As we enter into a new decade it’s the perfect time to reflect on the ever-changing landscape of business security. Doing business in this era is nothing like it was in the Y2K days. Today your primary business assets are digital, from your employee data to customer data and everything in between. Depending on your industry, that data may be subject to a whole host of stringent laws in regard to how it is stored and protected. What happens if it gets lost, leaked or stolen? The consequences can be catastrophic.
Here at Nomerel, an Oklahoma IT company, we help businesses in dozens of industries, including medical, legal, oil and gas, and many others, to protect their masses of data. We’re talking millions of patient records, project files, multimedia files, archives, and numerous other pieces of valuable and often sensitive information. Not only do we protect this data, but we also help our clients to formulate a disaster recovery plan so that if the worst does happen, we can quickly get the situation under control.
We want to share the stories of three organizations that did not have a disaster recovery plan. Although not clients of ours, these stories are very similar to those experienced by businesses we’ve encountered right here in Oklahoma. Today, those businesses are our longstanding clients and have solid business continuity plans in place, but it is unfortunate that they had to learn the hard way about the dangers of data insecurity.
If you’re keen to protect the future of your business in the digital age, give us a call or complete our contact form to set up a meeting. We would love to talk about your business continuity plan; we think you might be surprised at how fast and cost-effective it is to implement.
How to protect your company from a digital ransom attack: this city in Florida paid a big price
In June this year, an entire city in Florida was hit with a data breach that cost an astounding $600,000. What’s even more shocking is that this case wasn’t the first of its kind. It is fairly common for government agencies to fall foul of hacking organizations who paralyze computer systems or steal data and demand a ransom for its release. Private companies are also vulnerable to these types of cyberattacks.
In this instance, Riviera Beach found itself facing disaster after an employee of the police department opened an email attachment that was infected with a virus that shut down the entire city’s online systems. Email, office phone systems, and water utility pump stations were impacted. The city was unable to process payroll and vendor payments.
The solution? First, the city was forced to bring forward a planned upgrade of its computer hardware by a year, to the cost of $900,000. Then it paid out an additional $600,000 ransom to the hackers responsible for the attack to recoup their valuable data.
The key point with this story is that Riviera Beach’s digital security was simply not up to scratch. Had they had a dedicated security strategy in place their systems would never have been infected. We can guarantee that preventative cybersecurity would have cost them a whole lot less than the $1.5 million it took to resolve the problem.
Anyone can create a data backup, but an IT company is going to make sure it is fail-proof
Remember the much-loved 1999 kids’ animation Toy Story 2? Well, it might surprise you to learn that due to a simple user error and a major issue with a data backup system, the whole movie was accidentally deleted while still in production. Hundreds of man-hours worth of work were erased in just minutes, and it took a gargantuan effort to get it back.
The issue came about when an employee accidentally triggered a command which began to systematically delete every file in the network. When it dawned on the Pixar team what was happening, they unplugged their master server to halt the deletions and then took a look over what was left. 90% of the movie had been deleted.
No problem, the team thought, we can just use our backup, right? Wrong. This was the crux of the problem. Unfortunately, the backup system had not been adequately checked. If it had, somebody would have realized that the backup system was not big enough to store all the data. New files were writing to the backup drive and pushing older files off. Only a minority of the necessary files were there.
Luckily there was something of a solution. One of the team members had recently been working from home. She had a computer at her house that had a full copy of the network from just a couple of weeks earlier. The team managed, over the course of a sleep-deprived weekend, to trawl through these files and compare them with those recovered from the backup and a series of files saved locally by animators and modelers. They rebuilt the movie – still with several thousand files missing – adequately enough that the project could get back on track.
What’s ironic about this story is that Pixar ended up scrapping, rewriting and rebuilding the movie all over again just a few months later, not because of another data error but because they wanted to make it better. But they certainly learned a lot from their mistakes the first time around, namely that a fail-proof business data backups system is a worthwhile investment when producing a multi-million dollar movie.
Think the Geek Squad is going to help your company? Wrong. This is one of the hundreds of stories – don’t risk it!
In 2008 consumer electronics retailer Best Buy was faced with a gigantic $54 million lawsuit. Why? They had lost a customer’s business laptop, and she was seeking damages not for the loss of the computer, but for the loss of her personal data.
She argued that Best Buy had completely disregarded the importance of protecting her data after her laptop went missing from a store in Tenleytown, D.C. She had taken the laptop there to have the company’s Geek Squad technicians deal with a repair. When she began to question the laptop’s whereabouts, Best Buy misled her about the computer’s location for weeks before finally admitting that it had been lost.
Not only is it appalling that Best Buy can lose electronics that contain valuable and sensitive personal information, but their methods for managing the issue were even worse. They offered the customer just $1110 dollars and a $500 gift card – enough to buy a new laptop, sure, but certainly not compensation enough for the loss of private data. It seemed like they weren’t taking the issue of data breach seriously enough, and the customer quite rightly wanted to make the company sit up and take note when she issued the massive lawsuit.
The lesson here is that we cannot take the protection of data lightly. There are myriad ways in which data can accidentally be lost and subsequently become vulnerable to fraud or exposure. Businesses must have stringent security measures in place to ensure that accidents like this don’t leave them losing either their own valuable data or, perhaps even worse, the personal data of their customers.
Don’t want to be the fourth story on this list? Reach out to us
We would love the opportunity to learn about your organization and discover which of our services would best suit your business. At Nomerel we are proactive; we have experience in every industry and will protect your data with care. We provide organizations with fail-proof data recovery plans throughout Oklahoma, Northwestern Arkansas, and Kansas. We build cost-effective, custom IT solutions that are tailored to your business’ exact needs, giving you everything you need and nothing you don’t. Allow us to bring simplicity and clarity to your IT environment so that you can have the freedom to focus on growing your business.
Any company that uses mobile devices or the internet in any way—which is virtually every business on the planet—should be concerned with backing up their data in the event of a crash or security breach. Selecting the right cloud managed service for your needs though can be challenging, and there’s a lot to consider when shopping for a service that fits your unique needs.
Selecting a Cloud Server to Handle Data
As businesses grow, so do their data needs. One of the biggest challenges that companies face is accommodating that growth. Most businesses utilize the cloud for more than just backup; cloud managed services are an intricate part of MDM solutions as well. In essence, a lot of data is involved with a backup plan. One of the biggest challenges that any company faces, regardless of if it’s a small business or large corporation, is the massive amount of data involved in a comprehensive backup plan. Selecting the right cloud service for your company’s needs may be easier to do by using a business technology company or cloud consulting service.
Keeping Your Backup Safe
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges that companies face with creating an effective backup plan is security. Any information transmitted digitally is vulnerable to a security breach. Unfortunately that is just a fact of life in today’s digital world however, in today’s competitive market most cloud managed services prioritize network security above all else. A company specializing in cloud consulting services can best advise your company on how to keep your data safe from cyber criminals. But, one of the ways they will do that is through top notch encryption. To make your data safe, client side encryption is an option. You can encrypt your data before it even goes to the cloud however, at the cloud, it’ll also be encrypted. Many reputable cloud servers will provide the encryption key to their clients exclusively. They won’t even have access to it. When selecting a cloud service company, it is best to look at companies that have been ISO 27001 and 9001 certified.
Still, some legislation goes as far as to prevent companies from story data outside of geographical borders. It is important for a company to consider legislation in their country before considering cloud managed services. Aside from legislation, it’s also important to realize that some companies will not ship physical drives to your company’s location in the event of a catastrophic crash that requires a large restore at short notice.
Making Sure Your Backup Is Available
Ensuring that your data is available 24/7 is important for almost every company that utilizes the cloud. Companies big and small invest in having cloud managed services available at all times not only for connectivity within the company, but for backups in the event of a crash. If that system is experiencing downtime during a backup or at a time when a company needs to restore part or all of their services, this could be detrimental to the company.
It is best to ‘shop around’ for a cloud service provider that has a reputation for little to no downtime, or who reimburses customers for the time they are unavailable. Consulting with existing customers can provide insight into the quality of services that a company gets from any one particular cloud managed service provider. Some questions that you or your IT support can ask would be about a company’s track record with downtime, how resilient their data servers are and the availability of their own IT support staff.
Alternatively, hiring a cloud consulting company can save a lot of man power or time when it comes to finding a cloud managed service that best fits your company’s needs.
Moving to a New Cloud Server
Much like a typical brick and mortar location, sometimes a company outgrows its current cloud server. It’s important consider when and if this happens as some cloud managed services do not have a service platform that facilitates moving your business easily. In some cases, a cloud service provider may actually restrict a customer’s ability to move to another service. It is not only reasonable, but responsible to question a cloud managed services provider concerning their policies on transitioning a client to another company.
It’s best to choose a cloud managed service that can provide company data on a physical backup. A physical drive containing your company’s data can make moving to another service easier, but many companies are unwilling or unable to do this. When considering a cloud server it’s important to ask about their contract period and policies on cancellation before signing a legally binding contract.
Affordability
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges, at least for small businesses, is an affordable backup plan. Most cloud services base pricing on the amount of data being stored so, for larger companies, this can become costly if it isn’t carefully managed. Many companies prefer to outsource backup services due to the OPEX business model and thanks to a competitive market it is often easy to find cloud servers that offer attractive features at a reasonable rate for storage.
Another factor when considering the price of a cloud server are their fees. Before signing any contracts it is important to ask what additional fees they charge for restores, maintenance, setup and what their charge is per license. Also, it’s important to know what kind of IT support the company provides in the event of a crash and if it comes at an additional cost.
There are many factors that go into considering a backup plan for your business. For some businesses cost may be the biggest challenge, but it is important to ensure that your data is available in the event of a crash, not to mention safe from cyber criminals. Selecting the right service can be a daunting, overwhelming task so it may be wise, and ultimately cost saving, to hire a cloud consulting company to help in selecting the right services for your company. Ultimately you need to be certain that in the event of a crash, you can restore your data and get your company up and going again quickly.
It isn’t always obvious that it’s time to update your office hardware. Or perhaps it seems like an unnecessary expense and it’s easier, not to mention cheaper, to just have your IT services find a way around an issue until some other time. Unfortunately that very often isn’t the case; it’s not really cheaper to divert your IT support from important tasks to repair a computer that can’t actually do the task your undoubtedly frustrated staff needs to do. The cost comes in the form of overtime for your IT support and time lost by your employee, not to mention the disruption of their productivity thanks to the irritation and stress of out of date hardware.
There are many, many indications that it’s time to retire your overworked hardware and consult with an information technology consulting company about updating your IT hardware, but listed below are just four of the major ones.
Your IT Staff spends most of their time Fixing Your Machines
One of the most obvious signs that it’s time to do an upgrade is when your current hardware keeps breaking down. It is essential for a company, any company, to maintain their hardware. Most large companies have an IT support department that makes sure that equipment continues to perform at its best. Even smaller companies have an IT support manager that shares the same responsibilities. When they are working overtime to ensure that your IT hardware continues to keep going, it’s time to upgrade.
Fortunately, there’s help with that. An IT system company can help your IT department identify ways to upgrade and improve on your IT hardware. As new software and new technologies come out, it causes more work for your company’s hardware so whether it’s a new office phone that can utilize VOIP features or a new wireless printer, IT tech services are a necessity in helping your business stay on the cutting edge.
None or Few of Your Machines Match
When it comes to company hardware, it shouldn’t look like a patchwork quilt. That is to say, office equipment should be uniform rather than a variety of brands purchased over the span of many years. Aside from the fact that it makes office tours a little embarrassing, it creates issues when it comes to sharing information in the office, not to mention it causes enormous strain on your IT support. Computers have very few interchangeable parts beyond the mouse, keyboard and some of the cords. When a piece of hardware requires repair and none of your computers are the same, your IT support likely doesn’t have that part on standby just on the off chance that one specific machine out of 50 will malfunction and need one specific part. The part will have to be ordered from the manufacturer or, more than likely, a company online that has outdated hardware for purchase. The part may or may not be inexpensive, but it’ll certainly take time to get it to you. In that time, that machine, and possibly that employee as well, isn’t making you money.
The best solution to this is to use an IT managed services provider who can upgrade all of your machines to a single model so, when something does actually go wrong, parts are on hand to have it fixed the same day.
The Software Will no longer Update or You Can’t Install New Software
Software updates are essential to your IT infrastructure for the same reasons it’s important for your home computer or smart phone. It fixes bugs that have previously gone undetected as well as updating security protocols to prevent things like identity theft or other cyber criminals. When your system can no longer update, or is too old to install new software, then it is imperative for the security of your company to upgrade. Out of date software will slow down your productivity as it cannot properly communicate with new technologies and hardware, but the biggest reason is security. Updates include security patches that protect your customers as well as ways to help your software work more efficiently. If your software cannot update, or even if you need to use a handful of applications to do one thing, it is time to consult with an IT company to upgrade your IT hardware.
Your Computers Can’t Talk to Tablets, Office Equipment, Etc.
As technology evolves, so does the need for connectivity. It is essential that office workstations be able to communicate with not only each other, but also the equipment that helps your office run more efficiently. When a desktop or laptop cannot communicate with the meeting room projector, the printer or even send files wirelessly to a tablet then it’s time to look at ways to upgrade the office hardware. Though there are inexpensive ways around this temporarily—you can buy USB Bluetooth adapters to use with desktops and laptops—ultimately it’s best to just go ahead and consult with an IT services company that can advise you on the best products to meet all of your office needs.
Many new machines feature built in Bluetooth and can communicate with any smart device it recognizes as well as other wireless equipment. Desktop support can help connect new machines to these devices making office productivity that much better.
Software and hardware is constantly evolving with no end in sight. In today’s world there are few areas of our lives that don’t feature computers and smart devices, and the workplace is no different. When computers are out of date or mismatched and your IT support spends all of their time fixing a dying system, it’s a drain on your company’s time, finances, productivity and the patience of your staff. It is essential to the success of a business that every piece of that hardware is up to date and working efficiently and with the help of IT tech services, that isn’t a problem.
By investing in an IT managed services contract or even just consulting with an IT services company for updates, you can help your company be more productive and profitable.
In the last several years cloud technology has become the rage, and for good reason. There are a lot of great reasons to utilize the cloud whether you’re a soldier overseas looking at pictures of your kids or an international corporation that needs to be able to share information instantly across the globe. Information is accessible and provided at speeds that are important to running a business with very few drawbacks. Still, no system is perfect and even the convenience of the cloud has to deal with issues like technical difficulties and network security. Check out some of the great reasons to invest in a cloud managed service as an asset in managing a company.
(Pros)
Accessibility
Companies, particularly ones that work outside of a typical brick and mortar building, know the importance of accessibility. With the cloud, employees can access vital information to their job from anywhere. Cloud software allows users to access files and other media using laptops, tablets and smart phones as well, making it easier than ever before to stay connected and be productive anywhere. Another huge benefit to that accessibility is backup and recovery. Technical disasters happen, having a contingency plan for data backup when that happens involves having everything backed up and ready to go on the cloud.
Cost effective
It is incredibly expensive to manage desktop software in-house. Licensing per user alone is huge, add in capacity and other factors and it simply isn’t a cost effective option. With the cloud a company gets virtually unlimited storage, tech support that specializes in data backup isn’t necessary, and there are with several different attractive and affordable options for companies of all sizes. In addition to the different subscriptions, companies also have to choose appropriate bandwidth however, even with that expense it is still a more cost effective solution than to create a cloud infrastructure within the company.
Storage
The cloud isn’t a single location, but rather lives in the internet. And with the internet, storage isn’t a problem. With virtually unlimited storage the cloud is ideal for businesses that deal in large amounts of software, information or who has a large infrastructure that requires a lot of space. Most users are familiar with the cloud in their personal life thanks to entities like the iCloud and Google Drive. These free services are often enough for individuals, but with a monthly subscription companies (or those individuals who need more), storage isn’t an issue.
Speed
Having the convenience of the cloud doesn’t mean much if it’s too slow. One of the biggest benefits of the cloud, specifically certain cloud service providers, is the download and upload speeds. When a company invests in a good cloud plan, information can instantly be available. For example, an audio recording from a lecture hall in London, England can instantly be available to students in the United States when a customer chooses the right subscription plan. Of course a company or individual’s internet provider can impact how quickly information can be obtained, but most cloud servers are constantly improving how information is stored and retrieved for their clients.
Software Upgrades
Because of the connectivity of the cloud, desktop software updates, updates to apps and software patches are available to clients instantaneously. Customers see this when a smart phone automatically updates and makes software changes to the phone so that it can function better or improve network security. Employees get the benefit of this in much the same way as company devices are updated with company-specific that allows employees to do their jobs more efficiently than ever before.
(Cons)
Connectivity
The cloud exists on the internet. If you can get on the internet, then you have access to the cloud. This should be a very simple matter but as anyone who lives in a region with poor cell service can attest, having access to the internet isn’t always an option. Many places, such as the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States, have spotty cell service and unreliable access to the internet. For companies that rely on access to the cloud to conduct their business, this can be a huge strike against the convenience of the cloud.
Security
In recent years, there have been very public information breaches and cloud companies have worked hard to ensure that their customers can safely use their services. Still, once something is in the cloud, it is vulnerable. There are several security protection options to make information safer, such as encryption on the client’s side before it goes to the cloud, but ultimately there’s still a degree of vulnerability there. With numerous advancements in encryption, companies and individuals can have a reasonable expectation of privacy and safety, but the fact remains that the cloud is a room with a door, and the key can still fall into the wrong hands.
Technical issues
When information is hosted in-house and something goes wrong, there’s a group of employees prepared to get to work immediately to fix the situation. The same applies to cloud services, of course, but they don’t answer to the client whose information is now unavailable. The cloud is massive with many functioning parts that keeps information stored by clients at their fingertips. Even the best cloud services experience outages and technical difficulties occasionally. And, when that happens, those who use that cloud server are now at the mercy of a tech support team that is under no obligation to report repair times or progress.
As with any form of sharing information, the cloud isn’t perfect. The convenience of being able to share information instantly within the company, or recover from technical catastrophe client side, is undeniable. But, the same concerns exist today that were there a few years ago. How safe is that information? And, what happens when the cloud experiences difficulties? Is it going to be available when needed? Many companies find these concerns acceptable in light of the many benefits of having a subscription to a cloud server. As many people spend enormous amounts of time taking pictures and using social media, cloud technology has become an invaluable part of the modern world.
The world seems to be changing at a faster pace than ever before and how we share information is changing with it. We’re no longer storing information on floppy disks or even thumb drives anymore, but rather the cloud. Cloud managed services are invaluable when it comes to storing and sharing information, but is it safe?
The answer is yes, it’s reasonably safe.
Of course no method of storage is completely full-proof, but network security has come a long way in the past 10 years to make sure that all types of data will be secure on cloud managed services. Companies, such as an information technology consulting company or a managed security service provider, have been founded as an entirely new industry was created to meet the security needs of entities that needed to keep information safe, yet accessible. The sole goal of companies such as this is to keep your information, whether it is your child’s school picture or your investment portfolio, safe from cybercriminals. One of the many ways that this is accomplished is through encryption.
Keeping Your Data Safe
The very basic definition of encryption is that it takes readable data and converts it into an encoded format that can only be decoded with an encryption key. Encryption can be used by any entity to protect sensitive documents from hackers. When data is encrypted, it is transformed from plain text to ciphertext using a set of unique algorithms that form an encryption key. Without the key it doesn’t matter if the data is viewed or not because it isn’t in a format that anyone or anything can understand. Like a locked diary, one would need the key to read the information. Once the encryption key is applied again the ciphertext is transformed to plaintext and once again can be accessed as normal. In the case of smartphones, for example, each time these small computers communicate a new set of algorithms is created to protect the information being transmitted.
Interestingly enough, encryption actually came from WWII when the Allies had to decrypt coded messages sent between German U-boats. Thanks to that, the first digital computer was created and the marked beginning of computers as we know them. Protecting those computers and the information that lies therein, however, is much more difficult. Because different companies have different security needs, there are a variety of ways this can be done.
First, there’s server-side encryption. This is standard with cloud storage services and they don’t charge extra for it. When your data is sent to the cloud, it is encrypted before being stored. This provides protection against hackers, but for an added layer of security, clients can provide their own encryption key. Alternatively, you can generate a unique key using a key management service for that same added layer.
Then, there’s also client-side encryption.
Client-side encryption entails a lot more than server-side encryption because you are responsible in-house for encryption the dada using encryption software. Before the data is ever sent to the cloud, it is encoded with encryption keys generated by the company and is sent to the cloud encrypted so that the service never sees the decoded data. In addition to receiving encoded data, the cloud storage will still apply server-side encryption to help protect your files.
Though client-side encryption is by far the most secure way to store your data on the cloud, it comes with its own risks. It is essential to securely manage your encryption key because with client-side encryption, your cloud server cannot assist in decoding your data in the event that the encryption key used in-house is lost.
Cybercrime and Evolving Technology
As the information technology industry continues to evolve every day, so does the threat of cybercrime. Fortunately that threat is being met with new software and techniques to help prevent the theft of sensitive files. To protect clients, some cloud storage services monitor traffic in order to spot suspicious login attempts. Most, if not all of us, have received courtesy emails when logging into an entity for the first time on a new device, so this isn’t an unfamiliar concept.
Back in 2014 many internet users became very hesitant about using cloud storage after several celebrities had intimate images and videos leaded from Apple’s iCloud. It wasn’t a breach of security with cloud storage, but rather an exploited weakness in the password system. Nonetheless, iCloud took the blame and prompted changes in cloud storage systems. Implementing more stringent CIAM practices also plays a big part in preventing instances such as the 2014 celebrity fiasco. CIAM stands for customer identity and access management and it’s something that most entities on the web have become more aware of in recent years. Though the registration and login experience may not have changed much for customers, good CIAM solutions include multi-factor authentication and single sign on (SSO) security across all applications.
In addition to methods to protect initial login information, companies dedicated to protecting their cloud storage service are shifting to a new way of doing things. Software as a Service (SaaS) is replacing hardware solutions to ensure security protection. Human monitoring is being replaced by SDN (software defined networking) that can monitor the network in real time to better protect customers against cyber threats.
Implementing better CIAM solutions, along with using a state of the art SaaS model can make cloud storage services very safe for customers to store their data.
Quite a few things go into keeping cloud managed services running safely and smoothly. Much like any other machine, there are many intricate cogs that keep it going from a network administrator to the service monitor. It is essential that all parts of network security be constantly evolving and because it is, cybercriminals have a much tougher time with hacking personal information and sensitive business documents. Cloud service providers are considerably safer than they’ve ever been before thanks to a combination of encryption, CIAM solutions, and various other security protection measures designed to combat crime.
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