You may hear a lot about business continuity plans and may even hear them incorrectly referred to as disaster recovery plans. So, what is a business continuity plan? A business continuity plan is a total blueprint for how a business or organization ensures that its output–products or services–will continue to be provided with as little …
Before you can begin making any specific plans to handle a major event which threatens your firm’s capacity to do business, an analysis of the threats and hazards in the environment needs to be put together. This first step is known as a risk assessment. It details the hazards that have the potential to damage …
Risk Assessment: The first step in disaster planning Read More »
You have heard of a business continuity plan, but you may hear less frequently about one of its important components: the business impact analysis. A business impact analysis is the step where you make an inventory of the what business functions or assets would be impacted by any major negative events that could strike your …
It just keeps showing up in the news. Ransomware seems to just not come to an end. If you haven’t heard, ransomware is a particularly nasty virus that freezes access to your data and then demands a ransom, usually in bitcoin. The worst thing about it is that once you are hit, there is almost …
This cyberattack scheme hasn’t garnered nearly as much attention as the usual “break-in-and-steal-data-to-sell-on-the-Internet version,” but it can be even more debilitating. Ransomware attacks have begun appearing in the last few years and its practitioners are so polished that in few cases they even have minicall centers to handle your payments and questions. So what is …
What is Ransomware and How Can it Affect Your Business? Read More »
Think about many of the software applications you use to run your organization. There may be dozens of them, which you have acquired from 3rd party vendors; the simplest example would be a word processing package, such as Microsoft Word. You don’t sit around thinking about how to design the optimal package. You rely on …
It is easy to perceive IT as a discrete area of operational support, and forget that “IT” ecompasses an exceptionally broad range of areas. Many specific areas of IT have little to do with one another. It is easy to think that a highly trained IT member is knowledgeable about most areas. That isn’t a …
IT is a pretty broad ranging field: can you really handle it all? Read More »
So, why is your firm in business? You have a mission statement, value proposition for each one of your products or services, and strategic plans to drive future growth. This requires people skilled and knowledgeable in the core areas that define what your business is all about. Everything revolves around your core competencies. Core competencies …
What is your approach to outside IT support? Do you take the “we’ll do what we can ourselves, and bring in outside help only when we can’t handle something?” Does management view external IT support services as a kind of “on-off” service? Too often, business executives view Managed Service Providers (MSPs) as purveyors of specific, …
Why viewing a MSP as just a “fix it” service makes bad business sense Read More »
We discussed in our last blog how unified communications can hoster greater collaboration and workplace functionality, but today we’ll look its value to the “back of the house” and external customers. Unified communications offers opportunities for operational improvements and cost savings, as well as opening up new pathways to create greater customer satisfaction. Move many …
Unified Communications can save money and improve customer satisfaction Read More »