Cybercrime is on the rise. Ransomware, phishing attacks, socially engineered emails, open wifi hacking, and so much more. They all target the most susceptible part of your security – your employees!
How can you prepare your employees to be the first line of defense for your organization and themselves? Top-quality employee training!
We all know that using the right technology can improve your productivity and efficiency, but did you know that it could also save you money and provide your clients with a better service? That’s exactly what happened thanks to a recent technology upgrade put in place by one of our clients, a Long-Term Care facility!
This long-term care facility, like most businesses these days, is dependent on strong Wi-Fi infrastructure. However, care facilities have the additional requirement of providing Wi-Fi for their residents and their visitors as well, not just for their own business needs! Read more
Last month, I got to tour another one of our manufacturing client’s facilities, Jaypro Sports, in Waterford, CT. They are a leading authority for institutional sport equipment and athletic field/facility solutions. This was a great opportunity to see what they do and how they do it!
At IT Direct, we believe that the overarching purpose of using technology is to solve a business problem or to improve efficiency or productivity. In this way, technology can help the business achieve their goals. During my tour, I got to see several areas where technology had really come together to help Jaypro Sports achieve those goals! Read more
I’ve been heading out “into the field” lately to talk to some of our manufacturing clients about what they feel are their most important uses of technology. Read more
We are focused on our mission of helping our clients gain a competitive edge from their technology. This year we are looking closely at 3 key areas that are critical to supporting your success. Take a look at this quick video:
It seems that no one wants to talk about it, or acknowledge its existence, but the elephant in the room is the continuing and constant growth of ransomware (malicious software designed to deny access to a computer system or data until a ransom is paid).
One of our partner companies, Datto, produces a fantastic yearly report on the global state of ransomware as reported by over 2400 managed service providers (MSPs) around the world. The report is filed with excellent information in a very readable format. You can download the whole thing here.
If you don’t want to tax yourself with the whole report, below are some of the key points and main takeaways that are important to you and your business: Read more
In our last blog post, we gave an overview of NIST compliance and why it is so important. In this blog post, we provide you with a quick, very high-level breakdown of the NIST 800-171 Requirement Families.
Each family falls under one of the three main functions of cybersecurity: protect, detect, or recover.
There are 14 families of requirements in NIST 800-171. In the NIST Special Publication document, the families are presented in alphabetic order, but it may make a little more sense to divide them into their security function. So, that’s what we’ve done below: Read more
When does adding two things together equal more than the sum of their parts? When you can take a few pieces of information, put it together, and come to a conclusion that saves you tons of time or resources! This is one of our very favorite things to do for our clients!
How do we do it?
Sometimes multiple helpdesk calls come in and they seem unrelated and may even be assigned to different techs to solve. They may even be quick issues, like difficulty updating a password, or a pop-up that keeps occurring from time to time for low disk space on a user’s computer. To an outside eye, these issues may seem coincidental or completely unrelated. But, our POD teams get to know our clients so well that they pick up on these seemingly unrelated events and can make changes that save everyone time and energy.
Putting it together
One client’s 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
IT Direct: A CompassMSP Company
