Suffolk Computer Consultants, Inc. Blog

In the 1980s, there was a cartoon by the name of G.I. Joe, based on action figures manufactured by toy giant Hasbro. Due to the popularity of this cartoon, they set out time each week to do a brief PSA aimed to educate kids about the dangers of certain actions. The tagline, “Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.” became entrenched in the lexicon. Now, over thirty years later, kids that grew up on G.I. Joe are business owners and have come to understand just how poignant that message is. Let’s take a look at a couple of ways businesses can expand their knowledge base and use it to improve their operations using IT.

I want you to step out of your role as a business owner for a moment and see yourself once again as the average consumer. How concerned are you that so many businesses have collected and are now storing your personal data, and that you have no control over its privacy? If you feel at all uneasy, you’re not alone… 87 percent of Americans feel that data privacy is a human right in these modern times.

Data security has to be a major consideration for the small and medium-sized business, as not having a plan can lead to some pretty ugly situations. To help you prioritize the right things, we’ve made a list of four questions that you’ll need to answer to ensure your business is doing the right things when it comes to securing your data.

Your business may rely on its technology, but it relies on your employees more. This relationship can expose your business to a myriad of different problems that hinder progress and stymie productivity. One of those problems happens to be IT-related threats that come from inside your company. Today, we are going to discuss the different types of insider threats to help you understand what you need to be looking for to keep your data and network secure. 

About two and a half years ago, the financial services company Equifax was forced to admit that over 145 million people were victims of one of the largest data breaches in history. The company’s network was accessible by hackers from May until July of 2017 after a website application’s vulnerability was exploited. 

Data recovery is more a strategy than a solution. You first need to keep a regular backup to ensure that you aren’t losing large chunks of productivity. Then, you need to have a strategy to efficiently recover data if it is corrupted, lost, or stolen. Today, we’ll talk a little bit about some situations that businesses run into that would spark data recovery.

Big data, or massive data sets that can be used to make inferences and reveal patterns, has become an increasingly important part of modern business and can be leveraged in many different ways. There are a few different options for storing this data available, which the use case for the data will dictate. Here, we’ll evaluate whether a “data lake” or a “data warehouse” would better suit your needs.

While blockchain technologies may have entered the public awareness thanks to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, this is far from the technology’s only application. We wanted to take a few minutes and explore how the blockchain’s features promise many benefits to established and emerging industries.

Your business’ data is a key component to its success, and with a managed service provider on your side, it becomes even more beneficial for you to put to use. As we carry on with our series describing the value of a relationship with a managed service provider, we’ll look at a few ways that your business can benefit from the data services that this relationship can provide.

The more successful your business is, the more files you have. These files need a storage facility. For decades, each file that needed to be kept would be printed off and stored in a file cabinet. Today, there are better solutions; and, since a lot of the work being done today is collaborative, file sharing has really moved to the digital age. Let’s help you do some things you need to do to maintain efficient file management systems.

It feels like every week we learn about another big business or bank or municipality getting hacked, and the data of their customers getting stolen.

Big organizations are losing millions of dollars, forcing their hand to run damage control to millions of customers and deal with crushingly bad press. Beyond feeling a little numb to these cyberattacks (more on this in a moment), many small business owners might be feeling pretty lucky they don’t need to deal with these types of threats. Unfortunately, they are dead wrong.

As a business owner security should be of the utmost importance to you and your business. Adapting to the modern age means implementing different strategies to adapt to employee physical location, travelling employees, or even employees dealing with circumstantial dilemmas such as health problems or family matters. Whilst your business can experiment with different off-site methods, there should always be one constant: security.

Threats to data security are seemingly everywhere. Some companies spend millions of dollars a year on data security, but it only takes one unwitting user to tear down their huge investment. In fact, 2018 saw over 446.5 million records compromised, even if the number of data breaches dropped by almost 25 percent. Today, we will look at the biggest breaches that have happened from the beginning of May.

Working in conjunction with the Ponemon Institute, IBM Security completed a report tracking trends in 2018’s data breaches. As you might imagine, much of the data contained in this report could be seen as troubling to a business.

Productivity is a core component of any business endeavor, but unfortunately it is often difficult to stay productive with the immense amount of distractions that intercede. In order for anyone to maintain productivity, they need tools aligned with the tasks they are presented. For the modern business, management software has connected most of a business’ core processes to streamline workflows for most people. The use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms keep people in the groove longer, while also providing management metrics designed to give them an idea about how their business is functioning.

Have you ever played the telephone game? One person in a group whispers a phrase to another, who then passes it to another, and the fun is had when the group shares what they heard and how the message was garbled along the way. In many ways, this activity is similar to a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack - although the attack is a lot less fun than the game.

Take a moment and consider the data that you have collected during your business’ operations. How valuable is it to you? What would it mean if it were to leak out of your business’ control?

With data starting to be treated more like a commodity, companies are spending more time and money attempting to secure the data they have. Some organizations aren’t successful. In 2018 over 446.5 million records were exposed, even as data breaches dropped by 23 percent to 1,244. Today we take a look at some of the most noteworthy data breaches that have happened in the first four months of 2019.

Earlier this week, we published the first part of our blog, “The Wild Ride That Is Data Privacy” where we went over the systems in place in society that are designed to put your privacy at risk. We continue the article today. Please visit our blog to re.

Data Privacy is a huge topic these days. We often talk about data security when it comes to protecting your organization’s information, but we often don’t go into a lot of depth when it comes to protecting an individual’s information. It’s important to understand how personal information moves around, so you know what you are up against when it comes to protecting your privacy online. This post is going to be a bit of a deep rabbit hole, but I really want to shine some light on the subject for my readers.