Blogs on IT Support and Cybersecurity for Small Business

Managing a mix of office servers and cloud services today means you have to stop thinking about the physical pieces of hardware and start thinking about your people. The goal is to get the most out of the technology you already paid for while making sure your team can work from anywhere. When you combine private servers with public cloud services, you are building a network that needs to feel easy for your employees to use while staying locked down tight against an ever-growing series of threats.

For many, the introduction of remote or hybrid work practices was less of a choice and more of an existential need. Now, years after certain events caused this existential need, there are still pockets of friction that appear and make these approaches to work far more challenging than they can and should be.

Let’s explore a few of these pockets of friction and even more crucially, how to smooth them over.

Let me ask you something… Do you know just how much IT downtime costs? For SMBs, it’s typically between $427 to over EIGHT GRAND an hour. Imagine your whole workforce just chillin' because the Internet's down, meanwhile deadlines are getting missed, customers are getting ticked off, and opportunities are disappearing. That's a nightmare, man. 

This is why you need to do what you need to do to keep your business up and running.

Summer is here, and with it comes the rest and relaxation that warm weather encourages. That said, summer is not a time to let up on your cybersecurity awareness. Today, we’ll share how you can both enjoy the summer season without putting your security at risk in the process.

Many of today’s businesses span continents. That’s not an exaggeration. With faster Internet speeds fueling remote workforces, some businesses choose to strategically use workers from all over the globe to create and sell their products or services. In today’s blog, we’ll discuss some of the adjustments and alterations that you need to make when relying on truly remote teams.

IT support is essential for businesses, but traditional on-site support can be expensive and inefficient.

Thankfully, remote IT support, such as that offered through managed services, is now available. This is a game-changer for small to medium-sized businesses. Let's explore the benefits of remote IT support.

Many business owners considered allowing their employees to work from home like opening Pandora’s box; once opened, there was no going back. Unfortunately, for these administrators, they were faced with the very real prospect of losing their business if they didn’t allow it. Millions of people started working from home in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but now that public fear has diminished, how have companies reacted? Let’s discuss some remote work statistics to get an answer.

Mindset is important regardless of what someone is doing, but it plays an especially important part in the workplace. This only becomes more true when that workplace is distributed, and work is actually done in the worker’s home.

Let’s go into the kind of perspective you want to encourage in your team as they utilize remote work.

The workplace has undergone a dramatic shift over the past several years in favor of remote work, due in no small part to worldwide circumstances. In fact, many workers who would prefer to work in-office found themselves unable to, pushing the button on the topic of remote work even more. While there are some outspoken companies that want to see the return of in-office work, experts in the industry seem to be of the opposite opinion.

One of the biggest arguments for remote work is that it poses environmental benefits, but how much truth is there to this statement? Today, we want to dive into the details and see if there is actually a solid benefit to working remotely—for the environment, at least. The answer might surprise you.

Remote work has seen unprecedented adoption in the past few years. While we’re all for the benefits that this trend brings, it is critical that any business that embraces remote or hybrid work does so securely.

Let’s discuss a few measures that your business can and should implement to achieve this security.

Hot desking—the workplace organization method wherein there are no assigned workstations—has an assortment of pros and cons to it, but many companies are finding the more fiscal benefits to be worth the trade-offs. Let’s explore some of the pros and cons of hot desking, and go over a few tips and strategies that will help if you choose to implement it. 

Love it or hate it, remote work is here to stay—particularly now that many people have experienced it for themselves and have no intention of giving it up. However, many employers are going to want their employees back in the office to some degree. How can a balance be struck between these two sides? We posit that a hybrid work environment will play a role.

Defining VPN

The virtual private network is a tool designed specifically to protect data as it is transferred over the Internet. The best way to describe it is as an encrypted tunnel that protects the interception of data that is being sent from one place to another. 

It’s true that there are a lot of businesses that rely on their workforce to show up every day. Many of these businesses were forced to shut down or operate at limited capacity during the pandemic but are just now getting up to speed. Outside of operations, there are a lot of administrative uses of technology, some of which involve protecting employee and customer information. Let’s get into some of the strategies that businesses can use to get the most out of their workforce at this time. 

Let’s go over a few solutions that can assist your business’ continuity in these testing times.

The Fear of Infection

The primary concern that comes from this specific variety of disaster is generally one of widespread infection, which makes it an uncomfortable prospect for people to congregate anywhere. This is especially true of the workplace, where papers and files were traditionally distributed (and redistributed) as work was done.

Naturally, this is the perfect storm for any illness to spread: materials being passed around, with many people together in a relatively enclosed space. With COVID-19, this is especially problematic, as the CDC believes that it is spread through respiratory droplets and close proximity to others. As a result, it is better to avoid this situation… but how could your business possibly cope with its entire staff being absent, due to either illness or preventative “social distancing?”

Fortunately, the technology exists today that allows you to see the best of both worlds.

Securely and Safely Working Remotely

Many common technologies today can be used to enable your employees to do the same tasks they would do in the office from the relative comfort and security of their own home. Let’s go through some of these technologies and applications and review why they are valuable to a remote work policy.

• Mobile devices - If your employees are going to work productively from home, they’re going to need access to the proper tools to do it. Supply your staff with laptops or thin clients that permit them to bring their tools out of the office if need be.
• VPN (Virtual Private Networking) - Of course, once your technology has been taken out of the security of the office, the data that it accesses can be put at risk. Utilizing a virtual private network can help decrease that risk greatly by shielding the data that is in transit.
• Cloud solutions - Of course, in order to effectively work remotely, your data and applications need to be accessible to your team as they need them. Hosting these resources in the cloud enables your team to access them from wherever an Internet connection can be established on many different types of devices.
• VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) - Communication is absolutely critical to business productivity, especially when it comes to remote resources. Without communication, you can’t expect to accomplish much at all. Certain solutions, like VoIP, allow you and your team, to maintain this communication--again, from wherever an Internet connection can be maintained.

While productivity is crucial to your business’ success, so is the well-being of your employees. Giving them the option to work remotely can help attend to both needs. For assistance with implementing the needed solutions, reach out to Coleman Technologies at (604) 513-9428.