SMART Blog

Have you ever considered investing in smart technology for your office? We’re talking, of course, about the smart appliances, lights, thermostats, and so on, all of which make your office feel like you stepped into a sci-fi movie. As IT experts, it would be wrong for us to let you implement all these shiny new solutions without considering the security implications.

Our question to you is this: are you willing to leave glaring security weaknesses in your infrastructure for the sake of being considered “high-tech?” We hope the answer is an emphatic “no.”

They say a man’s home is his castle. We’d contend that a more apt comparison is that someone’s business is more like their castle, realistically speaking.

As such, it is essential to ensure your security in every way possible. Much like a traditional castle was constructed to keep threats out, your business’ security needs to be approached in a similar way.

While we aren’t suggesting that you literally dig a moat or maintain cauldrons full of boiling oil, you do need to implement security measures that serve the same purpose for your business and its network.

With so many devices now connecting to the Internet, decreasing your business’ threat surface area is more important than ever. Your threat surface area consists of any device that connects to your organization’s IT infrastructure, and if you’re not careful or forget a couple of oddball wearables, you could be looking at a data breach. Today, we want to go over how you can prevent that from happening.

Small businesses today generate a lot of data. From customer details and sales records to inventory tracking and employee schedules, you need to be able to structure this data so that you can use it effectively. Keeping that data organized and accessible is important, but managing it effectively can often be a hassle. This is where smart database management comes in. When done right, it helps businesses run smoother and often save money.

Businesses have two different types of technology to contend with each day: their information technology, and their operational technology. As these categories have become less distinct with the introduction of the Internet of Things and other similar advancements, a few new challenges to maintaining security have become apparent. Let’s go over these challenges, and what you need to do to overcome them.

There is no denying that a business’ security--notably, its access control--is absolutely crucial to consider. Here, we’re offering a few tips to help you improve your business’ security through improvements to your access controls and their policies.

Businesses are just now starting to reopen as stay-at-home orders are lapsing or going to lapse. For many of those businesses, remote solutions have got them through this ordeal and for many others they continue to deploy a remote workforce. For companies still promoting telework, monitoring your local IT environment is something that you need a solution for. For this week’s tip, we’ll discuss some of the best practices you can use to monitor your IT while out of the office.

The way people talk about cybersecurity, it’s as if it is something like a television or a new phone: something you can just buy. That’s not the truth. When you are seriously looking at how you can keep unwanted entities off your network, while having control over what you do with your technology, you need to look at it as three levels of security.

We’ve not been shy about promoting the use of VPNs (virtual private networks) as a means of protecting your security while you are online. However, we wanted to take a bit of time to specify what a VPN can - and cannot - do to help you.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released an emergency directive concerning a critical exploit known as Zerologon, that affects servers running Windows Server operating systems that needs to get patched as soon as possible.

Nowadays, a business’ network security needs to be amongst its top priorities if it is to have any chance of operating without undue risk of data breaches and other incidents. Admittedly, managing this sounds like a Herculean task, but a few relatively simple implementations can help give your security a considerable advantage as you lock down your business’ future. Here, we’ve reviewed four such areas you need to focus on.

Of all the contentious topics in the workplace, employee monitoring is among the most divisive. As an authority figure in your business, it is only natural that you would want to make sure that your team is working diligently—especially as they are working remotely. That being said, there are some lines that cannot be crossed you should be aware of. Let’s discuss the concept of monitoring your employees and what cannot be done.

True to form, 2020 has given us a final parting gift: the news that the United States was targeted this year by the biggest cyberespionage attack ever. Let’s go into the ramifications of this attack, and what it should teach us going forward.

Research has revealed that cyberattacks are spending decreasing amounts of time on their targeted networks before they are discovered. While this may sound like a good thing—a faster discovery of a threat is better than a slower one, after all—this unfortunately is not the case.

Headlines have been filled with news pertaining to the recent hack of Colonial Pipeline, which has created significant gasoline shortages up the east coast of the nation. While the pipeline has been restored, the way this was accomplished sets a dangerous precedent. On top of this, the attack seems to have set off bigger infrastructural changes in the political space.

Ransomware has rapidly progressed from an irritating annoyance to a legitimate global threat, with the U.S. Justice Department officially going on the record and establishing that future ransomware investigations will be handled the same way that terrorism cases are now. Let’s review the reasons behind this policy change and how your business should respond.

Cybersecurity is a massively important consideration for today’s businesses, and as a result, managing it is often given a considerable amount of time. However, recent developments suggest that this time can potentially be reduced by the use of “self-healing” security software. We know that this sounds a little out there, but stay with us! We’ll explain.

Let me ask you something: how many people do you fundamentally trust? Well, in a zero trust network, that number is reduced to zero. The idea of such a network is that everyone, whether they’re operating inside of the network or out, needs to be verified… and as you might imagine, it has proven effective in preventing data breaches. 

Network security could mean any number of things, but more often than not, people are using the term as a blanket statement against the dreaded idea of malware and its many forms. Today, we are discussing how vast the world of malware can be and how often you might find yourself misunderstanding what it exactly is. Knowing all this can help you identify if you have become a malware victim or not.

We’ve all seen our friends and family sharing quizzes on their social media profiles, prompting people to find out what their celebrity stage name or what Hogwarts house you would be in, or to share what their first concert experience was. These fun, lighthearted quizzes are a great way to get to know a little more about the people we’re connected with… and that’s the biggest problem.