By the DynaSis Team

Every day, small and midsized business (SMB) owners are bombarded with seemingly conflicting messages regarding how IT solutions can help them best run their businesses. With so many options to consider regarding corporate security, productivity and cost efficiency, it is not surprising that some of them stick their heads in the sand and do nothing.

Unfortunately, with SMBs becoming favorite targets for cyber attackers, and with corporate competition increasingly fierce, that is the worst possible way to operate. Here’s one example:

A business owner has been operating with a “break-fix” mentality, which means he or she only makes technology purchases when something breaks. This is a reactive operating strategy, but many business owners take this path because they believe they cannot find the time or budget to manage their technology proactively.

This approach has always been financially inefficient and detrimental to productivity, and DynaSis has long recommended that business leaders team with a knowledgeable, trustworthy IT consulting partner, such as a managed services provider or an IT services firm, to help them create and implement a technology roadmap that includes staged upgrades and improvements.

Today, however, the break-fix approach has become more than inefficient. Outdated, network-connected equipment, such as networked printers, likely has no built-in security protections. Such machines are more likely to be operating with open Internet connections, and hackers know that. Furthermore, competitiveness in today’s market relies on providing workers with modern technology. Organizations that persist with the break-fix model invariably fall behind.

In other words, making smart, planned technology improvements helps organizations foster productivity, security, cost efficiency and competitiveness—not to mention employee satisfaction. The question then becomes: how does the business owner know which improvements are smart?

To help our readers, we have prepared a chart of technology Do’s and Don’ts, in terms of best practices. The list only scratches the surface, but it’s a good place to start.

These are just a few of many examples where smart technology choices are beneficial to your company, its personnel and its bottom line. If your technology environment is inadequate or outdated, your employees cannot achieve their missions, and customers may perceive your physical space—and your firm—as dated. Similarly, if your approach is too lenient, you could be throwing away money, productivity and security. A knowledgeable, expert IT support company can help you evaluate your options, minimize your risk and keep your equipment operating in peak condition.

Selection of an IT outsourcing company is a very important business decision. For almost a quarter century, Atlanta’s small to mid-sized businesses have relied on DynaSis’ for managed IT services, internet security, and 24 x 7 x 365 helpdesk support. Today, with cybercrime becoming an ever-increasing threat, DynaSis has become an industry leader in network protection and ransomware prevention. Please take a tour through our website at www.DynaSis.com or speak with a technical expert at 678.218.1769.

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By the DynaSis Team

Despite mobility being one of the technology cornerstones for small and midsized businesses (SMBs), many organizations still are not making effective, long-term decisions for their firms. In May, we talked about the ongoing challenges of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to the workplace and the importance of having qualified IT support teams or managed IT services providers administer and manage this solution. However, numerous studies indicate that BYOD is not the only component of mobility where SMB owners and decision makers are having a hard time achieving optimal benefit.

Per data from research firm SMB Group, between 55 and 65 percent of SMB owners (depending on organizational size) agree or strongly agree that mobile solutions and services are “critical” to the business. Yet, the researchers also found that many SMB owners do not have a strategic perspective regarding mobile technologies. Following are a few examples:

• According to a Techaisle 2015 SMB Mobility Adoption and Trends survey: More than 80 percent of SMB employees require mobile access to company data, yet many owners remain overwhelmed by issues such as total cost of ownership (46 percent), compliance (44 percent) and integration with desktop, IT and communications infrastructure (37 percent).
• In an SMB Group survey of mobile application selection: For firms with 1 to 100 employees, “ease of use” and “low cost” are the top two criteria for adopting or allowing a mobile app in the workplace. Companies of 100 to 1000 selected ease of use and “integrates well with other applications” as the two top criteria. Neither selected such strategic drivers as “increases productivity and collaboration,” “ease of access and management” or “application security” as top application criteria.
• Per a study by RBC Capital Markets about mobile websites: 67 percent of SMBs do not have a mobile-optimized website, and similar studies show that even fewer use SMS or text messages to reach their partners or customers. The study noted that such low adoption rates could be hurting SMB sales—and even corporate reputation—given the uptake of mobile devices.

From these examples (and others), it’s apparent that SMBs lag behind larger competitors in the mobile arena. The development of the “mobile workplace” was supposed to help level the playing field for smaller companies. Yet, for organizational leaders who don’t have the time, expertise or sense of direction to take advantage of mobile opportunities, the reverse could be true.

What many SMBs need most is a cohesive mobile technology strategy, which is a key, not only to effective mobile adoption but also to mobile risk management. As with so many areas of the business, company leaders are often too wrapped up with daily operational issues to make time for strategic planning.

Having the assistance of an outside resource, such as a managed services provider or IT consulting firm, is often the best way to obtain both resource and expertise for objective planning and decision making. With a strategic plan in place, business leaders can make informed, long-term decisions that support both the organization and its personnel.

DynaSis has been providing managed IT support services to Metro Atlanta’s small to midsized businesses since 1992. We provide Availability – making sure your network is up and running; Mobility – allowing your employees world-wide access to your network; and Security – as an Internet security company, we resolve “issues” before they grow into problems. If you want to learn more, please visit www.DynaSis.com, or call us at 678.218.1769.

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By the DynaSis Team

For many small and midsized business owners, cybersecurity is a maze with no apparent exit. Bad news arrives daily, and “recommended” or “best practices” solutions can differ from one IT solutions provider to the next. As a managed IT services firm that helps companies navigate this maze on a daily basis, we understand how confusing cybersecurity can be. Even so, that doesn’t mean business owners can afford to ignore the threat landscape and hope it will go away. It won’t.

Last week, we read the annual Data Breach Digest from Verizon, an incident report that identifies cyberattack trends. To pinpoint the trend lines, a team of investigators explored more than 500 cybersecurity incidents from 2015 and then analyzed them with data from the two previous years.

Some of the results were unsettling, to say the least.

• Human error is still responsible for a large percentage of data breaches (30% over the past three years). Among breaches caused by human error, phishing (spoofed emails or websites that look real, to which users respond and become infected) accounted for 72% of those breaches.
• Initial compromise is happening the same ways it has for a decade, including email, social media, and infected thumb (USB) drives.
• Perhaps most disturbing, the report found that 80% of all data breaches--even those not officially assigned to human error--involve exploitation of stolen, weak, default or easily guessable passwords.

Since the dawn of corporate computing, experts have been urging companies to require secure passwords—and to teach employees how to keep them safe. The fact that 80% of breaches involve compromised passwords surprised even us.

Human gullibility will never be eliminated, which is why cybercriminals rely upon it. However, organizations can teach employees how to recognize danger—and avoid giving into their gullible natures.

In addition, requiring strong passwords throughout the organization is one of the single easiest steps a business owner can take to secure his firm and its assets. Even if you don’t think you can afford an advanced threat detection and mitigation solution or don’t have the time to conduct a “safe IT practices” training session for personnel, it is business suicide not to enact and enforce a password policy.

If you do not have a password policy, we urge you to create one, now. Issue a memo about passwords with a deadline, and identify a trusted management or IT staffer to follow up and ensure compliance. To get workers excited, sponsor a contest, and offer a gift certificate or other perk to the person with the best password and the one that reaches compliance first.

To help you get started, here are a few pointers:

• Passwords must contain at least eight characters; 14 is even better.
• Passwords must not contain the user name or parts of the user’s full name, such as a first name.
• Passwords must use at least three of the four available character types: lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers and symbols.
• Passwords must be changed at least every 90 days, and personnel should receive a task reminder via email, calendar, etc. that won’t go away until they confirm completion.
• Passwords for company resources must not be shared with anyone—even other employees—not should they be transmitted to other devices via email or other method “for safekeeping” or any other reason.
• The firm should have a written, enforced policy that states failure to adhere to password guidelines may result in termination.

Many data storage solutions incorporate strict password policies, and a number of affordable security solutions police them. After you get everyone on board with password management, consider working with an IT consulting or IT support firm to adopt a technology-based enforcement mechanism. It will pay for itself, quickly.

DynaSis has been Atlanta’s premier IT support services provider for more than 23 years. As an IT company working with small to midsized businesses (10 to 150+ users), DynaSis has developed a unique 12-layer approach to network threat protection, ransomware prevention and crypto virus threat elimination. The DynaSis Business Cloud functions through a highly secure environment with full real-time data backup. Please contact us at 678.218.1769 or visit our website at www.DynaSis.com.

By the DynaSis Team

When we speak with companies for the first time, one activity we always suggest is an IT Assessment. Unless a firm has recently had an assessment—or is so well organized and disciplined that it’s systems and network are always up to date and running at peak condition—an IT Assessment can be an instrumental planning tool.

Yet, some business leaders don’t understand the value of an IT Assessment, or they are worried it will be too disruptive to their business. Others are concerned that the true purpose of the assessment is to sell them expensive upgrades they cannot afford.

If you have refused an offer of an IT Assessment for these or other reasons, and you have never experienced the benefits of an IT assessment, we hope you will read this article. In the rapidly evolving world of technology, firms simply cannot decide where they want to go, and then plan to go there in a cost-effective, practical fashion, until they have had an IT Assessment.

Many companies work with technology every day without any idea of the condition of their IT networks and whether their systems are functioning at an optimal, or even an acceptable level. Most do not fully know what IT assets (hardware and software) are in use. Without this information, a business decision maker cannot possibly prioritize and manage the technology initiatives that minimize downtime, security holes and other operating problems. An IT Assessment provides exactly the insight and visibility that organizations need to gain this knowledge and prepare for a brighter technology future.

As was pointed out in a recent article on IT complexity and reliability (an interesting, if fairly high-level read): “Since it is impossible to avoid failures in IT systems, modern IT operations strive to minimize the impact of failure by increasing the responsiveness of systems (i.e. automatic failover) and people (i.e. incident response) when problems arise.”

There is no better way to start the process of increasing system responsiveness, and to gain beneficial insight into the problems that affect people (and are caused by them), than with an IT Assessment. Best of all, the most proficient Managed IT Service providers can conduct an IT assessment with minimal disruption to the workforce or corporate operations. Much of the information gathering can be handled by running an assessment tool that only collects system and inventory information and does not collect any company data, causing little to no system impact.

DynaSis recently released a white paper entitled “The Value of an IT Assessment.” It offers more information on how organizations benefit from IT Assessments and details what they should expect when they engage in them. We invite you to read it at your convenience.

DynaSis has been providing managed IT support services to Metro Atlanta’s small to midsized businesses since 1992. We provide Availability—making sure your network is up and running; Mobility— allowing your employees world-wide access to your network; and Security—as an Internet security company, we resolve “issues” before they grow into problems. If you want to learn more, please visit www.DynaSis.com, or call us at 678.218.1769.