Whether it’s the risk of a security breach or the possibility of hardware failure, every company has cyber risk that can affect their productivity or even their ability to continue running their business.
While there are no real shortcuts to proper cybersecurity and network management, there are a few simple ways to reduce your risks.
Here are 8 things you can do to reduce your cyber risk quickly: Read more
IT downtime in your business can be caused by so many things – hardware failure, power surges, security breaches, storms, coffee spills, just to name a few. But no one cares WHY they’re down when they count on being up and running!
So, what’s the quickest way to get your business running again? At IT Direct, we use the axiom “proper preparation prevents poor performance,” in other words, plan ahead!
Yup, not the answer you were hoping for, I’m sure, but it’s the best way to ensure that downtime doesn’t ruin your day, your week, or even, possibly, your business. Read more
Life Lessons
Yesterday I went to a conference that was designed for women entrepreneurs to learn from other women entrepreneurs. It was a terrific event, put on by the Greater Hartford SCORE organization, a volunteer-based national group in which retired executives use the knowledge and skills they gained throughout their careers to mentor small business owners on starting and developing their business.
The panel was filled with five incredible, successful women who enjoyed telling the stories of their businesses, their lives, and all the things they learned along the way. The themes that stood out are important, not only for entrepreneurs, but for all business leaders: Read more
A state of (IT) confusion
The CEO has a Dell laptop with Windows 10, the finance guy has a Lenovo desktop with Windows 8, and your office co-worker has a Macbook. Some folks use Dropbox, others use Sharepoint, and still others use Google Drive. Linda has McAfee, Jane has Norton, and Bob has ESET. Alex VPNs into the network, while Sue uses remote desktop.
Does it matter?
These scenarios are all too familiar and you may think, ‘does it matter? All those folks can work, they can all share files, have access to the network, and they all have antivirus protection’. That may be true…but what happens when you need to update, replace, find, learn how to use, or support something. That’s when you’ll be pulling out your hair!
Higher level thinking
Handling your business IT with inconsistent standards is not only costly in terms of time and money but could be potentially damaging to your data and intellectual property in the case of lax cybersecurity standards. Read more
In our previous two digital transformation blog posts we discussed the infrastructure you need before you can digitally transform your organization and we talked about how to change your approach to technology so that it becomes a strategic component of your business. In this blog post, we get to the crux of what digital transformation is all about…Intelligence
At the end of the day, Digital Transformation is all about gaining intelligence on your business that helps you to make better decisions, enabling you to engage and help your clients, empower your employees, optimize your operations, or transform your products. Read more
In a previous blog post, we talked about the role of IT strategy and how it has changed over time. We described how to move up from a Reactive break-fix model and through the IT Pyramid to increasingly use your IT to drive value in your business.
What happens with an incohesive strategy?
Recently, we discovered a case where part of the business was still in break-fix mode, while other parts of the business had moved into higher levels of IT efficacy. Read more
During a recent meeting with a prospective client, a CEO of a growing manufacturer in Connecticut, he described what he was looking for in technology in terms of efficacy.
Efficacy – the ability to produce a desired or intended result
I thought this was an interesting way to describe what he was looking for – efficacious technology. It leads to the question…what is your desired result? I think he chose this word, because this answer will be different for every single individual in an organization and is entirely dependent on their role. Yet, the request remains that technology be efficacious, or leading to results, for everyone. Read more
Technology is a key component of your business. Are you doing enough to make sure that this key component is helping your company be more productive and efficient and prepare for the future? Chances are, if you don’t have someone dedicated to regularly looking at your technology with one eye on business strategy and the other on the future, the answer is probably no. Below we outline what this role can look like and then we use two recent examples from our clients to show how this role works in action. Read more
IT Direct: A CompassMSP Company
