Recent Blog Posts
How does your business maintain its critical technology assets? Organizations with limited budgets and workforces often resort to forsaking technology support entirely, only getting the help they need when something goes wrong. This is called break-fix IT, and it can become a major detriment to your organization in the long run if left unchecked. Thankfully, there?s a simple solution, and it doesn?t involve hiring in-house technicians or breaking your budget. Break-fix IT can be a huge problem for SMBs, particularly because they lack the funds to hire an in-house IT department and that employees often juggle multiple responsibilities at once. If SMBs have technology support at all, it?s either from a break-fix provider which only resolves problems after they have occurred, or from in-house employees who have subpar understanding of it. This makes it difficult to get the IT assistance needed to keep operations moving along. Poor IT is a Company-Wide ProblemOrganizations that suffer from poor IT administration don?t just feel isolated results of these issues. In fact, poor IT management often has widespread results that are felt throughout the organization and its infrastructure. An unresolved hiccup that keeps one employee from accessing their cloud-based data, for example, could eventually become a major problem that derails the entire organization, leading to widespread downtime that puts your budget through the ringer. Furthermore, when one employee can?t do their job properly thanks to technology troubles, anyone else who is also waiting on that employee to do their job will be held up. This creates a web of employees that can?t do their jobs, escalating the issue of downtime. Ideally, you want to avoid technology problems in the first place. In doing so, you can keep small issues from snowballing into major troubles for your organization. The SolutionSince your goal should be to prevent issues before they become problems, you want to take a more preventative approach to business IT management than what break-fix IT presents. Managed IT services allow your organization to take full advantage of IT professionals without the problems associated with hiring in-house technicians. Essentially, you outsource the responsibility of IT management and maintenance to a third party like White Mountain IT Services. Our technicians then act as a dedicated IT department for your organization, remotely monitoring your infrastructure for problems that could derail operations. Remember, IT shouldn?t be something that only management has to worry about. When you outsource your IT management to a third party, you free up countless hours spent worrying about technology management. You can then use this newfound time to get caught up in the workplace and focus on what matters most: running your business. For more information about managed IT services, including how you can get started with it, give us a call at (603) 889-0800.
It?s Not a Seminar, It?s a WebinarThe seminar has been used for decades as a way for companies to expose industry professionals and the curious to new practices, products, and procedures. The seminar would provide a condensed view of information for people that had, for one reason or another, become interested in the concepts discussed at them. Today, smaller companies, many of which couldn?t afford to routinely throw a seminar, can leverage the power of the Internet to work to this same effect by holding webinars. If you aren?t familiar with a webinar, it is exactly what it sounds like. It?s a seminar held on the internet. More accurately, it is course for people to learn more about a product, service, or practice; and, it can work on several levels for an organization. Webinars are inexpensive to hold. The solutions required to hold a webinar can be found free, or are extraordinarily affordable. A presentation software like Microsoft PowerPoint can be used to put together an arrangement to help hold the audience?s attention. In fact, the only expense of any real consideration is the cost in time to hold the webinar; which is hopefully mitigated by the acquisition of new clientele. The Webinar is a great way to distribute information to customers, potential customers, or even staff (if you think the concept is important enough for them to know about). Since the webinar usually covers a specific element of the business, it is normally developed with the hope that at the end attendees will better understand a concept. Putting together a webinar is relatively simple. Since you are the authority in your market, there has to be at least a few questions that you are asked regularly. Start there. The webinar gives you the opportunity to provide answers to questions, and teach concepts and practices that people need to know in order to make decisions that will affect how they spend their time and money, so be specific. It?s not a podcast after all. The typical webinar can be anywhere from a few minutes to several hours long. Many longer webinars are split into sessions to keep attendees from getting information overload. If an attendee doesn?t get much out of the webinar, there is a significant chance that they will not come back for another one. If you look at it as your chance to grab people?s attention, you?ll be in the best position when it comes time to present advanced or detailed topics, as then you will approach it with the urgency and specificity necessary to make a webinar work. One of the best features of a webinar, as a marketing or training tool, is that people can view them on their own time. So, while you may have some attendees when you first hold the webinar, others can view it at their leisure. Flexibility distributing your company?s knowledge and authority has shown to be beneficial. Buzzsumo has stated that nearly one-fifth of their webinar attendees turn into paying customers, an immensely large portion as compared to other forms of web marketing. For more information on the technology it takes to run a webinar, how to set one up, or to get productivity solutions designed to help your business, call the IT professionals at White Mountain IT Services today at (603) 889-0800.
What is the IoT, and What’s a Botnet?The Internet of Things (IoT) is a blanket term describing any item that collects data and connects to the Internet to process that data. Think everything from fitness trackers to smart home assistants, smart watches, and internet-capable security cameras. If you have any device that is described as ?connected? or ?smart,? you?ve interacted with the IoT. These kinds of devices are becoming more and more commonplace in everyday life. The big problem with IoT devices is that there is little, if any, attention devoted to maintaining their security. This, combined with their reliance on an Internet connection to function, make them perfect for building the online threat known as a botnet. A botnet is a network of devices utilized as an attack vector. By infecting numerous pieces of hardware, an attacker is able to leverage their combined resources as part of a brute force attack, overwhelming the targeted system?s security. We?ve seen this before, including events that took down dozens of popular websites on the Internet all at once. A Bad Memory Comes Back AgainThere are plenty of examples of IoT botnets, but a particularly nasty one, Mirai, has made headlines again as a new derivative botnet has begun to rise. Called Persirai, this botnet leverages the same IP cameras as Mirai to power its attacks. Persirai has been making its rounds around China, infecting thousands of devices. Of course, there are other botnets that warrant concern as well. A currently-dormant botnet, called Hajime, was measured by Kaspersky Labs to have almost 300,000 IoT devices powering it. The researchers also noted that it was very well-written and put together. As a result, should the idle botnet be put to use (as experts suspect is very likely will) it could very easily be as potent as Mirai was. How You Can Protect Your BusinessFortunately, many botnet-powered DDoS attacks can be avoided through some relatively simple preventative measures that are in line with recommended business continuity best practices. For example, keeping your data on multiple, distinct locations will help keep it safe should you find your business to be the target of such an attack. Furthermore, it never hurts to have a firewall put into place, as many varieties of DDoS attacks can be mitigated by them. White Mountain IT Services can help you to implement these measures to protect your business against threats that come from misused IoT devices. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 to get started.
Nobody likes to think that an employee would (or could) be deliberately responsible for a network security breach. However, a recent study revealed that 95 percent of surveyed businesses have employees who were actively involved in undermining the security measures the organizations had put in place. The same report stated that: 60 percent of attacks can, in some part, be linked to a company insider. 68 percent of which are the result of employee negligence. 22 percent are the result of intentional malicious activity from a company insider. 10 percent come about as a result of credential theft. Studied workforces also found that negligent behavior included the common misuse of company resources to access inappropriate content. 59 percent of those organizations surveyed had employees using the network to access adult-themed websites and 43 percent reported trends of employees using the network to engage in online gambling activities. It isn?t as though these networks were left unprotected, either. One of the companies covered in this survey discovered that in order to bypass their company?s network restrictions, one of their employees had simply done an online search for ?how to bypass network proxy? and run through the results until they discovered one that effectively rendered the company?s network controls ineffective. On a related note, a lot of the most effective means of attacking a business has been proven to be targeting one of its employees in what is known as social engineering. An untrained employee may not recognize the warning signs of such an attack, assuming they were even aware of the risks in the first place. Taking all of these facts and figures into account, one thing becomes clear: your employees are your first and last line of defense when it comes to your cybersecurity. As such, it is crucial that they are not only fully educated in the terms and warning signs that accompany a breach, but are made aware of the procedures you have in place to protect your business and why these procedures are so important to follow to the letter. White Mountain IT Services can help you improve upon your cybersecurity as it stands. We are available to help ease your workforce into the transition. Our network security strategies and solutions can help your organization comply with industry best practices; and, we can help implement controls to prevent your employees from allowing their personal activities from interfering with their workday productivity. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 for more information.
What follows are some common issues that often trip up companies when their IT is audited. Outdated Software – From the operating system on company workstations to the network itself, a failure to apply any updates or security patches is a big red flag for auditors. This is because outdated solutions are vulnerable to security threats, and therefore, the business is put at risk and could potentially put others at risk as well. No Business Continuity Plan – A business without a business continuity plan is a business that is vulnerable to chance–and while chances are that your business won’t burn down or be flooded by a tropical storm, there’s still a chance that it might. A lack of preparation for a potentially business-ending event is certainly not in line with best practice, and will prevent your business from receiving approval from auditors. Poor or Lacking Implementation – A wide variety of internal processes will be checked to determine a company’s compliance, and so you must be sure that yours are all in line. Outdated IT policies will often result in a failing grade, as will a lack of penetration testing or two-factor authentication practices. Furthermore, auditors will not look well upon security responsibilities being spread throughout an IT resource team, so every member will have to be able to handle all security responsibilities if called upon. These are just the beginning of the ways your company could potentially come up short in an audit. In order to truly perform well, you must be sure that the entirety of your IT is up to standards. It is also important to remember that auditors are not the bad guys. In fact, they are just the opposite–they’re the ones who are actively making sure that the bad guys have as difficult a time as possible entering your systems by enforcing basic security practices. White Mountain IT Services can help you prepare your security for the next time you potentially face an audit by implementing the solutions that the auditors are looking for. Give us a call at (603) 889-0800 to get started.
