Directive Blogs

Nobody enjoys getting spam in their email inbox. It's annoying, it can take up precious time to sift through, and did we mention that it's annoying? Every email user is familiar with spam, but not everyone may know how spam got its infamous name. The answer may surprise you and make you chuckle.

Sherlock Holmes is one of the most famous detectives in fiction, but without his dear Dr. Watson, he would have been stumped on occasion. There’s a good reason why IBM named its super-intelligent computer, Watson, after the famous character. True to its namesake, Watson is now being used to safeguard 40 organizations from cyber security threats.

Every time you pick up a personal computer from a vendor, chances are that it will have an extremely basic firewall pre-installed. These consumer-grade firewalls leave much to be desired, especially in the business environment. You’ll want to make sure that your organization is equipped with enterprise-level solutions designed to protect on both a fundamental level and an advanced level. To do this, you want to take advantage of a Unified Threat Management solution.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business, a large enterprise, or if you're in a rural town, or a larger city. You still have to worry about the security of your data and the integrity of your infrastructure. Thankfully, there are services out there that allow even small businesses to leverage powerful, enterprise-level tools for maximum network security. The most valuable of all is perhaps the Unified Threat Management (UTM) tool.

Network security for small businesses is far from simple. There are countless threats out there that want to see your business fall, and it only takes one to see this come to fruition. Unless you take action now to protect your organization, you risk the future of your business. But what is it that businesses need to protect from, and what measures are out there that can accomplish this feat?

How big a role does security play in your business’s network management? If it takes a secondary role more in favor of operations, you might want to reconsider why this is the case. After all, your organization’s critical assets--namely sensitive data like employee information, payment credentials, and usernames or passwords--all hold immense risk for exploitation from hackers. Therefore, even if you don’t fear a potential attack, you should at least consider it as a possibility.

Network security entails a ton of different procedures, and it can be easy to lose track of what you’ve already implemented, and what still needs to be done. Instead of worrying about keeping your business’s confidential data safe, know with certainty that it’s as secure as possible by following our security checklist.

The topic of online pornography can be rather uncomfortable to discuss, but it’s an issue that business owners need to be aware of; especially considering that 70 percent of all online porn access happens during business hours! Whoa. This statistic has some naughty implications for what your employees may be doing on company time.

Installing a VPN solution is perhaps the best move you can make to ensure the security of your network, and the files that it transports. Whether you send files between your workplace and home or to remote locations around the globe, VPN can help ensure their safety. What exactly is VPN, and why should your company be using it?

You can connect to over 2.7 billion people over the Internet, but you probably shouldn't. There are many people on the Internet with bad intentions, along with several websites that can harm your business. With a Unified Threat Management (UTM) tool, you can protect your business by filtering out the worst of the web.

Having a strong firewall to protect your computer is an important investment. The casual PC user may not think twice about their firewall because they use the firewall built-in with their Windows OS, but the complexity of your business demands a stronger solution.

Takeaway: A local employee wins the grand prize of a new car after becoming the 1,000,000th visitor to a random website, much to the jealousy of his fellow employees. His co-workers respond by entering every online sweepstakes while at work, bringing productivity to a halt.

We often view hackers as creeps who are bent on spreading viruses to disrupt everyone's lives, perhaps for the sake of anarchy or some extreme ideology. But when it comes down to it, most hackers are in it for the money and are just trying to make a quick buck. In fact, hacking groups may even be more organized than your business!