Blog

There is an ongoing security arms race between cyber criminals and cyber security specialists. One side ups the ante and the other side develops counter measures. The end result of this from the point of view of businesses is that cyber criminals are getting better at their “game” with each passing year. Some of these criminals are lone wolves while others are loosely organized groups. Here are three reasons you should be using managed security services.

Many cyber criminals aren’t particularly skillful at hacking. They merely exploit tools readily available for this purpose such as password guessing software — and these tools are getting increasingly sophisticated. It’s the people in this second category of cyber crime that hugely inflate the threat level.

Here are three reasons why using managed security services is a good idea:

Running Your Business Is Demanding

Your focus should be your business. Focus means more than just your attention, it includes how your resources are allocated. Keeping up with the latest cyber threats demands expertise and up-to-date security assets. Diverting excessive resources into security comes at the expense of your business competitiveness.

You Benefit From the Expertise of Specialists

When you have a plumbing, electrical, or computer problem, you hire the appropriate specialist to handle it. Rather than building a cell phone yourself, you buy one that was designed and manufactured by specialists. Because of this reliance on specialists, your ability to run your business as well as your quality of life is vastly improved.

The same argument applies to using the expertise of managed security services. You get greater security at less expense than would be possible when trying to handle it yourself. Even though cyber crime is getting increasingly dangerous, cyber security specialists continually counter these threats with their own innovations. By outsourcing your cyber security to experts, you automatically benefit from this.

You Benefit More Rapidly

When deciding whether to handle security yourself or to outsource it, an important consideration is how rapidly you get a return on your investment. With managed security services, the infrastructure and expertise are already in place. Getting set up with such a service is relatively quick.

For more information on how managed security services benefit your business, contact us today.

When disaster strikes, you may wish you had either a business continuity plan or a disaster recovery plan. How do you know which is right for you? First, let’s look at the facts.

Disaster Recovery Plan

A disaster recovery plan does not actually mean to recover from a disaster. In fact, it means to bring the systems back online after an outage. An outage could lead to disaster, however. For example, perhaps you tried to log into your email while in the office only to find the systems shut down. The IT department goes into hyperdrive to bring everything back online, and once they do, you exhale all the nerves of the last hour. Email only makes a small portion of this IT, and you have the internal network, various software licenses and your phone system as well. Each of these elements make up a good disaster recovery plan.

Business Continuity Plan

With a Business Continuity plan, all the resources and steps required to keep your business operations online get documented. This, however, doesn’t include the recovery of an IT system. You have a number of IT departments like:

• HR
• Sales
• Customer Service
• Finance

Business Continuity plans keep the wheels turning on these departments even after an incident puts a halt to it. You may have to start your business out at 30 percent operational during the recovery phase, but the long-term goal will be to bring the company back to 100 percent operation.

If you’d like to learn more about whether a disaster recovery plan or a business continuity plan will be right for you, you can contact us via email.

Many small businesses don’t have adequate disaster recovery plans. A common reason is that disaster recovery plan process is a low priority item for them. They see it as an expense for a hypothetical event that may never happen.

Because of this, day-to-day operations continually displace putting together and implementing a solution. It doesn’t help that a complete and robust plan involving redundant systems can be complex and costly. However, should disaster ever strike, it will be too late. Unfortunately, inadequate disaster recovery planning has forced many companies out of business.

There are many ways that disaster can strike, and businesses can potentially fall victim to any one of the five listed below:

Flooding

Not being next to a river, lake, ocean, or other body of water doesn’t guaranty safety from floods. Heavy rainfall or snow melt from an unusually snowy winter can cause a normally dry creek bed to overflow and flood your building.

Floods often happen independently of weather such as a nearby water main that bursts or even a small fire that triggers your sprinkler system. Water can damage your servers and destroy vital business and customer data.

Hurricanes

You don’t have to live near the Gulf of Mexico to experience hurricanes. All towns and cities along the eastern seaboard are potential sites for hurricane damage. Hurricanes cause flooding, wind damage, and large-scale power loss.

Tornados

These occur throughout the Midwest. However, tornados have struck in areas not commonly associated with them. If your area gets plenty of thunderstorm activity, there’s always a possibility of a severe storm developing into a tornado.

Fires

Out-of-control wildfires during periods of protracted dry weather have surrounded and burned down multiple buildings at a time. However, a fire can occur anywhere at any time. If your building has combustible materials, you’re at risk.

Power Failure

The power grid has many vulnerabilities. Week long power outages have occurred in several areas of the United States because of severe ice storms or unusually early snowfall occurring before trees have shed their leaves. Windstorms can also knock down trees onto power lines. Faulty power infrastructure and generator failures are yet other causes.

It’s not a question of if a disaster will strike but when. Several of the above listed disasters can happen to almost any business. If one should shut your business down for too long or destroy critical data, the losses in revenue, customers, and credibility could be irrecoverable and end your business. Whoa offers a fully managed disaster recovery as a service. To learn more about this or about disaster recovery in general, contact us.

When customers look to invest their time and resources into your project, they are looking not just at what deal is cut today, but how you’ll fare down the road. People are increasingly skeptical about businesses upholding their commitments to future work, and investors are skeptical about contributing to any cause without an eye to the future. So how does a business continuity plan help you?

You show a desire for long-term stability. Short-term profits generated by plans that reduce long-term profits are inherently unsustainable. By reassuring customers that your project is looking ahead, not just for the veneer of success today, but with a vision of success that thrives years ahead, you’ll win not just their support, but their confidence.

It actually works to protect you. Having a plan of how your business responds against disasters (cyber attacks, fires and storms, etc) means that you can respond without hesitation in the event of such an eventuality. Further, if something catastrophic happens but you can demonstrate having planned a business continuity response, it’ll be quite difficult to accuse your project of being negligent or naive.

Continuity plans exemplify leadership. By having a plan that features important procedures, lists all pertinent entities and contacts, designates responsibilities and powers, outlines preventative policies and draws contingencies, you prove the project is headed in a reasonable and responsible manner. Strong leadership and a keen eye to the reduction of risk will ease the worries of customers and inspire the project members.

Building a business continuity plan is an imperative part of future success. If you have any questions about how to best create one, please contact us.