Directive Blogs

Your business’ data is one of its most important assets. Today, there are ways to utilize data to help build a better business. Let’s take a look at the data services that are designed to help the modern business get the most out of this resource. 

We hear a lot about the benefits of moving your business to the cloud. It can reduce that big expense on new infrastructure and the ongoing management costs. The cloud can increase the effectiveness of your IT budget. It can add functionality and increase user satisfaction. 

Businesses are rapidly moving all or portions of their IT to the cloud, and for a lot of good reasons, but before you do, it is important to remember the following:

As digital systems have been adopted by more businesses, data has become a bigger tool. This is due to businesses having the initiative to direct this data into creating strategy. Today, data services are a desirable component for a business to embrace. Let’s take a closer look at how businesses are expanding their use of their data.

Data management is exceptionally important for any business, and companies that use the cloud in any sort of capacity need to be considerably more cautious in the way that it’s managed than a business that only hosts data on an internal server or network. The cloud makes things more complicated at times, but if managed correctly, it can lead to unprecedented efficiency for your organization.

It’s time to face the fact that those times when your technology acts up, you don’t have the time to spare waiting around for the issue to just go away...you need to react. Many small businesses just don’t have the means to maintain an in-house IT resource to solve their problems. What if we can offer you a different solution.

Putting together your workforce is something that requires painstaking attention to detail. You found workers who are willing to work as hard as possible to further your organization’s goals. Yet, you have to remember that even the most perfect employees are still human, and that they can make mistakes and can put the organization’s data at risk. User error is a common problem, and it is one of the most important things to keep in mind while you set up your information systems.

A surprising number of security issues come from inside your organization. User error on the part of the employee can present major problems for your workflow, data security, and the integrity of your business. User error could be something as simple as an employee clicking on the wrong links when they receive a suspicious email in their inbox, or if they are accessing data that they simply have no business accessing in the first place. Sometimes businesses will even completely forget to remove employee credentials when they leave a project or the company creating a breachable hole in your network. Regardless of the reason, user error can be a detrimental occurrence, and one which must be prepared for.

You might be surprised by how many of your organization’s security issues originate from within. A major contributor is user error, which can lead to some pretty severe problems reaching from your data security, to your workflow, all the way to the continuation of your business itself.

Your business relies on its data to succeed, which lends itself to the fact that your organization needs to have some sort of security measures put into place to guarantee its safety. 2018 is thought to be the year of ransomware, so it stands to reason that your business should prepare to deal with it. One of the best ways to deal with ransomware is to make sure that your company has a plan to restore data affected by said ransomware.

When you delete a file off your PC, or your hard drive becomes corrupted, you just take for granted that the data is gone in perpetuity. That isn’t the case at all, and it can present problems for businesses and individuals alike. The thing is that it’s deleted, it’s gone, it ceases to exist, because you deleted it with your own hands.

A network is arguably one of the most important assets that your business has. It keeps your team connected to crucial information and mission-critical applications. This is perhaps why it’s so irritating when your network acts up. You should be on the lookout for even the slightest problem with your network, as even a small change could be a sign of bad things yet to come.

We talk about a lot of frightening technology scenarios for businesses; data loss, identity theft, and expensive hardware failures that can inflict substantial downtime and, therefore, cripple the ability of your business to sustain operations. One industry that has changed the way they manage risk, specifically the potential failure of important security systems, is the nuclear power industry. Any business can learn how to mitigate disaster by looking into the specifics of the two most horrendous nuclear meltdowns in history, the meltdown at Chernobyl in 1986, and the tsunami-induced disaster at Fukushima in 2011.

You’ve heard about a ton of high-profile hacks over the past few years, and it’s important to note that these numbers will only continue to climb. A recent incident involving Time Warner Cable, a large ISP in the United States, shows the world that even huge companies that specialize in providing Internet for users can suffer the embarrassment of a data breach.

With so many businesses switching to the cloud for their data storage needs, it’s assumed that their data will be safe and sound. However, this is only somewhat true. While it’s true that the cloud is a secure and effective way to store your data, the virtual cloud is still vulnerable to freak accidents. Take, for example, the time when Google was struck by lightning last month… four times.

If you don’t already have a backup solution put in place, no time is better than the present to consider what it would cost your business if you were to lose everything in one fell swoop. There are plenty of ways you can back up your data, but the reality of the situation is that if you were to lose your business’s information, you wouldn’t be able to continue operations. It would put the entire future of your company in jeopardy, so you need to be absolutely certain that your backup and disaster recovery solution is fool-proof.

One of the most vital parts of your network security is a firewall. This is generally your first line of defense against the myriad of threats that can be found while online, and are instrumental to comprehensive network security. Despite this common knowledge, some folks might not understand specifically what a firewall does to keep your systems safe.

With more businesses moving toward Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) than ever before, the workforce grows more mobile by the day. These workers generally need a network connection in order to access important data and applications that are crucial to their day-to-day responsibilities. One way to do this is to use your service provider’s mobile data plan, but this can be both expensive and draining when used excessively.