When calling in for IT help desk support, there are some days you may be faced with waiting on hold. Instead of holding, what if you could use that time to be productive?  At Systems Engineering, we recognize your time is valuable. Our latest enhancement offers you the choice to save your place in line, giving you some time back in your day. This provides you with  flexibility when calling help desk during peak times.

In 2020, many organizations pivoted their business models due to the pandemic. If you're one of these companies, you may have developed new processes and procedures that allowed you to safely continue operations and maintain high levels of customer service. Now that the dust has begun to settle, it is an excellent opportunity to evaluate or reevaluate any new cybersecurity risks that could have been created by these changes. In this article, we offer practical guidance on how to classify and measure your cybersecurity risks for effective cybersecurity risk management.

At Systems Engineering, employees are our number one resource.  Our success depends on our dedicated and skilled staff who share our values and contribute to our vision.  The Systems Engineering Spotlight gives a brief but revealing look at one of our valuable members.

Educational institutions are heavily dependent upon technology to support today’s digital learning environments.  At a minimum, schools need high speed internet access, telecommunications services, and internal connections in order for faculty and students to access the digital resources they need. In addition, your teachers and students need a secure learning environment in which to teach and learn. When resources and budgets are constrained, E-rate, a technology federal funding program, can help schools obtain the technologies necessary to facilitate an effective and modern educational environment.

Have you ever questioned how you can measure the quality of a managed service provider (MSP), and their stance on IT security?  Do they put security first within their own organization?  The good news is a reputable MSP can answer this question by producing an impartial 3rd party SOC 2 Report. This audit is a voluntary annual review, and how the results can be an invaluable piece of information for leveling up trust within an MSP.

It seems we can’t go more than 24 hours without hearing about the latest and greatest data breach affecting millions. These headlines are worrisome and has lead to many sleepless nights for business leaders at small and medium-sized businesses. 

One of the most important documents your organization can create is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP). This plan is a comprehensive review of how your organization will continue to operate when responding to unplanned disasters that impact business processes, applications, and IT infrastructure. We are all familiar with the burdens that the COVID-19 pandemic placed on businesses throughout the world. Companies that had a BCP in place were much more prepared for a remote work strategy than those without. The level of response this pandemic required highlighted the importance of business continuity planning and raised some unforeseeable questions that all companies should now ask themselves.

Every year, business leaders sit down to create annual IT budgets to define how much their organization will spend on technology in the coming year. As technology now permeates almost all aspects of our businesses, your IT budget should be approached strategically to allocate and spend IT dollars on investments that drive the most business value.

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.

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.