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John Reilly

How Unused Applications May Be Draining Your Budget Unnecessarily

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How Unused Applications May Be Draining Your Budget Unnecessarily
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When an organization implements new software solutions, they are usually trying to either replace deprecated applications or find a solution to a particular problem. These solutions are often implemented without regards to the older software, and they’ll just collect dust on the network until someone decides to remove them. These unnecessary apps could be wasting precious time and resources for your business. In fact, up to 38 percent of enterprise applications aren’t being used on business networks.

In more specific terms, 30 percent of applications went unused, while only eight percent were used infrequently--less than once a month. A recent study by 1E claims that between the United States and United Kingdom, $34 billion is lost every year on unused or rarely used software solutions. Furthermore, the typical large enterprise could lose up to $7.4 million every year on unnecessary software solutions. While it must be mentioned that small companies won’t waste nearly this much, it’s still important to realize wasted resources when you see them. Software licenses aren’t cheap, and if they’re set to automatically renew, you could be wasting plenty of assets on software that you don’t even use.

Granted, it’s easier said than done to discover which applications your business uses, and those which it doesn’t. Unless you have an internal IT department that manages your organization’s technical assets, you could accidentally be renewing software solutions for apps which you barely use at all. Thus, it’s your responsibility to put a stop to it, and soon.

Through a comprehensive network audit, you can find ways to improve your infrastructure, be it identifying bottlenecks or discovering resources allocated toward apps that you don’t use or need. If your network is chock-full of unused and unnecessary applications, you can use a network audit to discover where they are and to jumpstart your network cleanup procedure.

Infradapt can perform a network audit that takes a comprehensive look at your IT infrastructure and identifies weaknesses that can be shored up. For example, it can identify bottlenecks or unnecessary resource allocation that can help you streamline operations. Furthermore, we can introduce you to new and improved solutions that can completely replace or consolidate your current assets into a more budget-friendly option.

It’s also necessary to mention that you should only be paying for software licensing on solutions that you actually use, and to keep tabs on when licenses expire. It’s usually better to pay as you need them, as something could come up and completely replace it somewhere down the line. If you outsource remote monitoring and maintenance through Infradapt, we can keep an eye on your network in real time and automatically issue updates to your software solutions as they are released. Furthermore, we can act as a single point of contact for your software vendors, so you only have to go through us to renew your software licenses. This takes away the pain of contacting multiple software vendors, which can be a time-consuming and downright annoying process.

To learn more about network audits, remote monitoring and maintenance, or vendor management, reach out to us at 800.394.2301.

Tags:
Applications Budget Server
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John Reilly

Outsource Your IT and Stop Worrying About These 3 Responsibilities

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Outsource Your IT and Stop Worrying About These 3 Responsibilities

The last time you reached out to IT support, how long did it take them to respond to your request? Did they have to drive all the way to your office, only to resolve the issue far too late? Being able to take prompt action is key to alleviating IT issues, especially when mission-critical data is on the line. A remote monitoring and maintenance solution may be just the tool you need to keep your systems maintained and operating properly, and all without expensive on-site visits.

Remote monitoring and maintenance lets your business get the technology assistance it needs as swiftly as possible. It’s usually more efficient to outsource this responsibility to a third party that can keep tabs on your business’s systems through an online cloud-connected interface. This allows technicians to resolve most problems without an on-site visit, though this is far from the only benefit that remote monitoring and management solutions provide.

Resource Allocation
Your network components and applications are constantly being accessed throughout the workday, but delegating the proper amount of resources to ensure that the tools are available can be tricky business. If you have an outsourced provider monitoring your network resources, they can adjust the workload to avoid bottlenecks and downtime, ensuring maximum functionality.

Threat Management
Similar to the above point, keeping an eye on the network and its resources can signify when a threat slips through your defenses. If a virus or malware program installs on a device, it may slow down the machine and spread to other parts of your infrastructure. Identifying where a threat is and eliminating it promptly is important to keep infections from spreading, and this same tactic can be used to detect telltale signs of hardware failures so your organization can prepare for the worst.

Patching and Security Updates
One of the best things about remote monitoring and maintenance is that the outsourced provider can remotely apply patches and updates, as well as resolve other problems that might come up. By doing this, you effectively free your business from the responsibility of performing this routine maintenance, which is an invaluable opportunity for an SMB to invest in more profitable endeavors.

Of course, the biggest benefit of remote monitoring is the fact that you’ll cut down on expensive on-site visits from your IT support. Since most problems can be resolved remotely, it’s logical that you avoid on-site visits as much as possible. After all, it’s a mutually beneficial situation; you get the help you need, and we help you save money. Of course, there are always going to be issues that need an on-site visit, but we’ll try to limit these so that you can focus on keeping your business productive.

To learn more about remote monitoring and management, reach out to us at 800.394.2301.

Tags:
Outsourced IT Remote Monitoring Security
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John Reilly

How to Make Sure That Your Business is HIPAA Compliant

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How to Make Sure That Your Business is HIPAA Compliant

While the explosion of technological advancement has been great for business, it’s become more challenging than ever before to keep sensitive information safe--even if all you use is an Internet connection. Even small healthcare offices are feeling the effects of this proliferation of threats and malware as they struggle to keep their organizations secure and compliant with government agencies.

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John Reilly

Hackers Scam CEOs for $3 Billion Over the Past 3 Years

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Hackers Scam CEOs for $3 Billion Over the Past 3 Years

What would you do if a significant sum of money magically disappeared from your account due to a “miscommunication” between accounting and someone pretending to be you? Wire transfers have made it extraordinarily easy for scam artists to make large transactions, which are augmented by the ability to impersonate authority figures within the office; the c-suite staff, also known as management.

This type of CEO fraud is known as a “whaling” scheme. In a sense, it’s like a phishing scheme, but on a much larger scale. When it comes to whaling, rather than faking the identity of your IT department or another employee, the hacker goes for the motherload: you, the business owner, or another member of your management staff. This plays to the employee’s willingness to comply with your requests and makes it more likely that they’ll perform unreasonable tasks, like sending “you” a large wire transfer.

Wire transfers in particular are proving to be a powerful tool for hackers to exploit. ITProPortal reports: “Individuals create bogus messages seemingly from a senior leader, for example, the CEO, which asks employees to wire funds across to them. The messages ultimately trick employees into transferring large amounts of cash electronically.” The average value of a wire transfer is $67,000, and according to the FBI, CEO fraud has cost businesses over $3 billion over the past three years alone.

One of the biggest problems with wire transfers is that they are difficult, and often impossible, to challenge. Therefore, your best chance of recovering from a whaling scheme is to avoid getting scammed in the first place, unfortunately. Due to the fact that wire transfers are too fast and finite, you’ll want to ensure that your business has practices in place to handle this influx of CEO fraud. A good place to start would be to address how your business handles unsolicited requests for payments or credentials via email, telephone, or otherwise. Here are a few tips and tricks to consider for your business.

  • Implement hands-on phishing scam training: If you want someone to learn something, it’s best to have them go through the process themselves. This type of hands-on education works well against phishing scams. Engineer a system that roots out those who have subpar reactions to phishing scams, and help them learn how to improve their ability to react to threats.
  • Always check in person before sending credentials, or anything else: Emails that request suspicious or sensitive information need to be cross-referenced, either in-person or by checking the email addresses that you have on record. Although, even this might not work at all times, as hackers can potentially spoof email addresses to make their messages appear legitimate. Basically, it’s better to just ask whoever supposedly sent the message before responding rashly to a request.
  • Educate employees on best practices: We return to the hands-on phishing scam training to emphasize the importance of best practices. Make sure that your team understands how to respond to threats, and regularly quiz them to ensure that they’re not going to inadvertently sink your business or cause data loss.

To learn more about whaling schemes or CEO fraud, reach out to us at 800.394.2301.

Tags:
Business Owner Hackers Security
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John Reilly

4 Ways Outsourcing Your IT Will Revolutionize Operations

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4 Ways Outsourcing Your IT Will Revolutionize Operations

The traditional break-fix IT model may have worked for businesses years ago, but today it holds them back from fully leveraging their IT to its fullest potential. Managed IT, the superior alternative, aims to take the difficulty out of managing IT so that you can focus on running your business. Here are just a few managed IT services that free up your business in this way.

Cloud Management
The cloud continues to grow more popular as time goes on, mostly due to the overwhelming convenience it offers for small businesses. Your workforce needs agility and constant access to important data and applications, especially if your organization wants to stay competitive in the ever-shifting business environment. This means that you need to provide your employees with the tools they need to stay productive anytime, anywhere. Still, managing a cloud server is far from a simple task, and not one to be taken lightly. When Infradapt manages your IT, you can outsource this responsibility to us and take the burden off of your shoulders.

Network Security
Network security requires an intensive knowledge of online threats and vulnerabilities, and as such, you want a seasoned professional handling the security of your systems. It’s not enough to equip your business with consumer-grade antivirus and firewall solutions. Instead, you need someone with a thorough knowledge of your organization’s potential vulnerabilities, including endpoints, network connections, and software solutions. This type of work is best handled by a third party working behind the scenes to keep your business secure.

Remote Management and Maintenance
Management and maintenance of critical IT systems are often a major pain point for small businesses, as they generally don’t have a dedicated in-house IT department to handle this responsibility. More often than not, technology systems needing regular maintenance are left neglected, which can severely cut their lifespans. For example, in order for servers to stay healthy, they need regular maintenance and management. Otherwise, a crippling hardware failure resulting in data loss could happen at any moment. Remote monitoring and maintenance is designed to provide all of your maintenance needs remotely, without the need for expensive on-site visits.

Help Desk Support
One of the most sought-after services is help desk support, especially for SMBs. An outsourced help desk solution provides your team with the support they need to get the most out of their technology. This helps to ensure that your team has the technology assistance they need when they need it. This is especially useful if you already have an internal IT department, allowing them to focus on implementing valuable and innovative solutions designed to improve operations.

So, what are you waiting for? To get started with any of the above-mentioned IT services, reach out to Infradapt at 800.394.2301.

Tags:
Save Money Outsourced IT Managed IT
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John Reilly

Shock: One-Third of Businesses Ignore Insider Threats

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Shock: One-Third of Businesses Ignore Insider Threats

Regardless of your security protocol, there will always be threats. One of the most often forgotten outlets for attacks comes from insider threats. Sometimes these threats may be from angry employees wanting to sink your business, but more often than not, those behind insider threats don’t have malicious intentions. Still, it’s best to cover your bases and ensure that your organization isn’t at risk from careless or negligent employees.

Insider threats are categorized as internal threats that are either malicious or negligent in nature, like irate employees, or those who just don’t care about security best practices. Regardless of why the insider threat is a threat, you should be aware of these enlightening statistics concerning security and insider threats.

Internal and External Threats: Reality vs Expectations
A study by Accenture and HfS Research claims that 69 percent of organizations have experienced the theft or destruction of data due to internal threats. This is compared to only 57 percent experiencing the same from external threats. These numbers are much different from their expectations, however; only 55 percent expect to become a victim of an internal threat, while 80 percent expect external threats to make trouble. The lesson: be prepared for anything, or you’ll be prepared for nothing.

Exposure of Sensitive Data to the End User
The Ponemon Institute issued a study claiming that 62 percent of users felt that they had access to data that they probably didn’t need access to. To resolve this problem, employers can implement a user-access control system that restricts access to certain information on a per-user basis. For example, your average employee has no business accessing financial records, salary information, and personally identifiable information (Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, etc.).

Reaction Time to Insider Threats
According to Ponemon, the reaction time to insider threats varied. Some organizations responded quickly, while others went months, or even years before finding out:

  • Within 24 hours: 24 percent
  • Within a week: 19 percent
  • Within a month: 14 percent
  • Within 6 months: 20 percent
  • Within a year: 9 percent
  • More than a year: 14 percent

It’s a bit surprising that organizations have taken this long to find out about insider threats, but regardless, it’s proof that something needs to be done, sooner rather than later. Organizations need to have ways to keep track of who accesses what data, and how their data is handled.

The Ability to Respond to Insider Threats
SANS Institute reports that 31.9 percent of businesses have no way of fighting against insider threats, while 68.1 percent have tools to take the fight to them. It’s surprising that the numbers are so low, but perhaps it’s because administrators simply aren’t aware of the activity themselves.

How Effective Preventative Measures Are
According to SANS Institute, only 9 percent of organizations have techniques proven to prevent insider threats from becoming an issue. 42 percent have the tools, but they aren’t used. 36.4 percent are currently implementing processes to mitigate insider threats, while 2.3 percent simply aren’t concerned by them.

Potential Vulnerabilities
Mimecast suggests that 45 percent of companies claim that they’re ill-equipped to handle malicious insider threats involving email security, which is more than any of the other kind email threat. Therefore, businesses need to keep an eye on what enters and exits the infrastructure via email.

The Types of Insider Threats
According to Gartner, there are three types of insider threats. One, called a “second streamer” (someone who uses the data from one job to obtain revenue from another job) consists of 62 percent of insider threats. 29 percent of insider threats are from the “career launcher,” or someone who took information with them as they left a company, while only 9 percent of insider threats could be classified as sabotage.

If your business doesn’t know how to take the fight to insider threats, reach out to Infradapt at 800.394.2301.

Tags:
Data Security Privacy
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John Reilly

This Solution Lets You Kick that Bulky File Cabinet to the Curb!

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This Solution Lets You Kick that Bulky File Cabinet to the Curb!

Since the late 19th century, office environments have used the filing cabinet to keep records stored in an efficient order. However, today’s workplace environment contains more technology than ever before, allowing for more efficient document management solutions. This begs the question, what’s better; the traditional file cabinet, or the digital document management solution?

Tags:
Document Management Save Time Mobility
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John Reilly

3 Features Every Business Needs From Their Data Recovery Solution

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3 Features Every Business Needs From Their Data Recovery Solution

As well-prepared as you might believe your business may be against disasters, the reality is that this is not always the case. In truth, you have no idea when you could fall victim to a data loss incident. As a business owner, you need to understand that it’s not a question of if you’ll experience a data breach, but when, and you need to be prepared for anything.

There are plenty of situations that won’t be under your control:

  • You aren't going to be able to shield your business’s technology from a flood that sweeps through your location and takes half of your infrastructure with it.
  • You aren’t going to stop your old technology from unexpectedly failing when you need it most.
  • An earthquake could knock the ground out from under your business’s footing, and with it, your data systems out of commission.
  • User error, despite your best efforts to ingrain proper data security practices into your staff, will persist, and could eventually lead to lost data or compromised security.

What can you do to preserve your organization’s data?

Data backup and disaster recovery are essential, but the concept is much more refined than it was in the past. Traditional backup solutions used unreliable practices in order to ensure that data was stored and accessible in the event of a disaster. Tape was, and still is, commonly used as a backup measure, in which data is stored on magnetic tape reels that could be deployed when needed. Now, however, there are much more efficient and less time-consuming ways to take advantage of data backup and disaster recovery, and it’s all thanks to the cloud.

Where tape backups are resource-heavy, user-intensive, and time consuming, cloud-based BDR is the opposite. Unlike tape backup that must be performed after-hours, and set by an employee who may or may not forget to do it, BDR is automatic and can be performed throughout the day, all to get past the possibility of an unexpected disaster destroying your data. If you want to guarantee maximum uptime and data retention, you should look for the following features for your disaster recovery solution:

Frequent Backups
Tape backups can usually only be performed once a day, and it’s often the case that they have to be done after closing time. Your business needs a solution that can back up your data multiple times a day. Modern BDR solutions can take backups as often as every 15 minutes, so you’ll always experience minimal data loss and fewer technical hiccups throughout the workday.

Off-Site Backup Storage
Storing your data backups in-house is usually a bad idea, for the specific reason that it could fall victim to the same disaster that strikes the rest of your infrastructure. If your office is destroyed, or your entire system is infected with ransomware, you won’t be able to access your data backups. It makes sense to store your data off-site and in the cloud, so that you can immediately restore your data as it’s needed.

Fast Recovery Time
You don’t want to be left waiting while your data is being restored, as this is time that your organization is wasting. You need a solution that can rapidly deploy your data as quickly as possible. With BDR, you can be back almost instantly, as the BDR can act as a temporary server in the event that yours no longer works properly.

Does your business want to leverage a truly modern data backup tool? You should ask Infradapt about our BDR solution. We can offer a reliable and efficient data backup and disaster recovery solution that’s capable of minimizing data loss and maximizing uptime, even in the worst of scenarios.

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