This year, many businesses had their 2020 IT budgets blindsided by the novel coronavirus. When the pandemic hit, business and IT leaders redirected and poured their IT dollars into digital transformation initiatives that created efficiencies and enabled the productivity of their remote workforces. As we look to 2021, lessons learned from 2020 coupled with a backdrop of economic instability will influence our technology spend in the coming year.

Has your company decided to transition a portion or all your employees to work-from-home long-term? What may have started as a temporary means to an end is working well, and you have decided to embrace this new way of doing business. What you need now is to ensure your remote employees can continue to get their work done as productively and securely as possible.

PORTLAND, Maine — September 2020 — Systems Engineering has recently been named one of the 2020 Best Places to Work in Maine. This marks the seventh consecutive year the company has been honored for its commitment to maintaining a high level of employee satisfaction. For the first time, the final ranking of winners will be released in the October 19th edition of MaineBiz.

On Friday, September 18, 2020, Homeland Security Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Department issued an Emergency Directive regarding the Windows Server Netlogon Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability This Windows server operating system vulnerability could allow a cyber attacker to gain access to your Domain Controller (authentication server). From there, the attacker can give themselves administrative privileges for your network, start to run malicious software, and exfiltrate sensitive data.

Office 2010 will reach end-of-support on October 13, 2020. After this date, Microsoft will no longer provide technical support, bug fixes, or security updates for Office 2010. You will be able to continue using this version of Office, but by upgrading before any product falls out of support your business minimizes risks, including reducing exposure to security threats, remaining in compliance, and continuing to receive the latest product updates and support.

Now more than ever your employees are working on personal devices. A recent Microsoft study reported that 67% of people use personal devices in the workplace. Tasks such as sending emails, reviewing documents, accessing applications, and other business productivity actions are performed on personal devices daily. Employees work on their own devices as a matter of convenience and, for the business, the productivity benefits are appealing. Be informed about the benefits and risks of this growing trend, and learn how you can manage and secure your sensitive company data.

As a business leader, keeping your sensitive company data secure is a top priority. As your organization adds more security controls, access to applications may have become more cumbersome. You and your staff are required to sign-in to multiple systems daily, each has its own set of credentials (usernames and passwords) and authentication methods. It's easy to lose track of credentials, and IT administrators are getting bogged down with password resets in addition to applying security policy enforcement within each of the various applications.

There comes a time in every business when the introduction of new technology is required. You know that the change is needed and will likely bring added productivity or cost saving with it. What you are trying to work out is WHEN this change could happen. You are aware that this could be a disruptive project for you and your staff and there never seems to be a good time. When thinking about implementing a new project, there are considerations every business leader needs to know. 

Has your small and medium-sized business (SMB) moved to the cloud, but not enabled Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)? This tool is a proven game-changer for data security in the fast-growing shift to remote work. So why do statistics show that enforcing MFA within organizations is very low? MFA is part of your cloud services and simply needs to be enabled and enforced to provide secure end-user access to your corporate data. Here is a look at some revealing statistics that show just how important enabling MFA has become to keep the cybercriminals out of your network.

The FBI recently released a private industry notification (PIN) warning businesses about the increase in end-of-life attacks. "The FBI has observed cybercriminals targeting computer network infrastructures after an operating system achieves end-of-life status," the bureau said.