2018 – New Year Resolutions, Plans and Observations

What’s the difference between small businesses and global enterprises?  From an I.T. problem perspective, nothing.  From an I.T. budget perspective, everything.

As an I.T. provider to small businesses, one of our primary goals is to bring enterprise solutions and best practices to our customers so they can focus on their core competency.

How and why are we able to do this?   We have the same challenges.  As this editorial article with a global consulting firm from the Dallas Morning News points out, executives at global companies face the same problems as small business owners with respect to I.T.

If you review our last two blogs from 2017, you find the same topics addressed in the Dallas Morning News article – cybersecurity, phishing and STEM.  Our customers are facing the same concerns and we are providing solutions to meet their needs.

With 2018 upon us, review your I.T. plan for the year. Diligent planning allows you to budget. The cybersecurity battle is raging and having a well thought out I.T. plan will put your business on a safer road to success for the next 12 months.

Here are five tips for productive I.T. planning, developed from our combined years of experience delivering cost-effective, high quality I.T. support.

1. Email Security – In 2017, cyber attacks happened at double the rate they occurred in 2016. With hackers actively pursuing holes in email applications, Phishing lures and Spam are sure to happen. It’s not a matter of if, but simply when. Make sure your business has a well thought out, layered defense in place and procedures to handle security threats ahead of time.
2. DNS filtering – Domain Naming System.  A DNS Filtering system is intended to block domains associated with botnets, phishing attacks, and other malicious Internet hosts—primarily targeted at organizations that don’t run their own DNS blacklisting and whitelisting services.
3. Back-ups – In this enlightened age, we know exercise is important and eating healthy can prevent disease. You should never text and drive, and you MUST BACK UP YOUR SYSTEMS! This is the first commandment of competent I.T. professionals.  Thou shalt backup thy data.  Make sure you have a back-up strategy and disaster recovery plan in case the unthinkable happens – which it usually does.
4. Updates – Habitually update your software and hardware before the current patches.
5. Health check your systems.  Contact us for network and security assessments to ensure your systems are up to date and identify areas for improvement.

Take comfort in the fact you don’t have to “re-invent the wheel”.  Enterprise companies are addressing the same problems your company is facing now.  The only differences are the scale of the problem and the number of commas in the budget they invest in a solution.

We do this all day every day.  So, if you haven’t given any thought to your I.T. plans for 2018, reach out and we will help protect your bus