Dec 9, 2021 | SMB Technology, SMB Technology, SMB Technology, SMB Technology, Technology News
A number of trends are expected to continue, as well as new ones to develop, in the coming year. These trends will introduce opportunities along with challenges in the IT industry. Read on to learn about how these movements in the industry affect its four pillars of operations, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and data. Focus on Strategy and Transformation Let’s face it, the last year and a half has been challenging. The work-at-the-office paradigm that many were used to has likely changed permanently. Remote workers, as well as creating more “nodes on the network,” have changed expectations; will some ever want to come back to the office, or stay remote? Managed services may be counting on remote work to stay popular, and to provide companies with network assistance, shown by a CAGR prediction of 7.9% ($355 billion) by 2026, according to IDC.In 2022, companies are expecting to move out of the tactical approach of just staying in business, and to start dusting off digital transformation projects that they couldn’t think of before, considering innovation and collaboration. The technology industry is expected to increase to $5.3 trillion in 2022, with a year-over-year growth increase of 5-6%, according to IDC. CompTIA’s trends outlook article points to a growing optimism about opportunities in the tech industry, coupled with challenges to manage. Opportunities in Information Technology The United States has long been a key player in the technology industry, accounting for 33% ($1.8 trillion) in expected spending for 2022. With its robust infrastructure and many connected users, as well as its abundant bandwidth, it has the opportunity to consider software development...
Dec 1, 2021 | SMB Technology, SMB Technology, SMB Technology, SMB Technology, Technology News
Many pieces comprise the customer experience puzzle, and one key trend is omnichannel, wherein multiple channels are integrated in such a way that a customer can switch seamlessly from one to another including call center, chat, web and mobile. Customer experience can make the difference between retaining and losing a customer. Read on to learn more about this trend and how it can enhance your customers’ experience. Omnichannel is an Emerging Trend Omnichannel has rapidly gained popularity as a trend, with more and more companies choosing it to manage their customer experience. According to a CompTIA article, companies that use the strongest omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain almost 90% of their customers. Those responding to the CompTIA survey indicate that they have moved to an omnichannel approach to customer engagement in the last few years. A majority of companies in the overall economy report customer experience as being even more important than the product or service sold. So, how does omnichannel change the customer experience? Business Benefits of Omnichannel Each interaction with a customer leads to that customer’s perception of the customer experience. Are they able to communicate with your company the way they wish? Some enjoy a self-service approach and having multiple easy ways to connect with you. Omnichannel, in a nutshell, is integration between distribution, promotion and communication on the back end, which allows an agent and a customer to stay connected through different phases of the customer cycle, from initial contact to renewal. For example, in a call center, an agent can take a call from a customer, look up preferences from...
Nov 11, 2021 | SMB Technology, SMB Technology, SMB Technology, SMB Technology, Technology News
Unified Communications, or UC, is an Internet-based way to bring together your company’s communications–telephony, web conferencing, email and more. With its benefits, it requires a reliable and secure network to keep your employees connected and productive. Read on to learn about Unified Communications and what you need to do to prepare. The Benefits of Unified Communications Even before 2020, the use of Unified Communications was growing; since then, it has become even more popular. In a nutshell, Unified Communications is a way of integrating multiple modes of communication–including VoIP telephony, email, web conferencing and more–via the Internet. These new and integrated technologies save time and money by allowing businesses to seamlessly connect and collaborate with colleagues, cohorts and customers with ease. Unified Communications can also help a company gain a competitive advantage, connecting with customers regardless of location. Workers can work anytime, anywhere, with just an Internet connection, communicating and collaborating with each other and customers from work, home or on the road. Integration with CRM can help them obtain information about customers easily, and they’ll never miss a voicemail by routing to email. When UC is supported by software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN), traffic can move easily because if one carrier goes down, another can pick up the slack without any downtime. Prepare Your Business and Network for UC with SD-WAN Adoption of Unified Communications provides multiple benefits, yet requires planning and consideration. First, you’ll need to examine how it will support your company’s business goals. Second, you’ll need to assess your network’s strength and security; do you have the internal bandwidth it takes...
Nov 4, 2021 | SMB Technology, SMB Technology, SMB Technology, SMB Technology, Technology News
With the amount of data being generated by businesses the world over, every single day, securing this data is vital. While Government, Industry and other regulations offer compliance to standards, information security reduces business risks related to cybercrime, ransomware and other interruptions resulting in data loss. Keeping your network safe and in compliance can help you avoid the consequences of data breaches. Read on to learn more about how to keep your network in compliance–and healthy, too. Maintaining Network Health Facilitates Compliance Your computer network is the backbone of your IT infrastructure, and needs to be maintained in order to stay healthy, and keep your business secure and compliant. Your network enables you to stay connected to customers, vendors and employees; keep your mission-critical applications running; and connect to public and private cloud infrastructure as well as back up data offsite. A healthy network is efficient, flexible and secure, routing data in the quickest way possible and rerouting easily. Security is another hallmark of a healthy network, one with no weak spots or holes allowing the intrusion of malware and viruses, where data is encrypted. Keeping the network strong is a good step toward compliance. Keeping Your Network Secure Keeping your network and its data and applications secure can be thought of as a two-prong effort. One involves technological tools and defenses. A company can protect its network with current operating systems patches to block malware or viruses from intruding, as well as maintaining current antivirus and anti-malware definitions. Going further, a company might consider network monitoring to keep small intrusions from becoming major problems....
Oct 18, 2021 | SMB Technology, SMB Technology, SMB Technology, SMB Technology, Technology News
Many threats to your network abound, and often ransomware, malware and viruses enter your network through social engineering, or “phishing” emails. Read on to learn the extent of the problem and how you can keep your business from being affected by these threats. Phishing a Growing Threat Social engineering attacks, including phishing, are among the greatest threats to individual users as well as small to medium-sized businesses. Even though giants like Google and Facebook get the headlines, small to medium-sized businesses are not immune. Anyone and everyone can be a phishing target, and these attacks often come through email, something people use every day. A malicious actor sends an email (perhaps appearing to be from someone the recipient knows), trying to get confidential information like passwords or trying to insert malware in the network. According to a CompTIA State of Cybersecurity report, it can cost $1.85 million to remediate a ransomware attack. Often these attacks come through spam emails and contain dangerous links that, when clicked on, can introduce malware to your system. Spam emails, in fact, account for most of the ransomware attacks. In spite of the prevalence of phishing, many users are not aware of the risk; as many as 13.6% of recipients click on the link. How to Prevent Phishing Emails from Becoming Attacks In spite of such daunting statistics, there is good news–more awareness about the dangers of phishing scams. Many companies are consistently and systematically training their employees, and those with more than eleven campaigns per year (on average, one a month), have a low click-through rate, only 13%. This...
Oct 12, 2021 | SMB Technology, SMB Technology, SMB Technology, SMB Technology, Technology News
Cybersecurity Awareness month is here, and is a great time to remember the importance of protecting our networks. Cybersecurity is a puzzle with many pieces; training your workers in awareness and best practices for cybersecurity is a key part of protecting your network, applications and data.. Read on to learn how to make your workers cybersmart in an age of increasing attacks. Awareness is the First Step Learning to be cybersmart involves common sense, being aware of threats and learning to protect against them. Ransomware, malware, phishing and more are part of the current threat landscape. Do your workers know how to identify a possible social engineering scheme, and how to report a phishing email? Are remote workers’ computers equipped with the latest anti-virus definitions, and the most current software versions? Do they know not to click on suspicious links? Passwords are another part of staying secure, passwords that are unique and easy to remember, and that are changed on a regular basis. Consistent training and reinforcement in these practices is the best way to make them part of your and your workers’ toolkit. Awareness and Tools Go Together Passwords, while still relevant, have been augmented with other tools for cybersecurity. Multi-factor authentication, which can involve more than one way of logging in, adds extra layers of security and ensures that only those authorized can access the system. Multi Factor authentication can be a one-time code delivered to email or via text, or it can be a biometric like a fingerprint. Multi-factor authentication has become more common over the years, and is a proven security...
