In the spirit of October being Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we want to discuss the ever-shifting impacts of digital threats. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, so do the tactics of cybercriminals seeking to exploit vulnerabilities. This special edition of our blog not only serves as a timely reminder to take cybersecurity seriously, but also as a guide focusing on the latest threats and strategies to protect yourself and your organization in 2023 and beyond.

On October 5^th, this newest version will begin coming pre-loaded on new PCs and, much like Windows 10 was for Windows 7 and 8 PCs, it will be available as a free upgrade for Windows 10 PCs. You may not see this update on your PC immediately, since Microsoft usually chooses chunks of devices to roll these major feature and version updates out to in phases. It’s also possible that your IT department or provider may have blocked the update from applying—just to avoid any unexpected incompatibilities from an unforeseen auto-update!

You hear a constant whirring or beeping sound when you walk past the server room that may be just annoying. Or it might indicate that something is failing. Or maybe you’re feeling the pain of having been told that it’s time to upgrade the server again in order to continue running your Sage software, and you ask yourself: “Didn’t we just upgrade that server a few years ago?” There is a chance you have been tempted to move everything to the Cloud, or maybe you’re being forced to because of changes to the work environment. Now is as good a time as any to make the switch for your Sage 100 software. But how do you know where to begin - or whether this solution even makes sense for you?

Strong and resilient backups are the most important piece of protecting your business. Cybersecurity is an ever-evolving arms race. Antivirus, spam filtering, and firewall vendors are all constantly plugging holes and vulnerabilities only for malicious actors to abandon their old tricks and find new ones. No matter how elaborate your security mechanisms are, they will never truly be 100% effective forever; there will always be some small risk. Whether that’s a brand-new exploit or users being tricked, malware and scammers will always try to find a way in. Those protective measures also won’t do much good against natural disasters or hardware failure, either.

Join us for our Bennett/Porter IT and Hosted Services free webinar series! We’ll focus on services and features that will enhance your work productivity, prepare you for the unexpected, and ensure your data is protected. With many employees working remote, businesses have had to change the way important company data is managed. This series will cover common scenarios and what you can do to ensure every base is covered.

You may have previously considered, or even had plans for, giving your employees the ability to work remotely. Due to the recent social changes in response to COVID-19, those considerations may have accelerated into a necessary reality to keep your business running during this time that we're all supposed to remain at home.

A few days ago, our I.T. Manager, Dionne, published a blog post about the various technologies that you might need to rely on so that your employees can get their work done seamlessly and securely from a remote location. That post addresses how people can stay connected to your organization. But how does your organization stay connected to them...informationally, culturally, practically?

A cloud-based Human Capital Management system offers many built-in solutions to keep your organization aware of your employees' activities and help them stay informed in the face of rapid change. The following features keep everyone working together, even when they're in different places.

If you’ve considered the option of working from home or been given the option to do so, here are a few ways to accomplish that.

Using a VPN

You may have heard of VPNs but didn’t know what it meant. Without getting too technical, a VPN allows you to use a computer to connect to your office, with encryption, without physically being there. There are tools that need to be in place to accomplish this. Typically, you’ll need some or all of the following items:

Are you still using Windows 7 on your work computer? Do you have servers in your office that have Microsoft Server 2008 installed on them? If so, then there are a few important things you need to know regarding these and similar Microsoft products.

On January 14, 2020, Microsoft will end support for many popular operating systems and software platforms used by businesses today. The most important of these are Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2, and Microsoft Exchange 2010. Support for Office 2010 will end in October of 2020.

As we pointed out in our blog post earlier this month, while backups are essential for the health of your business, there are many details which often remain overlooked in a basic backup plan. These oversights can render any strategy useless just when you need it the most…even if there are backup files available somewhere.

Having the right backup solution can save your company from losing important data, having to pay a ransom to retrieve it, or potentially costing your business the valuable secrets that keep it competitive. At the very least, nobody wants to re-key all of their accounting data if something goes wrong after, say, a long period-end process. These are all real consequences that have brought clients to us for help and a plan.

Still, it’s difficult to know how to begin developing a backup plan without some guidance. Here are some key questions we ask when helping customers design a new backup strategy…or evaluate the effectiveness of a current one: