What’s the story? How our manufacturing clients use technology – Part 1
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
Posts
Downtime got you down? Here are 5 steps to stay up and running!
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
NIST 800-171 requirements – in layman’s terms
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.
- Protect – Protect your systems from harm or intrusion to the highest level possible
- Detect – Detect when a breach is in progress or has occurred, from either inside or outside your organization
- Recover – Ensure you have the systems and procedures in place to recover from an incident as efficiently and effectively as possible, while following all legal requirements
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
What manufacturers need to know about NIST compliance
The President of IT Direct, Ari Santiago, recently gave an hour-long webinar on NIST compliance. He provided a quick, but very thorough overview of what NIST 800-171 is, why it’s important, and the 14 families of the framework.
If you’d like to listen to the entire webinar, you can find it here on YouTube.
In today’s blog post, we’re going to give an overview of that overview – a 60,000 ft view, if you will! Read more
NIST compliance: it’s just good cybersecurity practice
We all know that cybersecurity risks are not going away. The truth is, they’re only getting worse. Cyber-criminality is an industry, with a lot of money to be made. And as we’ve seen from the news about security breaches lately, they’ll take just about anything they can get their hands on!
The government has a plan!
Hmm…that sounds a little scarier than it is and not completely accurate. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a government agency responsible for maintaining cybersecurity standards for all government agencies. As you may know, they have created a set of standards for non-governmental organizations that handle Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), NIST 800-171. They’ve created the standards, now you have to create the plan.
