Coleman Technologies Blog

What is Blockchain Technology?
In essence, a blockchain is a distributed ledger that builds a collection of records that is continually growing, all protected with encryption. By design, blockchains are meant to be resilient to edits and changes, making them quite reliable in terms of ensuring the integrity of these records. Each block (or node) of data has security measures to keep it from being changed, as well as timestamps for each record and information about the transaction. If a record needs to be altered, all subsequent records must also be altered, which requires the permission of the network majority.

How Is It Used?
Originally, blockchain was developed for cryptocurrency purposes, but the fact that it’s encrypted and resilient to changes makes blockchain ideal for other purposes. Public blockchains are used for cryptocurrency like Bitcoin to provide a distributed ledger, but it’s thought that private blockchain systems might be helpful for business purposes.

How Will It Be Used in the Future?
One of the most noteworthy ways that blockchain could be implemented in the future is the sharing of health records between various provider offices. Since it’s a distributed network, all doctors on someone’s medical plan would have access to the same unaltered data so they could provide the best service possible. Other opportunities for blockchain technology include a transparent ledger for public viewing, which has a wide range of uses for tracking payments for services rendered and other information.

Coleman Technologies can help your business check up on the latest technology solutions on the market, including ones that will help you improve operations or efficiency. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

What Makes a Good Backup Strategy?
It’s easy to underestimate just how valuable data is for a business, especially in today’s modern office environment. Protecting your data by any means necessary is critical to your continued success. The best way to do this is by using a comprehensive data backup solution that also has a disaster recovery component. While it might be tempting to back up all data on your network, it’s worth remembering that some data isn’t as valuable as other data. You’ll have to decide which data is worth more and design a strategy around making sure this is always available.

Resolutions for 2019
You should always strive for excellence in everything your business does, and data backup is one way your organization can improve itself for 2019. If you’re not sure how you can improve data backup and disaster recovery for your business, try following some of these guidelines:

• Implement a backup platform that lets you back up the data necessary to the operations of your business, minimizing downtime to keep costs low.
• Work with your IT administrator to plan your data backup solution based around specific factors like your recovery point objective and recovery time objective.
• Test your backups regularly to ensure that they work as intended. This means that any time you have to actually deploy a backup, you can know with certainty that they will work.

If you don’t have an IT administrator available who can help you with the process of implementing a data backup and disaster recovery solution, reach out to Coleman Technologies. Our professionals have seen their fair share of nasty situations that have led to the demise of unprepared business, like natural disasters, hacking attacks, and even user error; we don’t want it to happen to you as well.

We can help your business minimize downtime and expedite the restoration process with a data backup and disaster recovery solution from Coleman Technologies. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Innovation
Before we tell you how innovation may hurt your business, we’ll talk a little bit about how it is absolutely essential. Business is, for most companies, a very human endeavor. Humans that do the same thing day-in and day-out, don’t take all that long to get proficient at it. This proficiency, if not tested can soon turn into complacency, but if it is tested too much, it can turn into productivity-sapping frustration. Innovation is the process of renewal. Taking something that has worked, and making it work even better.

A constant need for renewal fuels the technology industry. Take, for example, a legacy computing system. A business can still utilize it because it knows what to expect. It’s been using the applications and the software for quite a while. Since it creates no new problems, and the management of it is routine, it works for your business, until it begins to cause other problems.

How could it be then, that this kind of unquestionable efficiency is actually hurting your business?

Well, the answer is pretty standard. With solutions available that take less capital to maintain, are available on newer technologies, and enhance your workers’ ability to be collaborative/productive, the expectation would be that embracing new technology systems will actually cost the business less than maintaining and supporting a legacy system. The legacy system will eventually be untenable because it will be so expensive to maintain, or, it will lose effectiveness. Either reason suggests innovation is an inevitability.

Innovation Betrayal
We’ve already established how serious business owners (and other decisions makers) need to be innovative in their procurement and deployment of business-class solutions to get more out of their business investments. What happens when the innovations they choose do the opposite? What if everything they’ve been told by industry leaders, by mentors, and by their vendors turned out to be completely ineffective?

What if by innovating some of their IT, waste and inefficiency spiked? What if the end result of a dedication to accepting new hardware and other solutions is that capital, that could be spent elsewhere (or, to maintain systems that worked properly for some time), is completely wasted? How can you justify taking capital from a functioning system and leaving your staff with a shiny, new system that doesn’t deliver the same effective computing platform (or operational effectiveness) that their old system did?

We all know that supporting a legacy computing platform is not just costly, it is risky. With the thousands of threats out there just looking to feast on unprotected, network-attached systems, upgrading to more secure systems that don’t need as much diligent oversight should likely be a priority of every business.

How do you make these two concepts play nice? One way is to virtualize. In the past, legacy applications were a major problem for IT administrators, but nowadays, there are solutions that make legacy application virtualization not only possible, but efficient. That way, you’ll be able to maintain the use of your legacy applications, but host them on a public or private cloud platform. This presents any organization with several benefits that include:

• Better for continuity
• Cost reduction
• Improved security
• Easier software licensing
• Boosts in accessibility

It may seem ironic that, by using some of today’s most dynamic technologies, you won’t have to move off of your old software systems, but that is the case. To virtualize your data, your applications, and any other part of your business’ computing systems the IT professionals at Coleman Technologies can help. Our technicians can provide you with the information and resources you need to successfully move your locally-hosted applications to the cloud, whether you choose to host that locally or not.

Customer Relationships
Another way that businesses have improved the way they do business through innovation is by overhauling the way that they handle their customer relationships. If your business has found success by pressing the flesh and getting out and having face-to-face relationships with customers and prospects, you shouldn’t change that now. However, today there are solutions that can make those face-to-face relationships more valuable.

By integrating technology solutions designed to help you better manage your customer relationships, you can subsidize those face-to-face relationships with automated correspondence and other services designed to promote enhancement to your organization’s sales and support. One solution is called Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

A CRM integrates all facets of your business together with one piece of software, not only improving customer relations, but also streamlining processes for sales, productivity, and support. By having all the information your team needs in one simple-to-use solution, they can produce more, provide better support, and collaborate better than ever before.

Another technology that is working to improve customer relationships is social media. There are dozens of different social media sites for a business to consider, but depending on the industry your business services, you may be able to get away with minimizing your social media presence and still have it work to enhance your relationships with customers and prospects. The major social networks like Facebook and Twitter can be of great benefit for businesses to promote their brand and interact with customers.

At Coleman Technologies, we help businesses just like yours do more with the use of technology. Our managed IT services work to proactively manage your business’ IT to ensure that you are experiencing the technology in the way it is designed to be experienced; and, that your company gets the most out of it. For more information about how Coleman Technologies can help you improve your business, call us today at (604) 513-9428.

Why Use a VPN?
The best way to understand what a virtual private network does, is to have a little background knowledge of why it’s necessary to have one. The easiest way to understand it is to think about accessing your business’ data as a two-lane road. On one side of the road is the traffic moving from your business’ infrastructure toward your device, and on the other side is data moving from your device to your business’ infrastructure. Anyone with the right tools can see the data as it’s being transported from one location to the next, and if the data isn’t protected by the right solutions, it can be stolen while it’s in transit. A VPN makes it much more difficult for hackers to accomplish this feat.

Understanding a VPN
Your average connection should be encrypted to protect the integrity of any data stored on it, and a virtual private network helps by augmenting this practice while out of the office. To aid in protecting your organization’s network connectivity, a virtual private network can encrypt your connection to sensitive data while on a different connection, such as if you’re working from a remote location, or just simply not in the office at the moment. When the data is encrypted, hackers have a harder time stealing the information that’s being sent to and by your devices while out of the office.

To be fair, it’s not that hackers can’t steal the data being sent to or by your devices while using a virtual private network; it’s that the data that hackers do steal is much less useful to them overall. The reason for this is the encryption. If the hacker can’t crack the encryption of the files, the can’t read the data, and, then the data they have just stolen is completely useless to them. Modern encryption methods are virtually impossible to decrypt (at least, the average hacker will spend more time than it’s worth to decrypt the data, making the process far less appealing than it normally would be).

Coleman Technologies can help your business set up the perfect virtual private network for all of its specific needs. Whether you’re out of the office momentarily or for a lengthy amount of time, or if you have remote workers in all corners of the globe, the right virtual private network can keep your data as secure as can be while it’s moving from one location to the next. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Why Use a VPN?
A virtual private network works by protecting your network from prying eyes while data is in transit. While you’re out of the office and connected to a network, any data that moves between your device and your internal infrastructure is susceptible to being intercepted. Any villain with the right tools could snatch your data while it’s moving from one location to the next. A VPN makes this task more difficult for the hacker, if not outright impossible.

Understanding a VPN
Any network should be encrypted to keep the data stored on it safe, and a virtual private network takes this one step further by implementing an encrypted connection while out of the office or on a different network. This is particularly helpful if you don’t trust the integrity of the web connection you are currently using (and you shouldn’t--hotels, coffee shops, and other public places attract all sorts of folks). If data sent to and from a device is encrypted, hackers have a harder time making heads or tails of the data or its purpose, thereby removing the incentive to actually steal it.

To be fair, a VPN doesn’t necessarily make it harder for data to be stolen--rather, it makes it harder to be read, analyzed, or interpreted. It transforms the data into a jumbled mess that can only be decrypted by someone who has the encryption key. This makes the data stolen significantly less valuable, as hackers can’t really do anything with encrypted data. At the absolute worst, the hacker will spend an insane amount of time trying to crack the encryption, and it’s entirely likely that they will simply give up or see it as not worth the effort.

If your business wants to maximize security for remote workers or traveling, a virtual private network is a necessity. Coleman Technologies can help you implement the best one for your budget. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.