MSPNetworks Blog

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.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is just one way of describing the concept of machine learning technologies. AI has grown considerably over the past couple of years, so much that automation as we know it today wouldn’t exist without it. Throw in some data-driven insights and you have a technology that has cemented itself for use in a business environment, but there are some concerns with how fast it is growing and evolving.

Defining Artificial Intelligence

If you’ve seen the AI on display in movies and on television, the kind that quickly becomes so advanced that it threatens all sentient life, you’ve seen a science-fiction depiction of AI that is not necessarily grounded in reality. AI is often characterized as a technology that grows too fast and spirals out of control, eventually overthrowing humanity and acting of its own volition. One recent leak from the US Air Force in which the AI system saw the human operator as an enemy is one such instance that has been, at this time, denied by the U.S. Department of Defense. Whether or not this is a true story, however, is not why we are here today.

The kind of AI used by businesses is built around automation. Many tools use machine learning as a way of automating specific tasks that would typically slow down processes and systems. This is the type of AI we are examining today.

Let’s look at some ways that businesses use AI and automation to improve their processes and productivity.

Better Customer Experiences

A business cannot last long if they don’t have a consumer base, especially in today’s competitive business environment. The biggest use of AI in business is perhaps the use of AI chatbots on the support side of the house to help consumers get the help they need, when they need it. This means that the human typically responsible for such work can instead focus their efforts elsewhere, or help consumers with more complicated requests.

Improved Business Knowledge

AI and automation can be used to help improve countless processes within your organization, and it’s all thanks to AI and automation allowing for data insights and analytics. Collecting all of the data is one thing, but sifting through it and gleaning insights from it is another story altogether. AI can handle it faster and more efficiently than any human resource could, allowing businesses to both learn and act much faster than they typically would be able to.

But How Fast is it Advancing?

Some industry leaders believe that these technologies are growing too fast for comfort, depending on who you ask. As demand for these solutions increases, people feel like they are losing control over their technology, and since AI tools are growing so fast, humans often feel like they have to slow the technology down to keep it from going too wild with the data at hand.

Here are some of the major concerns people have with AI:

• AI-fueled automation creates problems for organizations to keep workers.
• Making workers depend too much on technology and are less productive.
• Information that is unreliable is being shared because of its prevalence of it.
• A complete lack of oversight.
• The creation of dangerous malware.

Are you considering implementing artificial intelligence systems for your business? MSPNetworks can help you make the most of them. To learn more, call us today at (516) 403-9001.

Small manufacturers and distributors operate under a whole separate set of conditions than their larger competitors. This is because they don’t have the available capital to have any noticeable inefficiencies, and if they do have some, they are going to definitely affect their ability to compete. One solution that these organizations can lean on is a logistics platform. 

What Is Logistics Technology?

Logistics is the act of using information and technology to improve the efficiency of your business’ supply chain, procurement, and overall operational efficiency. With so much depending on a business’ ability to deliver products and services in real-time, having the data needed to make that a reality is important.

How do you go about doing this if you don’t have the massive capital to spend on a large logistics platform? It can be difficult to get started, but as the business world has shifted away from the station-to-station model and embraced a more mobile-centric model, logistics not only is extremely important, it is easier to come by than it once was. Let’s take a look at some of the options SMBs have when it comes to integrating logistics platforms into their business. 

Work with Logistic Vendors

One of the best ways to get a logistics platform for a small business is to partner with like-minded companies. Many businesses have the budget restrictions your small business has and since most logistics companies set rates based on volume, you may be priced out if you are only doing a small amount of business with them. Teaming up with another company could deliver the cost-effective price point that will allow you (and your partners) to meet both of your logistics needs. 

Try Logistics Services from Major Providers

Another great option for smaller businesses is to use a small business logistics service that is run by an enterprise logistics company. Nearly every single one of these companies offers solutions for small businesses. This includes UPS, FedEx, DSL, and more. You may end up paying less than you would if you choose to implement a standalone logistics service and you’ll have some of the best companies in the business backing you up.

Look for Industry-Specific Options

Depending on what your business does and what market you do business in, you may find hiring a logistic provider that dedicated themselves to your market to be the best option. Logistics providers that do business in a specific vertical will know the ins and outs of how to handle procurement, distribution, and all the other parts of logistics that can be difficult for a small business. 

Managing Your Supply Chain Doesn’t Need to Be Difficult

Regardless of what you choose to do about your supply chain management and logistics platform, there are many different solutions that cater to the small business. If you would like to have a conversation about getting a logistics platform for your business and what you need to do to operate more efficiently in the changing business world, give the IT professionals at MSPNetworks a call at (516) 403-9001.

Artificial intelligence is a hot-button issue in today’s business technology landscape, and for good reason. It’s being implemented in various software tools and platforms with mixed results. There are some concerns over it, particularly in regard to intellectual property, but there are also major issues with it related to “the profound risks to society and humanity,” according to an open letter.

An Open Letter Calls for a Pause on AI Development

With tens of thousands of signatures, the short letter cautioned against the unfettered growth of AI without a greater appreciation of the potential outcomes.

There are many reasons why people are concerned, including present, short-term, and long-term ramifications of the continued development of AI programs.

Misinformation is a Short-Term Issue

Generative AI uses already existing content in its creation, meaning that it can also call upon information that is blatantly false, leading to the perpetuation of it. Considering how many people rely on the Internet for answers to their important questions, well, AI could only make it worse by showing the wrong answers. These falsehoods can even be made more convincing by the use of AI.

Developers could even use AI to spread misinformation intentionally, which is a serious problem that has many concerned.

Job Loss Could Become a Problem, Too

Some technology experts also believe that AI could lead to many employees losing their jobs due to their work becoming obsolete. Knowledge-based careers require more practical skills than AI can replicate, but other roles could be entirely eliminated as a result of advancing AI.

Long-Term AI Could Pose an “Existential Risk” to Humanity

While this might sound like an extreme stance, it’s one that is becoming more popular thanks to the Future of Life Institute, an organization that tries to predict “existential risks to humanity.” AI could disrupt the future if it can learn to write its own code, and the Future of Life Institute outlines how this could be problematic in its open letter.

Likewise, the Center for AI Safety has collected signatures in support of their own brief statement:

"Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."

There are Only Predictions at the Moment, but AI is a Challenge to Address

AI certainly seems to be a controversial technological advancement, but this is usually what happens when new and exciting things are developed. Only time will tell if AI becomes truly problematic for the business world or if it will just become another tool in our toolboxes.

To learn more about other technology and how it can improve your operations, be sure to contact MSPNetworks at (516) 403-9001.

Smartphones are everywhere. Nearly everyone has one either in their pocket or in their hand and that fact would make you think that the underlying smartphone market is one that is remarkably strong. This really isn’t the case. Today, we’ll take a brief look at the smartphone market and how a lack of true innovation is one of the reasons the industry has seen large decreases in sales. 

The Smartphone Market is Shrinking

It wasn’t too long ago that the smartphone market was filled with companies looking to gain a significant market share in the industry. Since then some of the largest companies in the world have ceased their smartphone divisions. LG, Microsoft, and Amazon have stopped making smartphones altogether, while once industry leaders like Motorola have been bought and sold numerous times. 

2022, in particular, was not kind to smartphone manufacturers. In fact, the whole market saw an incredible twelve percent decline. You may be thinking, “How can that be, with so many people using smartphones?” The answer comes from the fact that lots of people aren’t buying new phones every 18 months or two years like they have been for the past decade. Much of this has to do with a lack of innovation.

“Innovation”

Smartphone manufacturers dispute that they aren’t at the forefront of innovation. Today’s budget smartphones are as good as flagships were only five short years ago. The problem is that flagships aren’t moving the needle each year with new features and form factors. Consider for a minute that for years the chipsets, the displays, the user interfaces and cameras on new flagship smartphones were greatly improved in some manner each year. For the past few years, however, there are slight improvements, but a major rise in costs. Even real innovations, such as the foldable smartphone market, haven't taken off because of the cost of the devices vs. the practical need for them. 

The point is that when innovation slows, people aren’t going to jump at the chance to buy a new phone for twice as much money than they paid for a device that works well enough and has relatively the same general makeup. This is why only a handful of companies are actually turning a profit in the smartphone space. In their marketing material they speak about innovation, without proving to customers that they are pushing the space forward. 

While the smartphone market is struggling to capture the imagination of its users, it’s still an extremely important part of today’s society and therefore will be invested in. So, while you may not see marked enhancements in display clarity, device speed, or security features, there are still benefits from getting a new phone every couple of years or so.  

If you are looking to use mobile to your business’ advantage, you’ll need help managing all the new endpoints on your network. Our technicians can help you develop a mobile policy, a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy, and help your organization make mobile productivity a feature of your business. Give us a call today at (516) 403-9001 to learn more.

Do you ever think about how incredible technology is? In a world where it’s easy to take advantage of technology and devices that were practically inconceivable just a few short decades ago, it’s really amazing to just look at how far we’ve come, and how something so small can fit so much information.

Breaking Down What Data Actually Is

Let’s go back to before there were modern computers and smartphones. The prominent form of data storage throughout the centuries has been the book.

A typical novel has somewhere between 60,000 and 110,000 words (unless you are reading something by Brandon Sanderson—his novels tend to be three or four times that). 

How much data is that though? If you want to parse this down into smaller numbers, we can look at one of the most common forms of bite-sized information on the planet, the text message.

A text message has a maximum length of 160 characters. You can usually squeeze 1-3 sentences into that on average. Characters in the English language are 7-bits. A bit is represented by a 1 or a 0. The letter “A” is translated to 01000001, and “B” is 01000010. We’ll get back to this shortly.

A text message can contain a maximum of 160 characters, or 1120 bits (1120 ones and zeroes). There are 8 bits in a byte, which means a text message is 140 bytes.

There are 1,000,000 bytes in 1 Megabyte. Figure that the average word is around five characters, so a novel could have somewhere between 300,000 and 550,000 characters

Take 550,000 characters and multiply that by 7 (the number of bits in a character) and then divide the result by 8 (the number of bits in a byte) and you’ll get 481,250 bytes, or 0.48125 Megabytes.

That means a book on the larger side of things is technically around half a Megabyte of information. Once you add some of the hidden meta information, the cover, and some other data, a typical ebook sits around 1 Megabyte. If there are illustrations or images, then there is a lot more to calculate, so we’ll just assume that we are dealing with text for this thought experiment. 

How Much Data Does a Library Hold?

Many books are much larger than the average novel, considering that there are textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, massive reference books, and a lot of other larger format texts out there. Plus, it’s easier to work with round numbers, so let’s just assume that on average, a book rounds out to about 1 Megabyte.

A typical library tends to hold somewhere between 5,000 and 500,000 books. The world’s biggest libraries tend to put their book counts in the millions. The US Library of Congress holds more than 51 million books, and 75 million manuscripts, plus millions and millions of other items.

Let’s assume those 51 million books are all text. How much data would that actually be?

51 million Megabytes is 51 thousand Gigabytes, which translates to 51 Terabytes. It’s pretty common to buy 1 or 2 Terabyte drives for a home PC, so if you were conservative about your data, you could easily fit the entire Library of Congress book library in a pretty small office with 25 or so computers. Of course, you could just put multiple 2 TB drives into your workstations and store the entire Library of Congress on fewer machines too, or build a media server with an array of high-capacity drives… you get the idea.

We’re not quite to the point where a mobile device can hold that much information, but we’re getting there.

Keep in mind, this is just assuming we are taking the text. If instead, you wanted to scan every single page as a grey-scale image, you would be looking at an average size of around 8 Megabytes per book, so it would take about 408 Terabytes to store the Library of Congress. At that point, you’d be looking at a large rack-mounted device or a very small section of a data center.

How Much Data Does Your Organization Produce?

We’re going to make this a two-part blog since there is still a lot more to talk about! Next time, we’ll break down how much data human beings have ever produced, how much data you can fit into the palm of your hand, and more! Be sure to subscribe and bookmark our blog and keep coming back for more!

Last time, we broke down how much data is stored in a typical book, and how much data every book in the Library of Congress contains. This time, let’s really show you what that data consists of, and some other really neat comparisons to put things into perspective. Buckle up!

A Piece of Data is a Bit, but What Is a Bit, Really?

Last time, we mentioned that data is composed of ones and zeroes, called bits. There are 7 bits in an English character, and 8 bits in a byte. Why do we break down bits by simple ones and zeroes? 

Throughout most of the last 70 years, and technically even before that, we’ve stored digital information in a very simple, easy-to-comprehend way. Imagine a row of 7 lights. Any single light can either be lit up, or dark. There is no in-between. A one, or a zero. Depending on which lights are lit and which lights are dark, gives you a different character. It could be a number, it could be a letter, or it could be a symbol. Now multiply that row of 7 lights thousands, or millions, or billions of times, and you’ll have a massive array of lights that can convey large quantities of data.

For the last 70 years, most of our data storage has used this concept, mostly by using magnets.

Inside the traditional mechanical hard drive are multiple spinning platters. To the common eye, they look sort of like CDs stacked on top of each other. They spin incredibly fast, usually at 72,000 RPM. On these platters are billions of tiny little magnets. There’s a little arm that floats just over top of the platter as it spins, and it reads and manipulates the magnets as you read and write data to the drive. 

The sensitivity of this device is absolutely incredible. Imagine taking a single human eyelash, and holding it in the palm of your hand. Your hand wouldn’t even recognize its weight, right? If we were to cut that eyelash into 100 little pieces, and place one of those pieces on the arm of a hard drive, it would dramatically bend it. This arm is designed to detect forces billions of times smaller than that.

Kinda makes you realize the importance of data backup, right?

This miraculous little marvel of engineering has been the cornerstone of data storage in every single computer over the last several decades.

More recently, modern computers have started using Solid State Drives (SSDs) which store data as an electrical charge in tiny little transistors. These drives don’t rely on mechanical movement or magnets, which is much better for mobile devices as it uses less electricity and can survive being jostled around much more in your pocket compared to a mechanical drive.

Either way, these devices contain billions or trillions of pieces of information.

How Much Data Can I Hold in My Hand?

Last time, we came up with the amount of data of all of the books in the U.S. Library of Congress. It was about 51 Terabytes based on our estimates. We said that, right now, you can’t really hold that much data in a mobile device. You could, however, hold that much data in the palm of your hand. 

Take a look at the image above for this blog post. That’s a Micro SD card. Many digital cameras, smartphones, and other mobile devices use them to store data. At the time of writing this blog, you can purchase a Micro SD card that stores 1 Terabyte of information in a form factor that is about the size of your own thumbnail. 1 Terabyte could hold just under a 50th of the entire Library of Congress.

One of these tiny little cards can hold about a million books.

Dozens of these little Micro SD cards can fit into the palm of your hand—you could easily keep hundreds of them in your pockets. 

If you weren’t the reading type, you could use your 1 Terabyte Micro SD card to hold:

• 200,000 songs
• 250 full-length movies in full HD
• 6.5 million pages of PDF documents
• 250,000 photos taken with a 12 megapixel camera
• Essentially every video game from the 80s and 90s.
• Or you could store 10,000 copies of Windows 95 and Microsoft Office 95.

How Much Data Has Humanity Produced?

As of the end of 2020, the entire digital footprint of all of humanity is 44 zettabytes. That would require 44 billion of those 1 TB Micro SD cards. By the end of this year, that number will have doubled. By 2025, it’s estimated that our digital footprint will be higher than 200 zettabytes.

We produce a massive amount of data. With more than 62 percent of the world population on social media, and 300 billion emails sent every day, information is constantly being moved around. 

Every single minute, 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. That equates to approximately one of those 1 TB Micro SD cards every minute.

Data is Critical To Your Business

Every day, your business generates data. Your staff sends and receives emails, produces documents, updates and stores customer information, and so much more. That data is fundamental to keeping your business operating smoothly.

That’s why data backup is so important. It’s so easy to lose all of your data. Ensuring that your data is properly backed up will ensure that you can continue operations in the event of a mistake, hardware failure, or major disaster.

If you want to discuss properly backing up your organization’s data, give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

If you truly want to run your business effectively, it all starts with understanding how its costs break down. If you are armed with this knowledge, you can make better decisions about solution procurement and operations management. Let’s examine how you can cut costs without harming your business in the process.

Outsourcing Can Help

Outsourcing is often misunderstood, but it is an incredibly powerful tool to control your costs and improve operations. If you take part of your business that is costly to run normally, then outsource it to a provider, you get more stable costs and expertise that you might not normally be able to leverage.

Businesses have all sorts of outsourcing options these days, including gig workers or managed service providers. You can outsource help desks for support, or you can outsource recruitment and payroll. The sky's the limit, so to speak; if you can imagine it, you can probably outsource it, provided you find an appropriate vendor.

Data Allows for Better Decision-Making

The more data your business has, the more tools and resources it has at its disposal to enable better decision-making. You can look at data to learn about what has worked well in the past, what could work well in the future, and what needs to be addressed immediately. Data is key to the many types of initiatives you might have planned for the future.

Data analytics can give your business key insights into how it can be more efficient with sales, marketing, operational processes, and so on. It can help you build better consumer experiences and customer relationships, something which can increase revenue and give you more resources to work with in the future.

Keep Flexibility in Mind

You can provide greater value to your employees by keeping flexibility at the top of your mind. This means giving them tools to communicate and be productive whether they are in the office or on the move, and thanks to cloud-based resources and solutions, you can do this easily and efficiently.

Another way you can innovate and keep things flexible is through the use of artificial intelligence technology. An AI chatbot, for example, can free up employees for other tasks, focusing instead on tasks that generate revenue.

MSPNetworks can help your business be more cost-effective and productive at the same time. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

Regularly, when a business is searching for ways to move their operations forward, there is a little hand wringing on how to do so. Every decision your business has to make comes with a price tag, and the more that you can do without spending a lot of money, the more value you are going to see. For this week’s blog, we thought we’d take a look at some actions you can take with your technology to ensure that your business is going in the right direction.

Procurement and Deployment

When you are looking to upgrade your business’ technology, cost is likely the most important variable. This leads to a tendency to prioritize smaller investments that don’t necessarily cost your business a lot of money. Unfortunately, any value-creating piece of hardware or software is going to take a substantial investment for your business. Fortunately, there are options out there that give decision makers options on how these investments are made. 

Traditionally, if your business needed a new server, your company would price out how much they would have to pay to buy the hardware, migrate all the data and applications from the old hardware to the new hardware, and whatever associated costs that come with the setup and management of a new server. If the server was brought in to add more computing to your existing infrastructure, the setup and integration of the new server would come with its own associated costs. 

Today, you can add to your business’ computing infrastructure faster and with powerful technology through the integration of cloud computing. The costs associated with cloud infrastructure are comparable to the ones that you would pay over time with a hardware lease, but with it you get integrated management and maintenance of that infrastructure. Since the only real drawback is that you need an Internet connection to access those cloud-based resources it is an excellent option for companies looking to quickly add powerful new IT solutions to their current infrastructure. 

Managing Security

One of the most difficult parts of managing a robust computing infrastructure is keeping it secure. In fact, a lot of the axillary costs associated with maintaining large IT systems are tied up in security. Of course, you can decide what level of security investment is right for your situation, but you have to take into account that the less you invest in keeping your business’ IT secure, the more likely you will deal with security breaches; a potentially devastating thing for your business.  

At MSPNetworks, we provide comprehensive network and infrastructure security solutions designed to keep the near neverending myriad of threats off of your business’ IT. We also can help you create policies and procedures that work to keep your staff trained and in-the-know about all types of potential security problems. Our technicians work with New York businesses every day, and in the course of doing business see a lot of situations that provide us with real world experience in dealing with potential threats. Not only can we outfit your business with the technology you need to help mitigate ongoing threats, we also have the ability to customize a security plan specifically for your business needs, even when it includes comprehensive training.

Innovation

If you talk to any technology professional that works with businesses, they will tell you that if you can manage to integrate automated tools, you will be improving your business’ efficiency. One of the most important considerations any business owner or decision maker has to make in today’s business environment is how to streamline operations and get their revenue-generating staff to do just that. A lot of businesses have their best people working in support roles over 25 percent of the time, no doubt cutting down on the organization’s effectiveness. 

In using innovative software platforms to help your business cut out huge wastes of time and prioritize productivity, you get more out of your business. Today, you can get all types of powerful applications for human resources, security, business operations, marketing, sales, collaboration, communications, operational support, and more. Aside from improved access, there are other benefits that utilize state-of-the-art tools like artificial intelligence that can automate more processes, further improving efficiency.

Regardless of how you want to approach it, getting more from your technology is important if you want to increase productivity, improve employee satisfaction and retention, and other variables important to building a more productive and efficient business. If you would like to have a conversation about how to use technology to help you build a better business give us a call at (516) 403-9001 today.

It is a legitimate question whether something is actually art if it isn’t created by a human being. That’s before you are exposed to it, however. In fact, an AI created a piece of art that was crowned the winner at the Colorado State Fair. Let’s take a look at AI art in the context of this competition.

Let’s dive in.

Are AI-Generated Images Art?

At the Colorado State Fair, there is a fine arts competition where Josh Allen won the first place prize in Digital Arts/Digitally Manipulated Photography for his image, “Théåtre D'opéra Spatial.” When Allen provided a glimpse into his process via Discord, however, he was met with scrutiny. He used an image synthesis model called Midjourney to create the image.

As Allen said in his Discord post, he “...created 100s of images using it, and after many weeks of fine tuning and curating my gens, I chose my top 3 and had them printed on canvas after upscaling with Gigapixel A.I.” As he reports, he “could not be more excited” that his “favorite piece” ultimately won.

The rest of the community was a bit more critical of Allen’s choice. The image was produced with little actual hands-on work from Allen. Instead, it was built using the input that he plugged into the Midjourney platform. Allen wrote in his official submission, “I generate images with MJ, do passes with Photoshop, and upscale with GigaPixel,” and even labeled his piece with “Jason Allen via Midjourney.”

As you might not be surprised to hear, people have opinions on this topic, and many of these opinions cannot in good conscience be shared here. Still, there are many who believe that AI-generated art signifies the “death of artistry” and wonder “if creative jobs aren’t safe from machines, then even high-skilled jobs are in danger of becoming obsolete [sic] What will we have then?”

Art is Created and Judged In Accordance with the Technology of the Time

We understand why this has people concerned, but the fact remains that the tools we use today are simply taken for granted. An artist named Rhea Edge listed tools, techniques, and artists that use them, as well as when the tools were introduced, then shows that these tools also were not received well at the time.

In particular, Edge discusses the development of the camera obscura, a darkened room with a small hole in one side that allowed images to be projected onto a wall. This photography went on to inspire innovations in the art that are seen in modern day photography at large. Tubed paint was also a problematic topic due to artists not mixing their own paints. Artists were criticized right up until the 1970s and 1980s for these practices.

Edge also points out that art tends to change over time, highlighting how long it took the Impressionist painting style to really become an established style in the art world.

One other artist named Brian Simpson examines technology’s role in the development of art. He indicates that miniature portraits were essentially cut out entirely by the advent of photography. Simpson is also an advocate for Allen’s AI-produced artwork.

“There is a mind behind it. The mind is deciding I want this image. And with this image, this is the word I want to use,” Simpson said, going on to reflect on how Allen produced 40 images, ultimately choosing the ones he submitted.

“You can argue that choice and self-curation is part of the art process,” said Simpson.

This statement makes it clear that the current state of image creation and artwork still involves much human interaction, especially to achieve outstanding results like with Allen’s piece. How long this remains the case, however, is yet to be determined.

What are your thoughts on AI-generated artwork? Do you have any strong opinions on this topic? Be sure to share them in the comments below—and remember that AI is very well-established in the business world, so consider implementing it for your own company’s needs!

2023 is right around the corner, and if the past few years are any indication, it will be rife with challenges for businesses to overcome. Let’s consider some of these challenges, and what technologies can help minimize or even eliminate them.

Inflation and Supply Chain Issues Will Likely Continue

Unfortunately, the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy is expected to persist throughout 2023. Exacerbating these issues, the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia has not helped matters in terms of supply chain stability. Now and moving forward, businesses need to plan for any supply chain disruptions or impacts of inflation…but how can this be accomplished?

When economic conditions are fraught with such risk, it is important that you are able to identify how vulnerable your operations are to the whims of the aforementioned challenges. By doing so, you’ll be in a better position to minimize or completely eliminate your vulnerability to these factors.

Customer Experience and Sustainability Will Be Priorities

Based on how 2023 looks to be shaping up, it will be important for you to address your customers’, clients’, and prospects’ priorities—which seem to be focused on sustainable operations. With more focus put on a company’s stance on assorted social and environmental issues, it will be important that businesses are able to identify where their current strategies and initiatives may be received poorly or have a negative impact on the company’s reputation—including those strategies that involve external parties, like cloud providers and the data centers they rely on, and how the impacts these parties have affected the business by association. 

Likewise, your customers, clients, and prospects need more than just the assurance that you’re operating in an environmentally conscious way…they will want to be wooed, and in a more personalized and interactive way. This will also require the right IT to be in place, deployed so that workflows are streamlined and enhanced through technologies that have developed to the point that many of these responsibilities are resolved through automation. This not only ensures that the right processes are carried out in a timely manner, it allows your team members to divert their energies toward more gainful endeavors.

Employee Retention Will Require Effort

Since the onset of the pandemic, many businesses have struggled to keep their employees engaged, with many of these workers either leaving work as part of what has been called “The Great Resignation,” or participating in the more recent trend of “quiet quitting,” or strictly adhering to exclusively the responsibilities outlined in their job description and doing nothing more.

It is on the employer to then work to retain their employees through meaningful and fulfilling work and the benefits associated with it. Allowing for hybrid work is a great means of doing so, along with opportunities for upward mobility and increased pay and benefits.

What is Your Business Doing to Prepare for 2023?

Whatever it is, MSPNetworks can help you manage the IT that it requires. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to speak to us about what we can do for you.

It is not an exaggeration to refer to social media as a world-changing technology, impacting life in all manners—interpersonal, social, and professional. We wanted to focus on this last aspect and discuss how social media can assist a business in its operations.

First Off…Yes, Social Media is a Great Marketing Tool

We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention how social media can significantly help your business. Obviously, there are significant benefits to using these platforms to promote your business—building your brand, sharing your content, making use of the tools these platforms feature for advertising, and otherwise raising awareness of your business itself.

Of course, perhaps the most important of these benefits is that you can transition your social media followers into website visitors (provided your social media is used correctly, of course). This is really what you want, after all. Your business’ website should be the ultimate destination you’re pushing your prospects towards because that’s where most sales will be closed.

However, this is just the beginning of how social media can be of use to your organization.

Social Media is Also Useful for Other Business Needs, Too

There are a few business uses for social media that go beyond straightforward marketing.

Social Media Allows You to Network with Other Businesses and Business Owners

Word-of-mouth and personal recommendations are pretty powerful things… things that interacting with your fellow business owners on social media can help to encourage. Creating supportive relationships between businesses works the same way the tide does—it raises all ships. Not only can your new business relationships cultivate new opportunities themselves, they can draw the attention of other businesses while building your own organization’s credibility.

This is also closely related to another use that we will discuss in a moment.

Social Media Allows You to Reach Your Clients During a Crisis

While Murphy’s Law—”What can go wrong, will.”—may be a bit extreme, it is irresponsible to assume that nothing bad will ever happen to your business. A healthy social media network gives you an external means of keeping your clientele up to speed should you find yourself needing to lean on our business continuity or disaster recovery services.

Social Media Allows You to Learn More About Your Clients’ Needs

One of the greatest opportunities that a business’ social media provides is the opportunity to engage directly with the people that the business is trying to reach and serve. For example, if you want to know what the businesses you serve are looking for, social media allows you to just ask them directly.

Social Media Allows You to Serve and Support Your Clients in One More Way

Building off of that last point, a healthy social media strategy will also enable you to provide your clients with assistance from there. Not only do many people expect a business to be available on social media for support requests and general questions, they also expect these responses to be prompt. This gives you an additional outlet to provide value through, and helps you produce highly-visible social proof that can help convince other businesses to reach out and inquire about your services… after all, who wouldn’t want to work with a business that is so obviously available?

Social Media Allows You to Build the Reputation You Want to Have

Almost in summation, social media allows you to communicate with your clients and prospects in a way that speaks to them more directly, drawing them to your website to ensure that they receive your message. Social media also allows you to frame your business the way you want it to be perceived: helpful, approachable, and responsive.

We Can Give You the Technology to Live Up to the Promises You Make on Social Media

Trust MSPNetworks to provide and support the technology you need for your business to function and thrive. Reach out to us at (516) 403-9001 to find out more.

Social media is often seen as simply a consumer technology that has limited value to businesses, but you might be surprised by how much proper use of social media can impact it. Here are four benefits your business could potentially see from using social media websites and applications.

Increase Your Business’ Reach

Social media is an effective way to increase the scope of your business’ sales funnel, and considering that most social media accounts can be made for free, all you need to do is upkeep the account and post content to tap a market that might not be possible otherwise. It also helps you stay in touch with your consumer base. Interacting with them on a regular basis can prove beneficial to your continued growth.

Connect with Other Business Professionals

It’s sometimes about who you know in business, and the more people you know and are in contact with, the more opportunities you might have to grow. Social media accounts give your business the opportunity to connect with other business professionals and companies that could be valuable partners in the future.

Research Your Competitors

On a similar note, you can use social media to conduct market research and to see what your competitors are up to. Businesses are often quite vocal about exciting new initiatives they have planned, as they want to increase excitement for their goods and services. You can see which posts people are interacting with or interested in to gain insights into how you can conduct your own business.

Drive Traffic to Your Website

Again, the big benefit to social media is that you are increasing the accessibility of your goods and services by promoting them in another environment that is not your website. You can use social media to get consumers clicking on posts or links to your website where they can then see how great your mission, vision, products, and services are, further enticing them to buy into what you offer.

The Downside

One of the biggest downsides to social media is that you are effectively increasing the threat surface for your business by adding new accounts and avenues of attack to your infrastructure. Imagine if a hacker seized control of your social media accounts; they could ruin your reputation, use your account to spread malware or conduct phishing attacks, and so much more. You need to make sure that you are also keeping an eye on how your social media accounts are used, as improper use of them could create considerable trouble for your organization.

How does your business utilize social media? We’d love to hear from you and to hear some strategies you implement to be successful online. As always, if you want advice on how to secure your social media accounts to prevent hacking attempts and other disasters, be sure to contact us at (516) 403-9001.

The blockchain has had a single purpose since it was first developed back in 1991, and that has simply been as a secure means of storing data. Its method of doing so is fascinating, so let’s examine the concept and all that it now allows us to do.

To begin, let’s review how it is that the blockchain works.

How Does the Blockchain Work?

The big selling point behind the blockchain comes in its immutability…the fact that it is structured in such a way that the information it stores effectively cannot be changed without that change being recorded and reflected. The blockchain is really just a ledger system that is accessible by numerous parties. All transactions are gathered and compiled into records—the blocks of the blockchain—that are verified across the entire chain.

So, each time a transaction is submitted, the peer-to-peer network of computers that form the blockchain all individually validate the transaction. This transaction is then added to many others to form a block, this block being permanently added to the chain.

This is where the blockchain gets its security. Hacking the blockchain isn’t a matter of hacking one computer… it’s a matter of hacking dozens, or even hundreds or thousands, all at the same time. Hence, why the blockchain is seen as so secure.

Nowadays, the Blockchain is Most Known for NFTs and Cryptocurrencies

These are just two of the many potential applications of blockchain technology, with the promise of more to come in the future. For example:

• If properly encrypted, health information can be securely shared between different providers without its privacy being undermined, with a complete record of changes and updates.
• Financial services could benefit from the blockchain, in terms of transparency and significantly reduced transaction costs.
• Incorporating blockchain into mobile voting applications could help to improve voting in terms of accessibility and trust.
• By using the blockchain, food could be more effectively tracked through its distribution systems from its origins, catching contaminants and other health threats.

What Else Might the Blockchain Enable?

Through the immutability that the blockchain relies on, there are a great number of potential uses for the technology—with new ones becoming clear as time passes. There’s really no telling what we might apply the blockchain to in the future.

To find out what’s possible for your business through today’s technology, give MSPNetworks a call at (516) 403-9001 today.

We always hear about how innovation drives business. This has been typically true for the whole of human existence. As businesses have tried to stay profitable among the problems they’ve faced throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we are beginning to see a troubling trend where new products are released with a laundry list of new features, but aren’t really enhancing the customer experience. Today, we look at how businesses have enhanced their marketing efforts to make products that don’t provide the types of innovations that are useful to customers. 

Before we get into the practices that have caused this shift, we first have to come to understand the difference between upstream activities and downstream activities. Upstream activities are parts of a business that allows them to create the products and services that they offer. Things like sourcing, assembling production staff and resources, and logistics are considered upstream activities. Downstream activities are the ones that work in the facilitation of creating a product or service, as well as all the activities that go into selling them. 

Upstream Issues Complicate Things

The past couple of years haven’t been very friendly to businesses. The global pandemic and other issues led to serious supply chain problems that not only raised procurement costs, but also made it difficult to get the components and resources they need to create quality products. Add in what is called “the great resignation” where large swaths of people quit their jobs over potential health and safety issues and wage discrepancies and businesses are finding maintaining effective operations more difficult than ever. 

Running a profitable and efficient business isn't easy to begin with, but with the myriad of obstacles that today’s landscape presents the modern business owner, innovating processes and products has become more costly and more difficult. For enterprises, it is easier to earmark money for research and development, but for small businesses, finding a way to keep your company in the black, while making smart investments that return palatable ROIs has become the norm. 

Marketing Taking the Place of Consistent Innovation

Most of the time the research and development money of any organization dwarfs the marketing budget. Both are necessary, but innovation has always been a driving force of the business, while marketing or advertising has always been looked upon as an expense that is one of the last items in a SMBs budget. This is largely because in order to avoid becoming stagnant—and be competitive—businesses have to continue to grow their offering. 

Large businesses are able to do this successfully and it has resulted in a growing gap between the staying power of businesses. Additionally, it has caused a lot of SMBs to make a choice, go in on a business model with products and services that have brought the modicum of success the organization has achieved, or spend capital they don’t have to try and advance their offering in some way. With margins shrinking rapidly because of inflation, fuel costs, and supply chain interruptions, smaller businesses are turning to their message to try and drum up business rather than focusing on research and development. 

What’s worse, many SMBs are forced to spend less on their sales processes and administrative costs (which include IT, HR, and improving and innovating business processes), while larger businesses have no problem acquiring the resources and talent they need to thrive. Unfortunately, the people that are affected the most are the consumers. 

People are Paying More for Less

Like the business that is having difficulty innovating, many consumers today are spending more money for less. This creates a situation where it may not be viable for consumers to avoid purchasing their goods and services from larger companies. This is a dire consequence for small businesses as they depend on their intimate, customer-first approach to continue winning new business. As SMBs' dollars continue to be spent on operations, their marketing initiatives are the only avenue they have because they find themselves not able to make the future plans needed to ensure their customers (or their workforce) stay around. 

How We Can Help

If you run a small business, you have had to see how your IT costs have started to rise. You may not be getting what you are paying for. At MSPNetworks, we offer a way to reduce your technology support costs with our managed IT services. We can monitor and maintain your IT, back up your data, and consult on your technology decisions to help you get more for every valuable dollar. 

Things are tough out there, but instead of redirecting your capital to try to keep your lights on with a message, make the smart business decision and give MSPNetworks a call today at (516) 403-9001. 

There is so much technology to choose from for your business that it can be overwhelming to pick the right tools for your specific circumstances. There are communication tools, productivity solutions, and even mobile options that can enhance and enrich your clients’ and employees’ experiences with your company. As a business owner, you must do all that you can to keep the future in mind when implementing innovative new technology solutions to fit the needs of your organization.

Today’s blog is all about how these neat technologies can be utilized to build a better future for your business.

Hushme

Hushme looks like it might be a little intimidating, but it’s actually a very useful tool for businesses that depend on phone calls, yet don’t have much space. The device wraps around the user’s head and covers their mouth, kind of like a muzzle, and it has noise-canceling headphones attached to it. The user can talk into it and no one can hear a sound—very useful for preserving privacy in a busy environment.

Epson Paperlab

If your company uses a lot of paper or handles sensitive information, you might find that your shredder is a common destination for destroying documents. Epson has put together a machine that is an all-in-one paper recycler. A business can both destroy sensitive information and recycle it in-house, making for a convenient way to dispose of documents. It works by defiberizing the paper, removing all information and color, then reforms the fibers under pressure back into sheets of paper. The machine then cuts the paper to specification, and voila, you have recycled paper!

XGIMI Projectors

Some offices have a projector that they use to broadcast information, but thanks to a company called XGIMI, these projectors are more innovative and incredible than ever before. These devices can broadcast 4K video, all while fitting in the palm of your hand, and some even have theater-grade sound built into them.

XEBEC Tri-Screen 2

Many people prefer their laptop over the heavy-duty desktop, but there isn’t always room on the screen to get all of your work done. With XEBEC’s Tri-Screen 2, you can add a couple of additional screens to your laptop, which is super helpful for increasing the amount of work you can do. It’s a great way to make your laptop workspace just as productive as your desktop.

These technologies might vary in cost, but they may be worth the investment. What do you think? Would you use any of these solutions? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to subscribe to our blog.

Virtual reality has been one of the coolest technologies available for over a decade. Today’s applications make it an exciting piece of tech for individuals; and you’ve seen that market expand (especially during the pandemic) with Facebook, Sony, HTC, and HP coming to market with a VR offering. The question we wanted to look at is how VR could be used at a business like yours.

Virtual Reality Explained

For those of you who think that this technology is nothing better than a gimmick, you may be surprised to find out that not only is there serious application development happening in the VR space, some of that software may actually be of huge value to your business. Virtual reality is technology that allows an individual to simulate an interactive, three-dimensional virtual world and the use of those virtual worlds is slowly growing.

In 2018 the virtual reality market was a mere $829 million. As a result of growth, much being spurred on by the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, VR in business is projected to top $4.2 billion by 2023. That growth is due to the advancement of better hardware, better software, and more exposure to the technology. The software is notoriously difficult to develop so growth figures that look like that are impressive. 

Two Functions VR Can Bring to Your Business

On the surface, VR doesn’t seem to be the most practical technology. The price has dropped as to not be prohibitive for businesses who want to use it for the following two reasons:

Training

As a technology, virtual reality may be best suited for a training facility for businesses. By immersing employees into a lifelike environment you can better train them for situational awareness. Imagine not having to have business back up every time you had to train a new employee? With VR, employees can face complex situations, and learn how to best react when those situations come to fruition.

Retail

One way that virtual reality could grow to be an extremely important technology for business is in the retail sector where you can already see it moving online. VR development, then will have to be a line item on a retail store’s to-do list. With VR, customers can enjoy a shopping experience that is customized for them and they won’t have to worry about the crowds or the lack of product in stores. Even in brick and mortar stores, VR is being used to heat map traffic to coordinate where to put certain products. 

Engineering and Realty

With production costs higher than ever, one use-case for VR might be found for manufacturing and realty industries. Product designers can build products in VR for board members and buyers to sample and demo, before producing a physical product. Architects and interior designers can create virtual environments of living spaces, offices, convention centers, and more, and help convey their ideas and vision to their clients.

Virtual reality may not be the answer to all of your operational problems, but it is a fast-emerging technology that will be normalized before too long. What are your thoughts on virtual reality? Do you think it’s a gimmick or do you think there is room for it to be a positive force for your business down the road? Leave your thoughts in the comments below and check back soon for more great technology information.

With the ongoing fascination with cryptoassets that started with the cryptocurrency boom, the term “NFT'' has popped up again and again in the headlines. We wanted to help provide some clarity into what an NFT actually is, and why they have been such a big deal as of late.

Let’s begin with a hypothetical situation.

Let’s Say You Attended an Art Auction...

… and, as you were sitting in the bidder’s gallery, the original Nyan Cat GIF was put up for sale. You know, the cat with the toaster pastry body that travels the night sky propelled by a rainbow. You know, the image that can easily be obtained through a simple image search, by anybody, whenever they want.

Now, let’s say that Nyan Cat was ultimately sold for about $561,000 USD… because that’s precisely what happened.

NFTs Have Allowed for the Sale of Digital Assets

This sale, and countless others like it, have been made possible by use of NFTs (short for non-fungible token), which are a cryptoasset much like cryptocurrencies are. The big difference is that, while cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are fungible in that there is effectively no difference between Bitcoins, there are differences between NFTs… as their name would suggest.

Think of it this way: comparing Bitcoins (or other fungible tokens) is an apples-to-apples comparison. Comparing NFTs is more of an apples-to-ocean liners kind of situation.

Like cryptocurrencies, NFTs are powered by the blockchain, which means that each has its own record that effectively can’t be changed once it is created.

But What Is an NFT?

An NFT is effectively a seal of ownership, a token that stakes a claim to any digital asset. These tokens can be linked to anything digital—from images to articles to music to virtual real estate and beyond—to state that an individual owns that digital asset. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, sold his first tweet “just setting up my twttr" for almost three million dollars. 

NFTs can have different impacts, based on who you are in the transaction. For instance, a digital artist can set up a piece of their artwork with an NFT so they can more effectively sell their work (and potentially get a cut of all future transactions). Casual buyers get the bragging rights of owning an original work and some basic usage rights, while also supporting artists in the financial sense. Collectors can also buy NFTs on speculation, hoping that the value will rise so they can make a profit.

NFTs technically originated when the Ethereum blockchain added support for them, leading to the development of a game/online community called Cryptokitties. Basically, each Cryptokitty is its own NFT, and can be used with another kitty (and a payment to a miner) to breed another unique Cryptokitty. Similarly, another platform rose up that allowed participants to collect virtual rocks.

Are NFTs Going to Be “A Thing?”

Honestly, only time will tell at this point. While the technology is only peeking into the mainstream right now, there has been some support for NFTs exhibited. The band Kings of Leon’s latest (as of this writing) album was sold in the form of an NFT, with different tiers adding different bonuses. Groups of athletes have teamed up to provide fans with digital collections of memorabilia, and numerous brands (including Marvel, DC, and Star Trek) have taken to releasing digital statues of their popular characters.

However, it is also important to mention that NFTs contribute to the environmental stress that other power-hungry blockchain processes do, so this will need to be addressed before many will help to convert the NFT craze into a more sustainable marketplace.

In Short, Technology Can Be Really Confusing…

...and, while your business may not need to worry too much about digital art being sold for $69 million dollars, there’s plenty that you do need to concern yourself with. That’s where we can step in to help. Give us a call today at (516) 403-9001 to find out how we would, and can, help make your business’ technology a better investment than ownership of someone else’s tweet.

Artificial intelligence has always been an intriguing concept, from the works of Isaac Asimov to the initial work at Dartmouth College in the 1950s. Nowadays, many of the technologies that we rely on each day incorporate some version of artificial intelligence… and more progress is made each day. Of course, for all its benefits, artificial intelligence can also create some problems for businesses.

Let’s explore these advantages and disadvantages, shall we?

A Brief Definition of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is more or less what it sounds like. Rather than having a computer system that relies on human input and foresight, artificially intelligent systems are trained to recognize patterns and potential outcomes in data and are given the prerogative to act on the insights it gleans, improving its success record over time as it does so. If you’ve heard of machine learning or witnessed image recognition processes taking place, that’s AI at work. 

As you might imagine, the term “AI” covers a variety of technologies and has an equally wide variety of applications to business processes. This is primarily where AI shows its benefits.

Advantages of Business AI

Let’s review some of the primary advantages that AI can offer a business.

• Business Pattern Optimization - When you consider all the data that your business generates in even a day, the thought of analyzing this data to find patterns, opportunities, or inefficiencies to resolve is understandably daunting. AI can handle this analysis, delivering predictions that can help improve a pretty comprehensive list of business concerns, like maximizing revenue growths, condensing sales cycles, and generating improved returns-on-investment.
• Cost Reduction - Artificial intelligence lends itself to automation, which means that the cost and/or labor-intensive tasks that your team currently performs might be able to be completed automatically. Not only can this help reduce costs, it can help you generate revenues by freeing your team to work on other tasks. Speaking of which...
• Revenue Increases - In addition to allowing you to improve your processes in terms of your human resources, AI can help you identify new opportunities to bring in capital by gleaning additional insights from your collected data. Furthermore, AI can be used to optimize many external processes, helping make your marketing activities that much more effective.

Of course, there are a few drawbacks to AI that need to be addressed and mitigated. 

Disadvantages of Business AI

Let’s break down some of these drawbacks:

• Fear and Misunderstanding - We’re all too familiar with the reputation that AI has been given by pop culture. Heck, even Asimov wrote about the potential dangers that AI could present. It is either something to be feared or the deus ex machina that can solve any and all problems. Neither is the case. In reality, AI has definitive limits that prevent it from solving all of our problems or accomplishing world subjugation.
• The Data Required - Any automated system is only going to perform as well as the data it is referencing allows it to… and AI needs a lot of data before it can accomplish anything. On top of that, it needs to be the right data, organized properly. This alone can be a big hurdle for a business.
• How to Explain It - Some artificially intelligent systems don’t exactly give the user a full picture of how it came to its conclusions. While this might be fine if all goes as planned, it can create a real calamity when the system makes a mistake and there’s no way to figure out why.

So, Is AI a Good Tool for Businesses?

In a lot of ways, yes… so long as you understand its limits and put forth the effort needed to set it (and by extension, yourself) up for success.

MSPNetworks can help you manage the technology your business’ processes rely on, automating what we can (and properly) so that your team can accomplish as much as they can. Find out more by calling (516) 403-9001 today.

In today’s ever-connected world, many devices are capable of utilizing an Internet connection to share and access information, including some rather unorthodox ones. All of these devices contribute to the greater collective which is referred to as the Internet of Things. While this type of unprecedented connectivity can be a great boon for businesses, it also represents great risks for business owners who do not take it seriously.

In today’s blog, we will explore what the Internet of Things is, how businesses might utilize it, and what the security risks of leveraging it are.

What is the Internet of Things?

The Internet of Things generally refers to any device that is capable of connecting to the Internet, including those that have traditionally not been connected to the Internet in the past. These devices can communicate with one another in ways that were previously impossible, allowing them to perform tasks that would otherwise have to be facilitated by people. In a way, it makes for great innovations when implemented correctly, as it lets devices “talk” to each other.

Basically, any physical device can be transformed into an Internet of Things device through the use of communicative technology. Internet of Things devices can also be controlled through the Internet; think about logging into an app on your phone to control a thermostat or unlock your front door. Internet of Things devices can also be much larger, though, like heavy pieces of machinery with sensors that collect data on operations and transmit them to a central hub where they are monitored for effectiveness and quality control.

In other words, when it comes to the Internet of Things, the sky's the limit. You never know what is connected these days and what is not. In fact, it is predicted that the Internet of Things will consist of 41.6 billion devices by the time 2025 rolls around.

What Are Some Uses for the Internet of Things for Businesses?

Most businesses are using the Internet of Things to streamline operations, glean more information from their products, and reduce costs whenever possible. For some, the Internet of Things represents opportunities to reduce spending on utilities through the use of smart appliances and technology. For others, it means keeping a closer watch on the supply chain and production line. Some businesses are even using the Internet of Things to collect data on products that they produce. This data can then be used to see how consumers are using the products, what must be addressed for the future, and other things like that.

What Are the Security and Privacy Risks of the Internet of Things?

Due to the connected nature of these devices, one has to consider the security risks and privacy issues that could surface as a result of too many of them being on your network. If an employee were to bring an infected Internet of Things device onto your network, who’s to say what could happen? This is why you have to have a policy in place that takes a clear stance on Internet of Things devices, as every connected device brought onto your network is potentially another window into your organization’s network.

Don’t let the Internet of Things complicate your security practices even further. MSPNetworks can help you secure your organization’s network against the threats that Internet of Things devices pose through comprehensive security solutions and consistent monitoring services. To learn more about what we can do for your business, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.