"PHISHING ATTACKS PREVALENT AMONG SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED BUSINESSES"

Does this common headline make you wonder if you have taken the right steps to protect your small and medium-sized business (SMB)?  Let's assume you have a robust firewall, up-to-date antivirus, and a current patching program. Your remote employees are working from a private VPN, ensuring secure network access. You've created a password policy requiring complex passwords that must be changed frequently. And recently, you've implemented multi-factor authentication (MFA), adding extra security against compromised credentials. If this describes your network, then you are on the right track, but have you considered the human element?

UPDATED MAY 2020

Most businesses have some form of a wireless network (WiFi) in place, but is it really necessary to set up a separate guest wireless access? There are a few good reasons why this is an important step to take. We know having WiFi is imperative for employees who move throughout the office, but it also makes sense to offer wireless access to your guests, customers, vendors, and auditors. The question is how to do it safely?

Oftentimes, IT-focused individuals, including those of us at Systems Engineering, will make the mistake of assuming all end users have an idea of how technology works. How your organizations' networks operate is an example of this. So, let's start from the beginning.

If you haven’t heard the term “SD-WAN” (software-defined wide area network) by now, you’re either awakening from a two-year coma, or you haven’t been paying close attention to the onslaught of demonstrative offers, vendor emails, and introductory phone calls likely thrown in your direction.

The topic of SD-WAN has become the moniker for “building your company’s next WAN design." Needless to say, the term is out there as a hot topic, information is readily available, and most people feel that SD-WAN will be a positive disruption over the next three to five years. Due to the fact that clients want to build a better WAN experience with the benefit of lower costs, this makes perfect sense. Let's explore. 

Have you ever been responsible for moving your organization from one office space to another? If so, you know the burden of everything that needs to be thought of; from decor, to furniture, to kitchen space and, most importantly, technology. After all, technology is what keeps the business running, whether it's corresponding with your clients, maintaining your core business applications, or just ensuring monitors turn on the first morning after the big move.

Microsoft has once again added Systems Engineering (SE) to the FY17 Small Business (SMB) Managed Partner List (MPL). According to Microsoft, SE has demonstrated a continued focus on cloud solutions and modernizing today's SMB business environments. 

Without contest, Microsoft Outlook has been the cornerstone of my professional development. It was not always that way; before breaking into the world of IT, I used Outlook indifferently within various jobs. I read and replied to internal company emails without much thought about what it could do for me beyond that.

The world of hyperconvergence is relatively new, bringing forth a new approach to technology that should not be ignored. As Information Technology (IT) is ever-changing and continuously becoming more streamlined and sophisticated, it's important for businesses to stay "in the know" on the latest and greatest and to understand if it's the right 'next step' to take. To fully meet the needs of the ever-evolving and more tech-savvy clients businesses serve, it's a 'must' to have what IT takes to keep them satisfied. So, what is hyperconvergence and what does IT do?

Although data breaches are common enough to show up in news headlines on a weekly, sometimes daily basis, it's something none of us want our businesses to experience. In fact, an organization's IT staff is regularly putting practices and securities in place to try and prevent network compromises from occurring. However, it's not only employees who make mistakes that compromise network security. Listed below are five risks and their matching solutions to keep networks healthy and cybercriminals at bay. 

We all receive information and education about what not to click on in terms of attachments, suspicious files, messages, and website advertisements. With today's sophisticated social engineering attacks, it's difficult to discern what's trustworthy versus what is not. Here's a first-person account of what can happen when you do click on an electronic "something" that is ill-intentioned.