Category Archives: Manage Service

The Consequences of Not Having a Proper Disaster Recovery Plan

Disaster Recovery Plan
Cybersecurity, Data Backup, Manage Service, Security, , , , , ,

We have often talked about how having a disaster recovery plan is one of the most crucial elements of good business management. Despite our constant posts and reminders, however, there are still thousands of business owners all over the world that do not take disaster recovery seriously.

Most businesses take precautions to protect other aspects of their business—car insurance, vendor contracts, and so on. But it’s scary that many people choose not to spend money on a good disaster recovery plan.

How will you handle a disaster that damages your data, equipment, or other resources? If you have prepared a business contingency plan for such events, you will have something to fall back on. There might be losses, but they will be minimal, and you will be able to restore everything soon enough.

If you don’t have a proper disaster recovery plan, you might not be able to continue with business operations. Here are some consequences you might face if you cannot prepare a suitable recovery plan for your business right from the beginning.

Disaster and Substantial Data Loss

Businesses rely on many kinds of data to operate properly. From marketing to sales to customer records, your company’s data plays a considerable role in day-to-day operations. If your data gets lost or damaged, your business can invariably collapse!

Even huge companies are not immune to the effects of data loss. Many people have had to spend millions of dollars just to get their data back after they lost it because of a cyberattack or a natural disaster.

Business Interruption

If a disaster hits your business and you don’t have the means to recover, your operations may come to a stop. You can’t work and earn money until your business is back on its feet. Without a proper disaster recovery plan, recovery can take a very long time!

Depending on the amount of damage, you will either need to rebuild your business or relocate. Either way, the process will be difficult if you don’t have a recovery plan.

Loss of Customers when not having a Disaster Recovery Plan

No matter how loyal some of your customers might be, it is unlikely that all of them will stick around if they see that your business has suffered from a disaster. Some may wait a while if they see you doing your best to recover and restore all lost information. They will take their business elsewhere if they discover you can’t fully recover.

What’s worse is that even if the disaster did not directly affect other clients, the news might spread quickly, and they might leave as well. New prospective clients might also think twice about entrusting their needs to you.

Huge Spending

Disaster recovery can be expensive, even with a plan, especially if you do not prepare for a disaster. Depending on the type of disaster, you may need to buy new hardware and re-encrypt any lost or damaged data. You are also losing a lot of money because you haven’t yet gotten back on your feet.

Disaster Recovery Plan: Final Thoughts

Research shows that 40% of businesses do not have a contingency plan in case of a disaster. These businesses will have a hard time getting their money back if something bad happens.

If you want to prepare your business for a disaster, we can help! Get in touch with us, and we will build a disaster recovery strategy to give your business the most comprehensive protection possible. Don’t forget that we can help you check if your office has exposed or stolen passwords or login info by running a Free Dark Web Scan. If you want to test your Backup Disaster Knowledge, take our BDR Quiz!

Telltale Signs of a Phishing Attack

Anti-virus, Manage Service, Security

The main reason phishing has become such a prevalent problem is that it works. And hackers keep finding new ways to increase the success rate even further. What used to be easily distinguishable attempts at stealing information have now become brilliant scams that look valid at first glance.

However, this doesn’t mean that phishing attacks always work. All that’s needed is for everyone to stay vigilant with online communications and ensure they know what to look for to identify a phishing scam. Here are some of the most important signs you should look out for.

Fake Email Address

Very few people stop to look at the sender’s address when they get an email. Most of the time, employees will glance at the subject line and check the message. If the recipient checked the validity of an email address, it might prevent most phishing attacks.

Amateur cybercriminals might use free email accounts like Gmail or Yahoo to send a phishing scam. Major players, however, use email domains just like real email. For instance, if you get an email from someone@amazonprime.az rather than someone@amazonprime.com, you’d better be wary.

Inconsistencies in Writing Style

If the style of writing is suspiciously different from what you have been getting from what appears to be the same sender, this can be a sign of a phishing hook. Also, some countries use different date formats. If date formats are not what you are used to, that’s also one sign.

Errors in Grammar and Spelling

Official emails get checked for grammar and spelling mistakes or go through basic spellcheck. A few minor typos and one or two misspellings are forgivable, but email with blatant errors, especially if it is supposed to be from a reputable company, is a good sign of a phishing scam. It’s likely because the hacker used an automated language translator to mass produce the message for potential victims.

Suspicious Attachments

You should never open attachments unless you are expecting them or if you can confirm with the actual sender that they indeed intended them for you. Otherwise, don’t open it, no matter how legitimate looking the filename might be. It’s likely they loaded these attachments with malware that will unleash themselves on your system once you click on them.

Fake Links

No one would knowingly click on a fake link, but these phishing emails are made to look so real. To check whether they are valid or not, hover over them and read the URL, particularly the domain name. If it seems questionable, that’s because it probably is. Delete the email and don’t give it a second look.

There is no 100% guarantee of protection against phishing attacks but looking out for these telltale signs is an excellent first step. As a business owner, be sure that all your employees know these signs and that you have properly trained them on the critical security measures against online threats. For more about these threats and what you can do to protect your business, start your new Employee Training today and have everyone in your office watch our Free Cybersecurity Webinar.

It’s time to take cybersecurity seriously. Call us and let’s protect your business today.

Updates are Critical for Your Devices. Here’s Why:

Manage Service, ,
Hands of a tech updating her laptop's software programs and operating system.

Keep your devices updated to decrease your chances of getting hacked.

If there is one piece of advice that IT pros can give to professionals and business managers, it’s to update. Update your computers, phones and tablets. Update your web server, your software tech stack, and your cybersecurity defenses. Update your operating system, your drivers, and even your printers and routers. Why? Because updates are released for very good reasons.

Outdated technology isn’t just clunky, it’s also dangerous. Hackers thrive on unchanged default settings and known security gaps. So, even if your software and devices are working perfectly, it’s vital to keep up with regular performance and security updates.

 

What Is an Update?

An update is when new software is released that improves your current technology. Sometimes, an update fixes a previous problem. Sometimes, an update may add new functionality, or expand the software to integrate better with other programs. Updates come in all sizes and purposes. Let’s look at a few examples of updates that are easy to understand.

Adobe, for example, often releases a new edition and most users will update to get better features or the fix to a previous flaw. Windows 11 is an update from Windows 10. If you get a cool new web camera or microphone, you might need to install the latest drivers to use them -and this, too, is an update.

 

Why Should You Update?

Many people don’t see the point of updating if your programs and devices work well already. However, updating offers both a myriad of benefits and plays an important role in risk prevention.

If your devices or software go out-of-date, they will stop performing at their best, may lose support from the developer, and lose integration other technology. Worse, the older any technology is, the more time hackers have had to identify vulnerabilities. The latest updates often include security patches that close known vulnerabilities and decrease your chances of getting hacked. Likewise, not updating your software is like leaving the backdoor unlocked when you know there’s a thief in the neighborhood.

One of the biggest recent threats that updates can help protect you from is malvertising – or infected ads on legitimate sites. If your device, firewall, and virus scanner are up to date, malvertising is far less likely to affect your computer.

 

What Should Be Updated?

Updating happens at almost every level of device technology. You should occasionally update the operating system of each device and computer you use, and check for updates of hardware, firmware, and drivers.

Every program you use should be updated regularly, and so should the devices themselves. Update your programs, the browsers you use, and your defense software. Update the operating systems on your phones, tablets, computers, laptops, servers, and even often-forgotten hardware like your router and printer.

 

How Do You Update?

Updating will have a standard procedure for every device and program, and that process is usually quite simple.  Every computer, phone, and tablet operating system has a simple OS updating system that will check for, download, and install updates on a schedule or on command.

Navigate to the Apps section of your settings. From there, you can check for, download, and install updates for individual apps and programs.

Your web browsers will often ask to update themselves, and this is also true for many cloud platform programs.

To update your drivers, you will often need to download the latest driver and install it through your Device Manager menu. This may also be true of some software.

To update more complex software, there may be a plugin or update manager found through the internal dashboards. In almost all cases, updates and patching have been made easy, and the paths easily researched.

 

Taking Control of Your Update Cycle

Staying updated keeps your system running with optimized performance and security. When you’re ready to take control of your update cycle, contact us to up  your game and learn more about managed IT services.

Why manage your IT alone when you can have a team of experts at your disposal?

Manage Service, , , , , ,
Team of IT experts working on a computer - managing a company's IT systems.

Having an expert team handling your cybersecurity burden is the best option for your business.

The more technology evolves, the more systems’ security becomes complicated. You have more cybersecurity threats now, than the average 90s person. You have to be on the lookout for hackers who may sell or buy your credentials and private information on the dark web.

Furthermore, on top of an in-built spam filter, you need an additional third party spam filter to improve email security. And if you are using cloud services, then you need to initialize multifactor authentication, otherwise hackers will easily own your accounts.

All these measures may sound overwhelming, and a solution like SentinelOne’s Singularity XDR may sound appealing. Who doesn’t want an automated, AI-integrated cybersecurity software that gives you full control over threats?

Even if you could individually monitor and deal with threats, why would you want to burden yourself when you can have experts handle your cybersecurity burden?

In this post, we look at our last 4 blog posts to show how recent security concerns require innovative tools to deal with. We elaborate why you need to outsource cybersecurity to your managed service provider instead of handling these modern security concerns by yourself.

You Need a Third Party Spam Filter

Even if you have Office 365, you need a third party spam filter for optimum protection. Office 365 uses Microsoft’s Exchange Online Protection (EOP) as the built-in spam filter. However, EOP does not provide the level of protection against malicious emails required by most organizations. Some spam and phishing emails make it past EOP’s protection and endanger the organization.

Therefore, third-party spam filters are required for optimally spam protection. Third-party spam filters are preferred because they are AI-integrated and are constantly learning to identify and block new spam and phishing threats as they occur.

These spam filters also provide DKIM and SPF email authentication protection, which ensures your emails are not spoofed. Phishing attacks are commonly launched through spoofed emails, which are difficult to detect without DKIM and SPF email authentication protection.

You Need To Protect Your System From Dark Web Hackers

The Dark Web exists, and it can really hurt your business. Hackers sell and buy stolen credentials on the Dark Web. For as little as $8, they can get hold of your organization’s usernames, and account passwords, wrecking havoc to your system.

You should make an effort to monitor the Dark Web for your details. If your credentials are already on the Dark Web, the best you can do is immediately change your passwords and initiate multifactor authentication.

You Need Multifactor Authentication for Your Cloud Services

Hackers with your credentials can access and own your accounts. Most of our data is stored in the cloud, where access is authorized to any remote user with matching credentials. Multifactor authentication activates additional security measures that confirm that the remote user is indeed an authorized user.

Multifactor authentication is a quick, easy solution to the problem of hacked credentials.

You Need an AI Assisted Cross-stack Solution to Monitor and Respond to Threats

With evolving technology, the areas of vulnerability and attack vectors have increased. Solutions like SentinelOne’s Singularity XDR give customers a unified and proactive approach to almost all potential points of attack. You can monitor and respond to threats as they occur.

Get All These Services From Your Managed Service Provider

From the above points, it is evident you need to protect yourself against a number of cybersecurity threats. Luckily, there are tools you can use to constantly keep ahead of these threats. However, it is overwhelming to operate all these cybersecurity tools effectively. That is why 41% of businesses outsource their cybersecurity needs.

Outsourcing cuts the costs that would have been used in training and hiring employees, and buying and leasing tools for cybersecurity purposes. Most significantly, outsourcing gives you access to a team of experts dedicated to your cybersecurity.

about your security for your business? Contact us here, so we can review your current policies and look at ways to protect and secure your company’s data without breaking the bank and get you back to concentrating on what you do best.