MSPNetworks Blog

A digital twin could arguably be seen as a somewhat niche technological innovation. Regardless, they are an invaluable resource to quite a few industries that help the businesses that use them optimize their processes. Let’s go over what a digital twin is, and how it helps a few different business types meet their needs.

Small businesses, like any other organization, need to protect various types of data to ensure the security and privacy of their operations. The specific data that needs protection may vary depending on the nature of the business, industry regulations, and the types of transactions or customer interactions. Today, we thought we would go through some common data types that small businesses typically need to protect.

Did you watch the big game this year? Chances are that if you did, you got to witness all of the spectacles that the event had to offer, including a lot of technology that enriched the experience, whether you realize it or not. The National Football League has implemented emerging technologies that have helped solve persistent challenges over the years. Let’s explore some of these technologies.

Cybersecurity is crucial for everyone to focus on, both in the professional environment and in their personal lives. That’s why I wanted to put together a list of cybersecurity practices you should encourage your team to follow when they aren’t in the office or working remotely, when their time is theirs. 

Your business’ data holds incredible potential for helping you improve operations, but only when it is leveraged properly. To this end, you have to identify specific metrics that you are working toward and establish how these metrics are helping you make strides forward. IT offers plenty of metrics to help you make better decisions about operational efficiency.

Your business is likely subject to certain compliance laws and regulations depending on the type of data you collect from your clients or customers. Today, we want to emphasize the importance of your business considering regulation and compliance when managing its data and IT resources, as without doing so, you run considerable risk.

As technology seeps into every part of everyday life, the market for technology has exploded. This has led to technology companies growing to be massive and seemingly uncontrollable entities. Let’s take a look at big tech and its effect on society. 

Hackers are always on the lookout for personally identifiable information, or PII, as it’s an immensely lucrative resource. You’ll need to protect it if you want your business to continue operating safely and efficiently. Let’s go over what PII entails and what kinds of data you might find under this term.

Data is at the heart of all successful modern businesses. The information you collect and store can help you make better decisions, plan better strategies, and gain a competitive advantage. Let’s look at how your raw data can be refined into more meaningful insights through the use of business analytics tools.

The late American author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” Written in the 20th century, it has been put in practice by 21st century businesses. As the Internet has grown, the amount of companies expanded, and the amount of data that those companies collect has grown exponentially, especially now that there is a market for such data.

Your customers expect not to be inconvenienced when doing business with your organization. Small businesses can use new technology to meet these expectations by offering online ordering, mobile apps, and e-commerce platforms. Such innovations not only improve the customer experience but also expand a business\' reach. Let’s look at some of the ways new technology can improve your business.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Data is often seen as the most important part of a digital business. Small businesses can gather valuable insights through data analytics tools that can inform strategic decisions. This technology allows companies to better understand their customers, track trends, and identify areas for improvement. By making informed decisions based on data, small businesses can adapt to changing market conditions and make more effective choices for growth.

Cost Savings

While adopting new technology may initially require an investment, it often results in long-term cost savings. Automated processes reduce the need for manual labor which lead to reduced labor costs. Additionally, cloud-based technology can eliminate the need for expensive on-site hardware and maintenance. Over time, these cost savings can significantly impact a small business\' bottom line.

Competitive Advantage

Staying ahead of the market is essential to positioning your business for success. Small businesses that embrace new technology gain a competitive edge by offering innovative products or services and providing a superior customer experience. This advantage not only helps attract new customers but also retains existing ones, fostering long-term growth.

Adaptation to Market Trends

Consumer preferences and market trends are constantly changing. Small businesses that resist adopting new technology risk falling behind as their competitors adapt and evolve. Embracing technology allows businesses to stay current and agile, enabling them to pivot and adjust their strategies in response to market shifts.

New technologies can present your business with opportunities that you simply don’t have access to with your current IT environment. If you would like to talk to one of our IT experts about doing an assessment of your business’ current IT setup, give us a call today at (516) 403-9001.

It is so important to keep your business secure nowadays. Statistics show this to be the case. Don’t believe us? We can share a few of these stats and explore what they mean, just to prove it.

Predictions Place the Global Annual Cost of Cybercrime this Year at $8 Trillion

With an estimated 400 million or so small and medium-sized businesses around the world, that breaks down into $20,000 of damage to each. Of course, in the real world, cybercrime isn’t divided up so equally. Many companies will be impacted less, and others will be impacted a lot, lot more. Speaking of which…

By 2025, Cybercrime is Set to Reach $10.5 Trillion

That’s quite a jump, especially when you update the impact to each of the 400 million SMBs around the world. Instead of about $20,000 damage each, this figure equates to $26,250… which, again, would not be evenly distributed.

This makes it all the more clear that cybersecurity not only needs to be seen as a priority for the world’s SMBs (including those around New York) now, but also and even more so in the future.

Phishing Attacks Were Blamed for 80% of Cybercrime in the Tech Sector

Phishing—or the use of fabricated communications to illicitly gain access to a resource—is a huge threat nowadays, simply because of its use as a kind of delivery system for other forms of attack. When four out of five attacks involve phishing in some way, you can’t afford not to be prepared to spot and stop it.

Hopefully, These Statistics Start to Illustrate the Importance of Cybersecurity

If you’d like to learn more about your business’ potential protections and what we can do to ensure them, make sure you give MSPNetworks a call at (516) 403-9001.

When it comes to security, it can be challenging to keep up with shifting best practices. For instance, the use of a virtual private network has long been a staple to secure remote operations, and any decent IT service provider would recommend its use. However, this advice is changing with the growth of zero-trust access protocols.

Let’s compare these two security options to consider why this is.

Defining Virtual Private Networking and Zero-Trust Access

In order to properly compare these two security tools, it is important that we establish what each of them is meant to accomplish.

Virtual Private Networking, or the use of a VPN, creates a protected connection between two network endpoints via encryption. Let’s say you were stuck in an airport during a layover, but you had your work laptop with you. By using the VPN, you could connect back to your business’ infrastructure in order to access the data you need, without your activity being visible to others who may be snooping on the airport’s wireless network.

Zero-Trust Access is a strategy in and of itself that turns the principle of least privilege into an actionable approach, requiring comprehensive verification at each and every step of any business process. Fundamentally, the thesis of zero-trust is that everything and everyone is a threat until they are confirmed not to be—with this confirmation regularly verified throughout the user’s processes.

These two methods take very different approaches to securing your business. With the VPN, the focus is on keeping threats out, without particularly restricting the activities of those who have been authenticated. Zero-trust access, on the other hand, provides access to only what an authenticated user requires to fulfill their responsibilities.

What Does a VPN Do Compared to Zero-Trust Access?

Let’s break down different aspects that you need to keep in mind in terms of what each option provides.

Breach Containment

Should a breach occur, a VPN may help prevent the attacker from accessing more than what the VPN itself was directing toward, whereas a properly-configured zero-trust implementation will limit the breach specifically to the device, service, or application.

Cloud Support

Generally speaking, a VPN is hosted on-premise, although cloud options do exist. Zero-trust is typically hosted in the cloud, meaning that it works well in cloud-hosted applications.

Functionality

This is the crux of our discussion. All a VPN does is create a secure means of accessing different networks. Comparatively, zero-trust access does the same, but also restricts access within these networks based on predetermined policies.

Remote Support

With remote work being more prevalent than it has been in the past, ensuring a means of accessing the workplace securely is a more pressing need. A VPN enables remote workers to do so, while a zero-trust network does the same, but does so on a more granular level.

Security Strength

While the VPN does a great job of protecting data while it is being sent between two separate networks, that protection stops once each network is reached. The zero-trust network provides excellent security at every point, for every resource.

These comparisons make it pretty clear that both offer sincere benefits to a business’ security, and that both should have a welcome place in your business security infrastructure. That being said, it is also understandable why today’s security experts are predicting that zero-trust will ultimately take precedence.

In the meantime, MSPNetworks is here to help you ensure that your business’ technology and cybersecurity are maintained and ready for you to use it. Learn more about our managed services and how they can benefit you by giving us a call at (516) 403-9001.

We have not been shy about expounding upon the benefits of the cloud for businesses, as these benefits are both considerable and accessible. That being said, not even the cloud is completely perfect, and there are security errors that can easily be made.

Let’s go through these security errors to see if any sound familiar to your situation.

Missing Access Controls and No Multi-Factor Authentication

Here’s the thing: if your cloud resources are open to anyone, nothing in them can be considered secure. This is why proper access controls—ideally supported by multi-factor authentication—are so important to have.

The data and processes that the cloud can help you support are valuable to your business. Frankly, they’re critical. Leaving them exposed thereby puts your business at risk. Implementing access controls to limit access to your cloud resources to only the team members that actively need them is therefore necessary—and this access should also require multi-factor authentication requirements (identify authentication measures that go beyond just the username and password combination) to be met before it is granted.

You Have No Backups

Today’s businesses have various options available to them, in terms of how they put the cloud to use. Many will elect to utilize public cloud resources that are maintained and managed by an external provider, many will host and maintain their own cloud infrastructure within their business, and many will use a hybrid model that incorporates both for different purposes.

Regardless of the type of cloud you use, it is important that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Remember, the cloud is just another server that you are able to access remotely. What if something were to happen to the cloud infrastructure you were relying on?

This is precisely why it is important that you have backups for all of your cloud data—especially for that which you use a private, self-hosted cloud to store. And while it is true that most reputable cloud providers will actively store your data in numerous physical locations as a form of protective redundancy, it is always best to get this in writing in case the worst winds up happening.

Cloud Data is Left Unencrypted

Of course, backups are just one element of keeping your data safe. Again, while most public cloud providers are relatively very secure, data leaks and theft are not unheard of. Furthermore, data needs to travel back and forth between the user’s endpoint device and the cloud infrastructure, giving an enterprising cybercriminal the chance to take a peek while said data is in transit.

In this context, avoiding a breach will require you to keep your cloud data encrypted, which scrambles it to anyone who tries viewing it without the proper decryption key. This measure is actually required by many regulations that businesses of assorted kinds must abide by, including the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and the UK’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), making noncompliance a direct detriment to your business in general.

We Can Help You Ensure Your Use of the Cloud is Secure, While Remaining Beneficial to Your Business

In fact, we can say the same for all of your business’ critical technology. Here to provide New York with the best that the managed services model of technology support has to offer, we’re hoping to get the opportunity to assist you and your business in accomplishing more. Find out what we could do for you by reaching out to us at (516) 403-9001.

Sports franchises have changed the way they use data to help them strategize. In the past, businesses used basic scouting to find and develop talent, but with the use of advanced analytics, not only can sports franchises improve their talent bases, they can save money and build a competitive advantage over organizations that aren’t so analytically inclined. 

Enhanced Analytics

The field of sports analytics combines statistical analysis, data processing, and predictive modeling to build competitive superiority. In fact, more and more teams are enhancing the way they view data as franchises that were at the forefront of this strategy have found success using them. Improvements in sensor technology gives teams the ability to measure anything to help with team construction, individual performance, and what sells the best at the concession stands. 

Data-Driven Decision Making

With data driving organizational decision-making, teams can identify metrics to help them get the most out of their investments. By creating key performance indicators an organization can make more informed decisions using objective data rather than subjective insights, often to the benefit of the whole franchise. 

Improved Player Performance Analysis

Advanced analytics replaces some of the more basic statistics that sports franchises depended on to track player and team performance like goals scored and batting average with more advanced algorithms and statistical data that is collected using IoT sensors that give team managers a more accurate representation of the product on the field. This helps players know what to work on and helps teams construct better game plans. 

The technologies behind these major analytical improvements can work to help you make your business better as well. From measuring individual employee performance to strategizing your sales and marketing improvements to using predictive analysis to improve your standing processes, data analysis can help any business be more successful. If you would like to learn more about how to use data to improve your business, give us a call today at (516) 403-9001. 

With things like cryptocurrencies and NFTs flooding the public awareness, the term “blockchain” has been brought up more than a few times. However, this association hardly covers what the blockchain is or what it is capable of.

Let’s briefly review what the blockchain really is, and what the technology can do.

The Blockchain is Nothing More Than a Distributed, Immutable Ledger

So, what does this mean?

In other words, the blockchain is a means of recording information in such a way that it is effectively impossible to manipulate, as this record is replicated across the network of devices that create the blockchain. Every transaction made (a block) is recorded in this network (the chain), which means that any attempt to edit information results in a new block being created.

The only way that this information can be changed is if every single block in the chain is simultaneously altered—requiring anyone trying to change that record to infiltrate each and every device in the chain simultaneously, which potentially means hacking dozens or even hundreds of endpoints all at the same time.

This Gives the Blockchain Assorted Advantages

For example…

The Blockchain is Very Secure

The distributed nature of the blockchain, and the fact that it relies on digital signatures, makes the prospect of fraud nearly impossible due to the scale of the network and the need for the digital signatures in order to change data as well.

The Blockchain Enables Automation

Transactions can be set up to be completed when different triggers are fulfilled, allowing you to focus on other matters with the confidence that the blockchain will attend to what you have previously instructed it to do.

The Blockchain Saves Time

Finally, while many traditional transactions need to go through numerous, time-consuming steps, the blockchain can reduce the time you need to spend on these processes from days to mere minutes.

How Can Your Business Put Blockchain to Use?

There are actually quite a few ways that the blockchain can be used by businesses of all sizes, from supply chain management, smart contracts, and others. Reach out to us to learn more about how you can use various technologies with our help to benefit your business. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

Let me ask you: how confident are you that all of your data is in your control? How confident are you that you have access to it as you need it? How confident are you that it is properly secured, wherever it is being stored?

These are all important, arguably critical, questions to know the answer to. They are also all questions that are best answered by storing your data centrally.

Let’s explore why centralized data storage is so important for today’s businesses and their success.

First of All, What is Centralized Data Storage?

Centralized data storage is pretty much what it says on the box. Instead of keeping your business’ data spread out amongst disparate devices, it’s kept on a central, shared device. There are a lot of reasons that this is the better option, particularly where your business’ data continuity is concerned.

It’s Far Easier to Maintain Control Over Your Data

How much control do you have over your employees’ personal devices? If yours is like most businesses, very, very little. Therefore, any of your business’ data that makes its way to one of these personal devices is effectively lost to you. Using a centralized storage space that your team can remotely access if needed makes it far, far easier to keep track of your data.

You Can Ensure Your Data is Sufficiently Secured and Backed Up

On a related note, by ensuring all of your data is in a centralized location, it becomes far easier to put all the proper security in place to keep it safe. It also makes it easier to keep your data properly backed up, as again, it’s easier to keep track of it and protect it.

Everyone Who Needs Access to Certain Data Can Have It

Thirdly, by keeping all your data in a single, safe place (outside of your backups, of course), it is easier to properly manage your team’s ability to each access the data needed for their roles—and just as importantly, restrict team members from accessing the data they have no need for, following the principle of least privilege.

You Should Be Enforcing the Use of Centralized Storage Space

Long story short, centralized storage space is just the better option for businesses, particularly those that rely on collaboration. We can help you set up your business to utilize such a storage strategy. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to learn more.

Microsoft Excel is a great way for data to be visualized, particularly as it offers various features to highlight the context of the data you’re trying to communicate with. Today, we wanted to walk you through how you can use one such feature—People Graphs—to do so particularly impactfully.

What are People Graphs?

People Graphs are a Microsoft Office Add-In that allows you to create a quick data visualization. While the default icon included in the People Graphs is, predictably, a person, the graphs can be customized to display different icons—from a star, a heart, a clock, a bag of money or various others.

Let’s go over how you can create these simple graphs to present simple data points to your advantage.

Creating a People Graph

First, you need to have the data you want your People Graph to depict in your spreadsheet. Let’s assume that you wanted to share some statistics concerning the work/life balance habits of today’s workers. In one column, list out the stats you want to share, and in the next, list out the numerical values associated with these statistics.

Select this data range. Then, in the Insert toolbar, select People Graph under Add-Ins. A premade graph will appear on your sheet. Select the Settings option, which will appear in the top-right corner when you click on the graph.

From there, you can customize what your graph looks like, its color scheme, and the shape of the icon itself.

Once you’re pleased with the appearance of your graph, you can then select the grid button that appears next to the settings option. From there, you can customize the title and select the data that your graph pulls from.

Once you’ve selected the data, click Create, and your People Graph is complete.

Hopefully, you find plenty of use out of this capability!

Data is the lifeblood of a business. In the event of unforeseen circumstances such as hardware failure, malware attacks, or human error, having a well-designed backup and data recovery strategy in place becomes paramount. Today, we try and guide you through the process of creating a robust backup and data recovery strategy, ensuring the safety and accessibility of your data.

Assess Your Data

Before delving into the specifics of a backup and data recovery strategy, it is essential to assess and categorize the data you possess. Identify the critical data that must be safeguarded, including financial records, customer information, and intellectual property. Categorize the data based on its importance and relevance to your business operations.

Define Recovery Objectives

Understanding your recovery objectives is crucial in designing an effective backup strategy. Determine the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for each category of data. The RTO defines the acceptable downtime, specifying how quickly you need to recover data, while the RPO outlines the maximum data loss you can tolerate.

Choose the Right Backup Solution

There are several different ways that an organization can back up its data. It can simply back it up to hard drives, pay for cloud storage to send its backups to, it can even backup files to a tape drive if it so chooses. At MSPNetworks, we believe the backup and disaster recovery (BDR) system we offer offers the best, most comprehensive data backup.

The BDR offers incremental onsite backup to our BDR device, while also pushing copies to an offsite data center. The integration of the cloud provides a level of redundancy that ensures that regardless of what befalls your business, you can recover your data and keep working forward. 

Implement a Backup Schedule

Consistency is key when it comes to backups. Establish a regular backup schedule based on the criticality of your data. Consider the frequency of changes to your data and the associated risks. Automated backup solutions, like the BDR, can simplify this process by ensuring backups are performed regularly without manual intervention.

Test and Validate Your Backups

Creating backups alone is not enough; it is vital to regularly test and validate their integrity. Perform periodic recovery tests to ensure your backups are complete and can be successfully restored. This step guarantees that your data can be recovered when needed, minimizing downtime and potential loss.

Secure Your Backups

Protecting your backups is as crucial as creating them. Implement security measures to safeguard your backup data from unauthorized access, theft, or malware attacks. Encryption, both in transit and at rest, adds an extra layer of protection. Offline backups also reduce the risk of ransomware attacks targeting online storage.

Your backup is a crucial part of protecting your organizational data. If you would like to talk to one of our knowledgeable consultants about getting your business outfitted with a BDR, give us a call today at (516) 403-9001.

When it comes to valuable data, hackers will go out of their way to try and steal it, placing businesses in dangerous situations. In particular, healthcare data is attractive to hackers, and considering how lucrative the prospect of healthcare data is, companies need to take extra precautions to protect it. But what is it about healthcare data that makes it so attractive, anyway? Let’s dig into the consequences of potential attacks on healthcare data.

It Sells for a Lot on the Black Market

You’d be shocked to see the value of data on the black market, particularly personal health information and medical records, insurance details, and prescription information. Hackers know that there is a high demand for this data, so they have no problem trying to take advantage of the market.

Personal Profiles Aid in Further Attacks

If a hacker can steal a personal profile from a healthcare provider, they gain access to all kinds of information, like medical history, genetic data, lifestyle choices, and more. This information gives hackers all they need to launch customized attacks against individuals based on their profile.

Identity Theft is a Possibility

Identity theft and financial fraud can often be a direct result of healthcare attacks. Once hackers have stolen records, they can impersonate individuals or obtain other medical information and prescription medications, as well as commit insurance fraud. Victims suffer in a variety of ways, including financial loss, damaged credit, and inability to receive medical treatment.

Blackmail and Extortion Can Scare Victims Into Acting

With sensitive personal records such as healthcare data, individuals often find themselves on the receiving end of blackmail attempts or extortion. They might threaten to reveal conditions or other personal information regarding treatments. For public figures or others in sensitive professions, this can be damaging.

Medical Research and Progress Could Grind to a Halt

Medical research requires that data be accurate, and if hackers steal or alter information in healthcare records, medical research grinds to a halt. This puts any attempt at developing new treatments, understanding disease patterns, or improving public health in jeopardy. 

Hackers Take Advantage of Weaker Security Systems

Healthcare organizations often have weaker security measures in place, putting them at greater risk of being attacked. These organizations are often more focused on providing better patient care, meaning their investment priorities are elsewhere, leading to more potential for security vulnerabilities in the process.

There is So Much Data to Steal

Consider how many patients a hospital might see over the course of a year. Now consider that the hospital will retain those records for an extremely long time. This shocking amount of data makes hospitals and other healthcare providers targets that have a lot to lose as a result.

Of course, it’s not just healthcare data that’s at risk of theft, destruction, or worse—all data is vulnerable to this type of treatment if it’s not managed appropriately. Let MSPNetworks help you address this with our managed IT services. Learn more by calling us today at (516) 403-9001.