and security with on-premise (in-office) servers. With virtualization, a company and/or its IT vendor “carves” a server or dedicated storage device into multiple virtual servers/drives (these deployments are called virtual machines, e.g. VMs). One of the ways that DynaSis helps its customers maximize IT ROI (and security) is by designing and installing a virtual server layout from a single physical one.

Multiple VMs can reside on a single physical server, yet each will be totally segregated from the others and can have a discrete purpose, separate authentication and security protocols, availability rules and other characteristics of a physical server. Another advantage of virtual servers is that storage allocation for each VM can be altered quickly―and often, dynamically based on load.

For all these reasons, many cloud servers are virtual, with data centers dividing their large servers and storage arrays into numerous VMs for their clients. With virtualization having become an indelible fixture of data center operation, and the technology also being so beneficial for on-premise server installations, we scanned the Internet for expert advice on what we and our customers can expect from virtualization in 2015. Two items, in particular, sparked our interest.

Virtualization Security: With so many security breaches in 2014, it is inevitable that vendors will be placing a renewed focus on security. One of the hot new approaches at the data center level is “micro-segmentation,” where every discrete virtual machine becomes its own impregnable fortress with dedicated security.

Data-center-level solutions are generally too expensive for SMBs to implement for their on-premise implementations of virtualization, but that doesn’t mean companies that implement virtualization are at risk. Companies that work with a vendor that provides robust, end-to-end security and proactive problem resolution, including patch application, have the confidence that their virtual machines can be fully protected, as well. At DynaSis, we have always considered security paramount, and we recently introduced another layer of security for our Managed IT customers.

Converged Infrastructure: This term may sound a bit arcane to those outside the IT world, but it’s really a fancy way of saying bundling. Experts expect acceleration of this trend―where a company works with a vendor that provides a complete solution comprised of multiple infrastructure (hardware) components packaged to work well together.

Packaging interoperable infrastructure­ for maximum security and connectivity is always a good idea, but it requires preplanning, so it is easy to overlook. It’s the approach we take with our Ascend offering, where we build out a firm’s infrastructure and they lease it from us for a low monthly fee, including management and security. We definitely hope this trend will gather momentum in 2015, as it can be very beneficial.

In addition to these two trends, we saw mention of a number of protocols, solutions and platforms, all of which are too complicated to discuss in this short article. However, be assured that the DynaSis technicians are staying abreast of these developments to give you the most secure, productive virtualization experience possible. To learn more about the substantial benefits of virtualization, or to meet with a DynaSis Virtual CIO to explore the possibilities for your firm, please give us a call.

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By the DynaSis Team

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By the DynaSis Team

In Greek mythology, Pandora was a woman who accidentally unleashed all the ills of the world because she couldn’t resist opening the box that was holding them captive. For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), administrative access at the user level―letting untrained employees have full access to their desktop and potentially the company’s IT systems at the administrative level―is the Pandora’s Box of technology. Making matters worse, many employees don’t even know they have access to the box, so they open it unwittingly.

Here’s how this happens. Windows automatically configures the default user account as an Administrator. A Windows Administrator account is an unrestricted account that can make system-wide changes to the computer with no additional authorization or privileges.

SMBs that install new PCs for their personnel, or allow them to work from any PC or mobile device outside their scope of control, may unknowingly empower these individuals with Administrator access. Administrative accounts provide a direct pathway to root (hidden, low-level operating) settings and other built-in mechanisms for making any system change―not just beneficial ones.

If cyberattackers get access to a PC with an Administrator account, perhaps through a phishing email, infected site or other mechanism, they can then execute scripts, launch exploit kits (malicious toolkits that exploit security holes) and perform other actions at the root level. Many, if not most, actions running at this level will not alert the user, so destructive activities can continue, unchecked, potentially for the life of the PC.

If a device with Administrator privileges is authenticated to connect to the company network, the cyberattackers can easily penetrate the network, as well, potentially taking over the entire network for use as a bot (a form of automated attendant) to spread more phishing messages, stealing data, and infecting other connected devices automatically and decisively.

For every PC on the network, unless a user or an IT pro intentionally sets up a user account without administrative privileges, this can occur. This is a crucial, but often overlooked, step in securing any corporate defenses. Making matters worse, many “IT-aware” (but not IT-trained) business owners and employees have heard that the hidden Administrator account built into the Windows OS is disabled by default due to security concerns. This measure, in place since Windows Vista, was an important, needed change but it does not provide any protection for the default Administrator account at the user level.

Administrator-level users (called superusers in the IT world) are a primary mechanism for infection among SMBs. Given that the rate of targeted attacks against SMBs has more than doubled since 2011, and the ratio of data breaches to company size is 15 times higher for SMBs than for larger firms, the default Administrator account is something every SMB should address as soon as possible. To learn more about cyber security or discuss scheduling a security assessment to determine your level of risk, please give us a call.

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By the DynaSis Team

With the end of 2014 quickly approaching, many small and medium-sized business owners (SMBs) maybe already looking ahead to 2015 projects. However, in early December there is still time to take advantage of SMB incentive programs that confer significant tax advantages.

One of these is the Section 179 deduction. Although it is a mere shadow of its former self (at the present), it is still valid, with a 2014 deduction limit of $25,000 and a purchase limit of $200,000. That amount might not cover the cost of a new warehouse or other large capital facility or equipment purchase, but in the IT world it will stretch a long way.

Basically, all businesses that purchase, finance and/or lease less than $200,000 of new or used business equipment in 2014 should qualify for the Section 179 deduction. Furthermore, most tangible goods, including “off-the-shelf” software, qualify for the deduction, as does the labor to install and configure any purchases.

For example, let’s assume a business with 50 employees has to date purchased $100,000 worth of miscellaneous, covered equipment. Its IT systems are outdated―especially its desktops, which are too old to run current generation software.

The firm could lease 50 $1,500 desktops at a value of $75,000, and then spend another $25,000, outright, on software plus labor for installation and configuration of everything. The entire $25,000 the company expended in cash would be deductible. Or, a firm could lease all the IT improvements, with the cost of software purchases, installation and configuration included in the lease amount, and still deduct $25,000.

There is also a possibility that Congress may still reinstate during 2014 the $500,000 limit for Section 179 deduction purchases that ended in 2013. If this happens, companies should have a plan for purchasing additional equipment and other qualified items they can put into service before year-end.

DynaSis’ virtual CIOs (VCIOs) are IT analysis and planning experts with a wealth of experience helping SMBs plan capital IT expenses that align with and support their short- and long-term business goals. Additionally, our Ascend platform lets a company lease its entire IT infrastructure for a low monthly fee, including full support (proactive monitoring and management and Help Desk) and IT upgrades as needed. To learn more or discuss having an IT assessment to create a baseline for selecting the most cost-effective, productivity-boosting improvements, please give us a call.

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By the DynaSis Team

Another interesting survey came across our desk recently - this one about the use of social and mobile technologies. According to research from UK-based Advanced Business Solutions (ABS), companies* are using social and mobile outlets to increase their customer engagement, but they’re not putting them to full use to power greater business productivity.

According to the research, 85 percent of surveyed organizations use social and mobile technologies for external (customer/client marketing). Additionally, 69 percent use social technologies as response mechanisms for customer and prospect queries, comments, complaints and other communications.

However, only 17 percent of respondent companies are using these technologies to help workers share information and collaborate with one another. We found this interesting, given that approximately two-thirds of respondents stated that social and mobile technologies are valuable for employee collaboration. Nearly the same percentage thought that using them more effectively could improve efficiency.

A 2014 Constant Contact survey of U.S. small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) appears to correlate these findings, at least regarding mobile technologies. According to the survey, 92% of SMBs either have a mobile-optimized website or are planning to create one in the next six months, and 23% are interested in using mobile advertising. In both cases, the focus is on using mobile technology for external, not internal communications.

It’s important to note that neither survey addresses other forms of productivity for which we view mobile, at least, to be pivotal. Among these is remote working―what we call “mobile officing.” Having access to properly managed mobile devices can give employees the ability to work as safely and productively as if they were at their workplace.  (The ABS survey did recognize the definition of mobile technologies as “creating an always-on work force that can connect and access information at any time and from any place.” That’s essentially how we view it.)

These surveys made us wonder how our customers and other readers are using mobile and social technologies. Are you using either or both to enhance internal collaboration? Are you focusing on externally facing messages and collaboration only? Do you feel you are achieving greater internal or overall workforce productivity with social and mobile technologies?

We’d love to hear your feedback―and talk to you about how you can achieve all these goals easily and affordably. To learn more, please give us a call.

By the DynaSis Team

In early September, we wrote about cyber-attacks and the role that human gullibility plays in them. (If you didn’t read that blog, the answer is “a very, very big one.”) We also offered some suggestions to help business owners protect themselves against vulnerability.

Now, we’ve come across some additional information you might find useful. In this article, we’ll offer not only startling statistics but also some of the keywords that signal danger. First, let’s discuss the statistics.

Over the past decade, the number of spear-phishing attacks (phony emails designed to trick recipients into exposing confidential information) has grown to an alarming number. According to security software developer Symantec, spear phishing campaigns in 2013 rose by 91% over 2012. As of 2013, one in every 392 emails was sent for the purpose of spear phishing.  That may sound like a small number (approximately .025 percent), but consider how many email messages your company sends per day or per year. (The average employee sends or receives approximately 115 emails per day.)

Enterprise employees aren’t the only gullible ones, either. The U.S. Department of Defense has been compromised by unwitting employees responding to spear phishing emails. The massive 2012 Department of Revenue data breach in South Carolina that compromised the private data of 3.8 million taxpayers, 1.9 million dependents, 699,900 businesses and 3.3 million banks started with a spear-phishing email.

Furthermore, the risk of data breaches is exploding. In 2013, the number of identities that were exposed (by all types of attacks) rose 700% over 2012. And, with the courts now holding companies financially and legally accountable for not protecting their data from breaches, the stakes are higher than ever.

Now, for some good news. Hackers know that spear-phishing attacks are more likely to be successful if they use certain words, with Order and Payment being the top two. Other commonly used words include documents, declassified, accounting and important. Companies with robust email security solutions can screen out spear phishing emails―and even ensure emails containing commonly used words receive extra scrutiny.

If you haven’t shared these dangerous keywords with your personnel, we encourage you to do so. It’s also helpful to run training exercises where you test your employees with fake emails to see who falls prey to them. You may be surprised with who takes the bait.

To learn more about spear phishing, cyber threats or digital security, please give us a call.

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By the DynaSis Team

Have you thought about the cloud lately? Are you thinking of moving your corporate assets to the cloud, or have you already done so? If not, get ready for a wake-up call. The cloud is expanding across everyone and into everything, whether we like it or not.

Virtually all technology solutions and devices, from backup appliances to software as a service (SaaS) offerings (where software is hosted in the cloud and accessed remotely), are consuming more cloud storage and Internet traffic every year. Because of this, Cisco recently announced that within the next four years, 76 percent of the Internet traffic through the world’s data centers will be cloud-based. That is a 40% increase over 2013, when the cloud accounted for 54 percent of total data center traffic.

Already, cloud data centers are responsible a total of 2,277 exabytes of the total 3,829 exabytes of traffic being generated. By 2018, this proportion will be 6,496 exabytes of a total of 8,574 exabytes. (An exabyte is one quintillion bytes or one billion gigabytes.)

Cisco also predicts a substantial shift to public cloud services as companies become more comfortable with them. By 2018, Cisco predicts, 31 percent of cloud workloads will be in public cloud data centers, up from 22 percent in 2013.  Interestingly, the devices that compose the Internet of Things (discussed here last week) are also going to contribute a significant amount of data to the cloud. Cisco predicts that data created by IoT devices will be 47 times greater than total data center traffic by 2018.

If all this growth sounds overwhelming, it is. After all, it’s hard to envision one billion gigabytes, or to conceive how the IoT actually functions. Nevertheless, major enterprises are embracing the cloud along with cloud solutions such as SaaS.

Big corporations know, for example that a cloud-hosted Microsoft Exchange server is far more reliable and less vulnerable than one deployed at a physical office location.  Most major enterprises realize that corporate networks are more vulnerable than data centers (which is where “the cloud” largely exists). More importantly, cybercriminals know this, as well. That’s why cyber-attacks on companies are more prevalent than attacks on data centers―and the majority of all successful data breaches occur through hacking of corporate servers.

Small and mid-sized businesses that want to be as productive and competitive as possible should create a plan for cloud adoption, now. It doesn’t have to involve a leap. It can be a step, possibly beginning with hosted Exchange as we mentioned above.

Here at DynaSis, we have developed hyper-secure cloud solutions, including private, corporate clouds where the firm retains control of its data and hosts it for remote workers. If you would like to learn more, please give us a call.

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By the DynaSis Team

Have you heard of “The Internet of Things,” and if so, do you know what it is? This term is being bandied about in the media a lot recently, but it is certainly not self-explanatory, and we suspected that many business owners – not to mention their employees – do not understand precisely what it is or what it means for them. According to a survey, released last week by CompTIA, a leading IT industry trade association, we were right.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a term that describes a global, interconnected network of objects that can transfer data over a network to other objects/entities without the need for a human or computer to propel the transfer. It is similar to the “smart grid” approach being used by utility providers to interconnect buildings and other facilities powered by electricity. However, with the IoT, network nodes are connected via a wireless data transfer network (like the Internet), instead.

A considerable percentage of science and technology experts predict that it is the future of our world. Per Pew Research, 83% of technology experts and engaged Internet users believe that the dynamic web created by the IoT, the cloud, and embedded/wearable devices will have widespread and beneficial effects by 2025. Furthermore, research firms predict that by 2020, between 26 billion devices (per Gartner) and 30 billion devices (per ABI Research) will be wirelessly connected.  Already, a lot of them are.

In other words, it won’t be long before most businesses and individuals will be connected in some way to the IoT, whether by the watch a company president wears, the smart thermostat installed in a corporate office, or the medical monitoring device that an employee has implanted inside his or her body after a heart attack or stroke. So, what does this mean for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), and do their owners need to be concerned with it, now?

The CompTIA survey referenced earlier found that 34 percent of SMBs in the United States haven’t reviewed their service or product portfolios to take advantage of the rise of the Internet of things (IoT) and 31 percent have no plans to change their offerings in order to do so. Interestingly, 49 percent of American SMBs think the IoT will help their organizations make more money.

Here at DynaSis, we are highly cognizant of the IoT, not only the benefits it can bring SMBs but also of the risks it may generate. Already, security experts are warning that without proper precautions, a cyber-strike against the IoT could wreak incredible havoc, not only on companies and citizens but also on global infrastructure. They point out that when the majority of “things” can communicate without human or computer intervention, there will be fewer opportunities for a person or a system to detect an attack as it crosses various nodes. This scenario will make robust defenses at the corporate level even more important.

We believe that SMBs should be at least familiarizing themselves with the IoT, now, and should be preparing for the impacts (both good and bad) it may have on their businesses. If you would like to learn more about it or discuss how it might affect you, please give us a call.