29
Jun, 2020
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Are These Technologies Protecting Your Operational Security?

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With businesses slowly resuming their operations, it is effectively guaranteed that this process will be bumpy. However, this in and of itself presents an opportunity for these businesses to improve their operations for long-term benefits. Whether you are actively opening your doors or ramping up to do so, you need to have today’s technology supporting you and your activities.

Let’s review some recommended technologies for you to embrace as you reopen your business.

Updated Hardware and Software Solutions

First things first—while businesses resume their operations, the chaos that will predictably ensue is the perfect time for cybercriminals to take their shot. Therefore, you need to make it a priority that all your hardware and software solutions are fully updated or upgraded as improvements are made available. In doing so, you make sure that the tools your team will use are as secure as they can be against the latest threats.

As a bonus, updated solutions commonly come with other improvements and features that add to your potential productivity. This means that your team will be in the position to accomplish as much as they can in the shortest available time without being distracted by security concerns.

Cloud-based Technology

Cloud-based tools have created the opportunity for businesses of all kinds to successfully adopt specialized solutions for their needs. Telework is also made simpler using cloud-based technology solutions, as your solutions are made accessible from wherever your team happens to be working due to its inherent mobility and operational efficiency that your functionality will require.

Monitoring and Maintenance Services

As your team returns to the workplace, there is likely to be a lot of work necessary before your operations are back to 100 percent. One thing is certain: you won’t be able to afford any downtime that could possibly be avoided. 

For this to be the reality inside your office, you will need to ensure your uptime… something that a relationship with a trusted IT professional can do. Using remote monitoring tools to proactively catch burgeoning issues and fix them before they impact your business, a provider like NuTech Services can potentially identify and mitigate problems without you ever realizing that you had an issue at all.

Telework and Communication Capabilities

With the ongoing risk that businesses may once again need to close their doors, it only makes sense to have the communication and collaboration tools that would enable true business continuity. The right technology can make the shift to remote work almost seamless, especially if the cloud and its many capabilities are leveraged appropriately. With many capabilities now offered as-a-Service, Voice-over-Internet-Protocol coming to the forefront of communications, and so many other business resources now taking advantage of cloud delivery, your team should be just as capable at home as they are in the office.

A word of warning needs to be shared, however, as remote work can potentially give your team the opportunity to expose your data. If you elect to use the cloud, this makes the next section even more important.

Security and Authentication Measures

For your data to remain protected throughout remote work, you need to have the right solutions and procedures in place for your team to use and follow. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) will enable your team to safely access your business’ data while they are working remotely, and the proper protections on their endpoints will help to minimize their risks.

As far as their access controls are concerned, each team member needs to follow authentication practices that meet a high standard. Their passwords need to meet vigorous security benchmarks, used in conjunction with protections like multi-factor authentication, or MFA. 

Your office also needs to be made impervious to as much downtime as possible to permit your team the most productivity as they work.

For assistance in making any of these preparations, or with any IT challenges you are facing, reach out to NuTech Services! Help is only a call to 810.230.9455 away.

26
Jun, 2020
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Have You Kept Up with Your Security Audits? You Need To, Especially Now!

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When a business undergoes a security audit, its IT security is evaluated to make sure that it has the proper protections in place to protect against the various threats that could strike. Now more than ever, it is important for any organization to be confident in their preparedness. Let’s discuss the importance of assessing your own organization’s security with audits, and how this benefits you.

What Does a Security Audit Entail?

A security audit is intended to determine how effectively your business’ security is doing its job. Covering hardware specifications, your infrastructure as a whole, your network policies, the software you’re using, even how your employees behave, a good security audit will give you a complete picture of the protections and safeguards you have in place.

The reason behind doing this is simple: it allows you to identify (and, in theory, mitigate) any shortcomings in your current security infrastructure. Once your audit has been completed, you should essentially have a checklist of any detected vulnerabilities to attend to. Whether “attending to” these solutions will result in you decommissioning, consolidating, adding to, or reconfiguring them will all depend on the challenges you encounter.

Of course, considering how quickly technology can develop (particularly that which pertains to the business environment), these audits should be performed on a fairly regular basis. Even changes to your processes or the odd software update could easily expose you to new, unforeseen vulnerabilities.

In any case, documentation will be your greatest ally throughout this process. Any audit that is completed properly will generate an extensive list of discoveries, evaluations, and suggested next steps pertaining to your business’ security. These outlines should be detailed and particular, going so far as to identify specific departments within your organization if need be. Perhaps, due to the nature of the information they interact with, your HR department needs to have more cybersecurity protecting it specifically. Whatever your situation, your audit should give you a clear path to follow moving forward.

What You Might Discover During Your Audit

A brief disclaimer seems appropriate here: this is FAR from a comprehensive list. There are hundreds of issues that an audit could potentially catch, but in our experience, these are the most common discoveries:

  • Poor password hygiene
  • Data retention/backup policies not getting followed
  • Granting permissions to users who don’t need them
  • Misconfigured or outdated security software
  • Inconsistent access control levels on folders on the network
  • Non-compliant, unauthorized software installed on workstations
  • Sensitive data being stored incorrectly
  • Undocumented, outdated, or untested incident response plans
  • Insufficient (or non-existent) activity auditing

Again, there are hundreds more possibilities, so be prepared.

Compliance Requirements

There are many standards that different industries and governing bodies have set for businesses to uphold, under threat of fines and other challenges if any shortcomings are discovered. Therefore, in order to pass these compliance standards, it is mandatory to run audits based around those that apply to your operations. These may include:

  • SOC 2 type I
  • SOC 2 type II
  • ISO 27001
  • GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
  • SOx (Sarbanes-Oxley Act)
  • HIPAA
  • PCI-DSS
  • FINRA
  • FISMA

Again, this is not a comprehensive list, so make sure you are aware of any compliance regulations that you are expected to abide by.

NuTech Services is always here to help you make sure that your IT is properly managed and maintained—including the security and compliance standards that apply to it. To find out more about what we can do to help your business with its IT and cybersecurity, schedule a consultation with us at 810.230.9455.

24
Jun, 2020
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Tip of the Week: How to Effectively Communicate with Your Clientbase

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One of the most important things that your business needs to do—especially now—is to communicate with the clients you serve. To guide you into doing so to the best of your abilities, let’s go over some tips for you and your team to keep in mind pertaining to your communications.

1.  Use the Best Tool for the Job

Your contacts should never find it difficult to reach you, so you need to make sure you’re providing them with plenty of options for them to make contact. Don’t pick between a phone number or an email address, give them both, along with a live chat feature, conferencing options, and other forms of communication. Making use of things like a blog and social media give you a great way to reach out to them first, starting the conversation.

With all of the options you can now give to your clients, they will feel much more confident about getting an answer to their questions and having their concerns addressed. They’re also apt to pay more attention to you as well.

2.  Automate as You Communicate

Of course, in doing so, you may make it more challenging for you and your team members to keep the conversation going with your clients while also accomplishing what needs to be done each day. After all, if your whole day is spent answering questions on the phone, it’s going to be a little difficult to do anything else. Fortunately, there are solutions that you can use to better manage all these communications. Automated phone systems can keep your whole team from being interrupted as a client plays phone tag, while following up with emails and other communications can help minimize the questions that clients ultimately reach out with and simplify their experience.

3.  Coordinate Your Team

For your business to provide a good experience for your customers and clients, your team all needs to work together as they deal with them to avoid repeating or contradicting messages. Improving your internal communications will only make your external communications stronger. Tools also exist to facilitate this, including instant messaging and customer relationship management (CRM) software.

For assistance in implementing this technology (and others), reach out to our team here at NuTech Services. We can discuss the tools that will suit your needs the most, as well as figure out how we can optimize them to your needs. To learn more, give us a call at 810.230.9455.

22
Jun, 2020
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PCI Compliance 101

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Does your business accept credit cards? Of course it does. Regardless of what industry you are in, your customers are now using payment cards for a large portion of their retail transactions both online and in-store. To protect consumers, there has been a compliance standard enacted by credit card companies. Today we will look at this standard.

Introducing PCI DSS

With so many people using credit, debit, and prepaid gift cards to pay for goods and services, the economic ramifications of digital payment fraud, data loss, and other side effects of continued reliance on these methods of payment have led the companies that issue these cards to band together to create what is now known as the PCI Security Standards Council. Since its inception in 2006 the PCI Security Standards Council has been overseeing the establishment and coordination of the PCI DSS, or Payment Card Industry Digital Security Standard. Let’s take a look at how PCI compliance works.

Taking a Look at PCI 

PCI DSS was established in 2006 by credit card companies as a way to regulate business use of personal payment card information. That means all businesses. If your business processes or stores payment card information as a means of accepting digital payment, you need to maintain your PCI compliance. PCI DSS demands that businesses satisfactorily take the following steps:

  1. Change passwords from system default
  2. Install all sufficient network security tools (antivirus, firewalls, etc.) that will work to protect card data
  3. Encrypt transmission of card data across public networks
  4. Restrict the transmission of card and cardholder data to “need to know” basis
  5. Assign user ID to all users with server or database access
  6. Make efforts to protect physical and digital access to card and cardholder data
  7. Monitor and maintain system security
  8. Test system security regularly
  9. Create written policies and procedures that address the importance of securing cardholder data
  10. Train your staff on best practices of accepting payment cards

While many businesses already do these things in the normal course of doing business, if you currently don’t and you still allow for the use of payment cards, your business could have a problem on its hands. 

Business Size and Compliance 

Once you understand what you need to do to be PCI compliant, you then need to comply with the standards of your business’ merchant status. They are defined as follows:

  • Merchant Level #1 – A business that processes over six million payment card transactions per year.
  • Merchant Level #2 – A business that processes between one million-to-six million payment card transactions per year.
  • Merchant Level #3 – A business that processes between 20,000-to-one million e-commerce payment card transactions per year.
  • Merchant Level #4 – A business that processes less than 20,000 e-commerce payment transactions, and fewer than one million overall payment card transactions per year.

Since a business with more transactions has a better chance to foul up a situation concerning payment card compliance, they are required to do more to prove compliance than smaller businesses do. Here are the expectations for businesses in each merchant level:

Merchant Level #1

Doing massive business online and otherwise brings with it more responsibility. To maintain PCI compliance, Level one merchants need to:

  • Perform a yearly Report on Compliance (ROC) through a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA)
  • Allow an Approved Security Vendor (ASV) to complete a quarterly network scan
  • Complete the Attestation of Compliance Form for PCI Council records

Merchant Level #2

As transactions begin to decrease there are less stringent standards. Level twos include:

  • Perform a yearly Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ)
  • Allow an ASV to complete a quarterly network scan
  • Complete the Attestation of Compliance Form for PCI Council records

Merchant Level #3

Many medium-sized businesses will fall under this level and need to:

  • Perform an SAQ
  • Allow an ASV to complete a quarterly network scan
  • Complete the Attestation of Compliance Form for PCI Council records

Merchant Level #4

The majority of small businesses fall into level #4 status and, like levels two and three, need to:

  • Perform a SAQ
  • Allow an ASV to complete a quarterly network scan
  • Complete the Attestation of Compliance Form for PCI Council record

Businesses that are non-compliant will face fines, extra scrutiny, or risk having the privilege of accepting payment cards officially revoked. If you have questions about the particulars of PCI DSS compliance, call the knowledgeable professionals at NuTech Services today at 810.230.9455.

19
Jun, 2020
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Storing Data Is More Complex than You Know

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We all store data on our computers. Whether you have family photos and text documents on your home computer, or databases and on-premises applications running your entire business, data is typically stored in exactly the same way. If you knew how delicate your data actually was, you’d never let a single file exist in one place ever again. Let’s explore that.

How Do Hard Drives Store Data?

A traditional mechanical hard drive, also known as an HDD, holds your data on small magnetic platters. These platters are layered on top of each other, with a small mechanical arm that rests above them. Think about a record player, with the arm and needle over the record, except you have many, many records stacked on top of each other.

Of course, a record player spins the record between 33 and 78 times per minute. Your hard drive typically spins the platters much faster, most of them clocking in at 7200 rotations per minute.

The platters spin so fast, that it creates a cushion of air that prevents the head of the arm from touching the surface of the platter while it spins. This is critical, because if the head (the needle, to continue with the record analogy) were to even graze the surface of the platter, it would destroy the data on the drive.

These hard drives are mechanical in nature. Just like your car, mechanical systems can and will fail eventually. The little motor in the drive can burn out, the spindle can cease up, and so forth. These issues will very likely make the hard drive inaccessible. Thus, your data is lost. Opening files, saving files, and general computer use (even web surfing) causes the hard drive to read and write data. You are always using it, and depending on its stability to protect your data.

(Of course, there are also SSD drives, which don’t utilize moving mechanical parts. These tend to be a little more shock resistant, but they aren’t immune to failure.)

Yet, we trust these devices every single day. If you have a computer or a laptop, you likely have one or two of these inside it. Your servers tend to have many more. Many of us have external hard drives we use to store data to take around with us. If they are using a mechanical-based hard drive, all of our data is at the mercy of several rapidly moving parts and a cushion of air.

This leads us to ask:

Why Would You Ever Rely on a Single Hard Drive?

If your data is only stored on a single hard drive, consider it at high risk. It only takes one tiny issue to lose it all.

Fortunately, preventing data loss is easier than ever. We help businesses establish thoroughly tested, highly-trusted backup solutions that ensure that no disaster will be able to destroy your data. That includes storing a copy of all of your data on a separate device within the office, and a copy stored securely offsite that you can access at any time. This means even a major disaster like a fire or flood doesn’t cause data loss.

Want to learn more? Give us a call at 810.230.9455.

17
Jun, 2020
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Tip of the Week: Four Tools to Improve Business Productivity

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Today’s software solutions are generally built with a single goal in mind: productivity. Here, we wanted to go over a few tools that any business seeking improved efficiency in its operations should strongly consider, especially based on what the world has been experiencing recently.

Instant Messaging

Instant messaging is a handy utility for any team to have at their disposal for the brief messages that coworkers must send to one another throughout the day. Not only is it more efficient than checking and responding to endless emails throughout the day, it allows the message’s recipient to stay more focused on their task. After all, instant messaging and texting has hardwired us to switch more efficiently between tasks when we deal with these kinds of quick messages.

Instant messaging solutions are also widely available on workstations and mobile devices alike, which means that they are easily accessible to your staff whether they’re in the office or working remotely.

Video Conferencing

On the topic of workplace communications, video conferencing is another handy tool to have. Rather than restricting the benefits of face-to-face collaboration exclusively to those operating from within the office, it allows your remote workers to take a virtual seat at the table. As an added benefit, these conferencing tools can also offer screen-sharing capabilities, allowing you to share your perspective with the group for their input. This all culminates into a solution that enables a team to work more productively.

Cloud Storage and Collaboration

With so many still working from home, a big challenge for many businesses was how they were to get the requisite resources and computing power to the people who needed it. Consider the differences in your home network, as compared to the one in the office. The office network is almost guaranteed to be more powerful, never mind the issues that arise in terms of accessing the data and programs needed for your business processes from a home workstation or the obvious security concerns of doing so.

Cloud solutions now offer a much more secure means for your team (both in-house and remote) to work together on the same documents and files, using the same tools. This innovation set the tone for the future of workplace productivity some time ago, so if you haven’t made this change yet, you need to.

Project Management

Finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t address how beneficial a good project management solution can be to your business productivity. Chances are good that—despite being part of a “team”—many of your team members still see their tasks as individual endeavors, things that they are responsible for but exist in a kind of “bubble”.

With a project management tool, this can be mitigated somewhat by providing your team with a view into how their contributions play into the whole project’s success. It also assists in keeping track of where your team is encountering holdups, delays, or other inefficiencies so that they can be mitigated and resolved.

For more information about these solutions (or for assistance with putting them in place), reach out to NuTech Services and our team of professional IT consultants for help! Give us a call at 810.230.9455 today.

15
Jun, 2020
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Social Media is Being Scrutinized

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It’s probably fair to label social media as one of the greatest inventions of the 21st century. Nearly half of the world’s population are active users of social media; and, that number would almost certainly be higher if more people had access to unencumbered broadband. Over the past few weeks, however, one of the most utilized social media services, the microblogging website Twitter, has sparked some controversy after they added an amendment to a tweet sent by the U.S. President Donald Trump suggesting it contained “potentially misleading information”. Today, we’ll briefly discuss what this showdown with the White House means for social media companies. 

To start, let’s go back a few years. In the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential election, another major social media company, Facebook, was under fire for allowing foreign companies to influence the outcome of the election through insite advertising. Google and Twitter were also caught up in the mess, but the scrutiny Facebook saw during the ordeal, well…really hasn’t gone away. 

The result was hearings, lots of hearings. The debate whether social media advertising–if it is broadcasting hateful, divisive, or misleading information–should be allowed on these platforms rages forward. Facebook stood by the First Amendment, even as it was embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica mess. Twitter, took a different approach. They enacted a Civic Integrity Policy. This policy allows them to mark political posts that contain false information. CEO Jack Dorsey stated, “We’ll continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make.”

This action was implemented on a Presidential tweet, and it has drawn the ire of the White House. They immediately stated that this policy allegedly prioritizes perspectives that ignore a conservative point of view. Twitter denies this.

Trump’s reaction to this was swift. The President signed executive order #13925 – Preventing Online Censorship, which gives the Federal Communications Commission the power to regulate social media’s censorship practices.

Soon after, the Center for Democracy and Technology filed a federal lawsuit with the President as the defendant stating that the executive order is unconstitutional and violates the company’s First Amendment rights. Whether a company is entitled to rights, will be a major point of contention in the days ahead. The CDT went on record stating that, because of the executive order, tech company executives believe it will actually work to limit free speech, as businesses will err on the side of caution to avoid risk of crossing federal regulators.

Do you believe that it is responsible for social media companies to warn viewers that powerful people could be lying? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below. Please be respectful.

12
Jun, 2020
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Why You Need to Keep an Eye on Your Data

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When a company operates primarily via the Internet, there seems to be an inherent trust that their audience naturally has. There’s little-to-no doubt that all promises will be kept and that all data shared with them will be fully secured, but is this confidence appropriately placed? While we can’t speak to the promises these companies make, we can weigh in on some common data security practices.

How a Company Acquires Your Data

For a company to get your data, all they really have to do is ask you for it. Think about what happens each time you make a purchase online, or even create an account—you’re handing over your contact information, and usually pairing it to one of your financial resources.

Obviously, you’re subconsciously entrusting them with this information, assuming that they will keep it sufficiently protected and secure.

Here’s the thing: not all companies are totally deserving of this trust. Quite a few companies will make some extra money by bundling their contact lists and selling them off to other companies. This is considered a common enough practice but is fortunately looked upon more and more negatively as data protection is being prioritized more.

Even if this practice goes away, you still have no control over the company’s data security practices. Consider what information of yours could be exposed if that company was to be breached:

  • Your name
  • Your birthday
  • Your credit card information
  • Your contact information

These are all forms of personally identifiable information (PII), and this isn’t even a comprehensive list of the data that these companies will collect. Plus, if they were to suffer a data breach, the onus is still on you.

One of the biggest flaws of the Internet today is the questionable privacy of any activity. Anything you do on the Internet adds to a massive data trail that describes you, from the content you’ve streamed, the messages you’ve sent, everything.

As you might imagine, there’s a lot of value to be had from this kind of data.

How to Protect Yourself by Protecting Your Data

Due to this data’s value, you must do everything you can to protect it. Here are a few good ways to start:

  1. Use good passwords: Password hygiene and resiliency is the part of your online security that you have the most control over, so make sure that you aren’t taking any shortcuts that will undercut their effectiveness in protecting your accounts. Passphrases are often considered a more secure, but easier-to-remember, alternative to the password.
  2. Review the Terms of Service: For each account you’ve created, you need to check the fine print to see how they are using the data you provide.
  3. Track your finances: One of the most effective ways to find out if your security has been undermined is to keep an eye on your financial activities. Find a resource you can trust to give you these insights.
  4. Avoid public Wi-Fi whenever possible: Public Wi-Fi signals are a favorite hunting ground for many cyberattacks. Your data plan is a much safer alternative to these.

NuTech Services has the experience and know-how to keep your business safe from many cyberattacks. To learn more about how we can help, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.

10
Jun, 2020
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Tip of the Week: How to Effectively Task Out Goals and Assignments

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There is a lot that needs to be done in the typical business each day, and with so many steps involved in each process, it can be difficult to stay on track. Without the right information, it is basically impossible to remain productive. To help keep up your productivity and morale, we’ve put together a guide to help you task out your objectives for this week’s tip.

The Ideal Task Formula

The consensus of many productivity experts and trusted names is that the equation to build out a task essentially looks like this:

Step + Detail + Deadline + Context = Task

This works well, as it can apply to either a complete project, or each piece of a larger project. Let’s take a closer look at each part.

Step

Every task is going to feature some action or another, whether something needs to be researched, written, completed, or reviewed, what have you. Essentially, this defines the what of the task at hand, the goal that the person assigned to it needs to accomplish.

Detail

This takes the step and builds it out with additional context and specificity. This might involve such details as:

  • Who the task is assigned to
  • Why they’re completing the task
  • What contribution this task gives toward the final goal
  • Where the assigned team member can find the resources needed to complete the task

Deadline

Of course, one of the most important details associated with any task is the date and time it needs to be completed. By specifying this, you prevent your projects from remaining in a holding pattern, moving them along.

Context

The final things you include in your task are the other important details surrounding it: how long is allotted to spend on it, any projects it is associated with, and where it should fall in the assigned team member’s priorities. This enables the person you’ve assigned to better organize their schedule to make the most effective use of their time.

Let’s say you wanted to assign one of your team members to write you a blog post about creating a task, so you needed to task it out. The final product might look something like this:

“Write blog post about creating tasks”

Creation of blog for website describing how to create a task for a business goal to be posted on Friday. Please compose blog on document found in content creation folder.

Assigned to SEAN – Priority 5

*If unable to complete, please inform HR and reschedule to next week*

Wednesday: 9:30—10:30

  • Seek out sources for blog post about how to task out responsibilities
  • Compose blog post
  • Contact BRIAN to read blog over and proof

Friday: 1:30—2:00

  • Post blog to website”

There you have it: how to task out your business’ processes for your team to reference as they follow your instructions. This process can apply to just about anything, if you are careful to follow the steps and provide a clear and comprehensive view of that which needs to be accomplished. The more information you provide, the better the outcome will likely be.

For more information to help you boost your productivity, and information about the tools that can help you to do so, subscribe to our blog today!

8
Jun, 2020
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People Have Been Working From Home Longer than You Think

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Working from home isn’t new, but with the COVID-19 pandemic sparking public health fears many businesses decided to move their operations offsite. For much of the past decade remote work was an available strategy for business, but many business owners feared it would give them a lack of control over their workforce, and therefore was largely ignored. This was despite remote work being a strategy people have embraced for a long, long time. Today, we take a look at the history and progression of working from home.  

For Much of History People Worked From Home

In medieval times people predominantly worked at their place of residence. Many people of this era in Europe lived in what are known now as longhouses. They lived a subsistence life, looking after their crops and livestock. Individuals that lived in these communal buildings typically found a way to justify their inclusion by gaining a trade that would help the rest of the people out. In fact, it wasn’t until the mid-18th century where people started going outside their immediate community to go to work; and even then, the people that ran the factories lived and operated out of small buildings adjacent to the main factory.

Office Work In the 20th Century

As industrialization took hold, there was demand for clerical workers and salesmen that necessitated building an office. Inventions such as electric motors, telegraphy (and eventually telephony), and the typewriter facilitated a major change for business. 

Only a few decades later, much of the job market was represented by clerical work. The workers that still worked in production were made to hold fast to management’s new standards for productivity. The standard that kept increasing. Managers of the time began to keep detailed figures of how long a task should take. According to a productivity field guide from 1960, swiveling in your seat should have taken .009 minutes. At this juncture, the cubicle was invented, bringing unparalleled distraction prevention to the modern office.

Technology Helped Encourage Remote Practices

As computing became more commonplace, so did remote working. Factories, the base for the 20th century American economy, started to close as the price of labor started to be prohibitive for business. Service jobs filled the gap and a new level of productivity was established. Major innovations such as the personal computer, home Internet service, and ultimately cloud computing have expanded the availability for a worker to have access to everything he/she needs from anywhere.

What better place than home?

Remote work had been growing pretty rapidly as the COVID-19 pandemic hit. In mid-May, 66 percent of people that could work from home, were working from home. That number is sure to go down as businesses reopen, but it may be that enough has been learned from this situation that employers will offer more flexibility to their staff than they had previously.

Remote work can provide your business some serious benefits. To talk to our professional consultants, call NuTech Services today at 810.230.9455.

5
Jun, 2020
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Don’t Let Scammers Scare You with COVID-19

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The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a great number of people working from home. While this is good for the public health, it may unfortunately lead your employees toward a laxer view of cybersecurity. Cybercriminals are sure to take advantage of this if you aren’t careful, so it is important to be particularly aware of your cybersecurity right now.

The Advantage COVID-19 Gives Hackers

To put it bluntly, diversion. With so much attention rightly given to COVID-19 right now, there are many who are remaining in their homes as much as possible to try and prevent the pathogen from propagating. This approach makes the Internet even more important to so many people. Not only are many businesses operating remotely, many rely on support services and other online functions for their in-house processes. Otherwise, people who cannot work remotely are seeking ways to pass the time, turning to social media and other online services for that.

As a result, a huge number of people are online.

This creates the perfect storm for a scammer or hacker to take advantage of, as they now have a larger pool of potential victims. On top of that, the COVID-19 situation also gives them another opportunity to fool people into handing over their access credentials to personal and business accounts.

Between March 9th and April 26th, a total of 1.2 million domains were created that have something to do with COVID-19. 86,600 of these domains lead to malicious websites, 80 percent of which distribute malware to anyone unlucky enough to interact with them.

As far as phishing attacks and spam go, more of these are also popping up. COVID-19-themed scams are popping up in the form of fake emails, spoofed to look like they come from the IRS, the CDC, healthcare organizations, and various other companies.

Preventing the Influence of Scams

With so many scams and threats out there, vigilance is crucial… especially when you and your team may be working remotely. Any of the security best practices that people should be following in the office need to be particularly focused upon when you’re in the home. For instance:

  • Phishing awareness – Phishing can strike through a variety of outlets, from email, instant messaging, social media, and even telephone calls. Being able to spot these attempts is needed if your business is going to remain secure.
  • Maintain password standards – Many people have separate standards for their home passwords and their business passwords. You need to discourage this by reinforcing the importance of good password hygiene in all environments.
  • Back up your data – Data is important, regardless of where it is accessed. Maintaining a backup and securing it with antivirus and firewall is important.

At NuTech Services, we have the professionals with the experience needed to properly secure your network as you continue your operations. To learn more about what we can offer, give us a call at 810.230.9455.

3
Jun, 2020
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Tip of the Week: 3 Crucial Considerations when Managing Projects

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In the workplace, projects are used to push operations forward. This makes your ability to manage your business’ projects truly important as the global economy turns back on. To help, we’re sharing three tips that will help you most effectively do so.

1.  Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Even in the best of times, clear and comprehensive communications are necessary to the success of any business initiative. Without them, a team simply cannot function as they should, leading to delays, redundancy, and missed steps.

To avoid these ramifications, you need to set a precedent that encourages your team to communicate with one another. In addition to frequently reinforcing the importance of their collaboration, give your team the opportunity to do so in various settings. Regular meetings are a must to keep everyone on the same page. You should also provide your team with the solutions that facilitate communication (like VoIP, messaging, and good old email) and set an example by using them yourself.

2.  Identify and address risks.

Murphy’s Law clearly states that, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” This is important to keep in mind, especially regarding your business. Acknowledging the risks that you’ll face and determining how to address them proactively will prove to be exceptionally useful, as you can figure out which is the most likely to impact you and your operations and prepare for them accordingly.

One of these risks could involve scope creep, where your project expands beyond its original limitations and deadlines. Make sure that you’re accounting for these kinds of delays as you plan it ahead of time.

3.  Clarify responsibilities.

When multiple people are working together on a project, it is critically important to establish who is to see to which task. Otherwise, you encounter the same issues that a lack of communication will cause.

As your project progresses, you need to firmly establish each team member’s role and the responsibilities that they need to uphold. Not only will each member have a clearer idea of their part in a project, they will better understand the process and be able to contribute to it in a more productive way. Make sure that you work with the members of the team to distribute these tasks to the best available person for each one. This will help contribute to the team having ownership of the project and inspire them to contribute their best efforts.

For the IT tools and solutions to assist you in your project management, or the other processes your business relies upon, reach out to NuTech Services! Give us a call at 810.230.9455 to learn more.

1
Jun, 2020
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Is Your Business Being Attacked From the Inside?

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With cyberthreats the way that they are, a lot of industry professionals go on and on about the importance of deploying technologies designed to reduce the potential threats that a business has to confront. This technology isn’t cheap and while they absolutely do help you protect your technology and data; today’s hackers know that. Unfortunately for small business owners, that shift has left your staff on the front lines of cybersecurity; a place they really shouldn’t be. Let’s discuss cybersecurity from an employer’s perspective.

Today, there are literally billions of phishing emails sent each day. Inevitably, you are going to confront this problem, and depending on your staff’s preparedness (or intentions), you will either deal with them or they will likely deal with you. 

The first thing that you should know is that you have to train up your staff about phishing and other issues surrounding your organization’s security. They have to understand social engineering tactics used by scammers to infiltrate networks, steal data, and deliver malware. If they are left in the dark about these issues, you will likely see a plethora of cybersecurity problems in your immediate future. It’s good to be lucky, but you’d rather be good.

Once you’ve committed to a cybersecurity training regimen for your staff, you then have to understand that there are three manners of attack that come from inside your network. Let’s take a look at them:

Mistakes 

The first type of attack is brought on by mistakes. Those are instances where you have trained your people and they are committed to help you protect your business’ IT but made a mistake and it has caused problems. Most mistakes are only a mouse click made in error. Mistakes do happen and since there is absolutely no malice behind it, harsh reprimand of that employee, while probably warranted, will surely bring out the water works. You don’t want to alienate your staff (or your entire workforce) so if someone makes a cybersecurity mistake, and it is remediated quickly, there’s no real harm done. You will want to re-train this person and test them, so you know they understand what your policies are. 

Negligence

An employee that continues to make mistakes isn’t just a doofus, they are neglecting their responsibilities. Negligent behavior is at the center of a large percentage of the security breaches seen in business today. It can be characterized by an ambivalence to your business’ stated goals that is shown by repeat offenses that put your network and data in jeopardy. It may start with a simple mistake, but if an employee continues to make careless mistakes, it could really put the business behind the eight ball. Cybersecurity negligence is just like negligence in other aspects of the business and can’t be allowed to continue.

Sabotage

The employer-employee relationship isn’t always easy. In many businesses, there is a direct conflict of interest. Employers are known to overstep boundaries in the name of productivity and employees are known to get fed up with it. People get disgruntled, people are fired, people quit. There are rare occurrences where the relationship gets so bad that current or former employees will use their access to your company’s systems to try and sabotage an element of it, or the entire thing. In the rare cases where this does happen, it can lead to complete destruction of a business. If you have had to let someone go, or they have quit, you will want to immediately remove any and all of their credentials so that they have absolutely no access to your business’ digital resources. If the saboteur still works for you however, there may not be much you can do until their dastardly plan unfolds. It’s important, then, to treat your employees with the same respect as you expect from them. A fair employer won’t run into sabotage very often.

Keeping your technology systems running and working for your company is imperative for today’s businesses. If you would like help with security strategy or with deploying tools call the IT professionals at NuTech Services today at 810.230.9455.