Insights

You may have heard the term Multi-Factor authentication (or MFA).  Even if you haven’t, it’s likely that you are using it today with one or more of your online accounts.  When your online banking and credit card applications require you to receive a one-time authorization code via text message and then plug it into the app after you log in – that’s one type of multi-factor authentication (MFA). When your online app asks your phone app to authenticate you, via thumbprint or a “is this you” prompt, that’s MFA.  And while Multi-Factor authentication is a minor interruption for the user, it allows your financial institutions to make sure it’s really you logging on—giving you peace of mind that a cybercriminal who might have gotten your login credentials can’t get in and take your money.

There is no magic bullet when it comes to IT. But the right technology partner can take your company out of a defensive, reactive mode…and put you on the offensive where you take a proactive stance. Instead of IT being a liability that hinders your business, IT becomes an asset that drives your business—by increasing your capacity to generate revenue and enabling your business workflows to operate more efficiently.

Your customer relationships come down to trust. Whether or not you deliver on what you promise and provide quality products and services is certainly top-of-mind. But what’s also a concern is how securely you handle their personal information—especially their credit card data.

Even before COVID forced the majority of people to work from home, remote workforces were already growing rapidly for both the economic benefits (less office space) and the productivity gains. And with the U.S. starting to turn the corner on the pandemic, 84% of firms say they’ll allow employees to stay remote.

According to the Ponemon Institute, 72% of cyberattacks target small- to medium-sized businesses. With the bad guys now focusing on the SMB sector, hardening security is critical, especially for firms developing and deploying SaaS applications for the healthcare industry in the cloud.

Just as virtualization has proven beneficial for server infrastructures, the same is true for firewalls.  Virtual firewalls provide the same functions as physical firewalls along with additional benefits. For example, virtual firewalls lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of your implementations because more than one instance can be deployed on a single physical appliance.

What is VoIP? The acronym stands for Voice over Internet protocol. Why is VoIP important? Since the 19th century, the nation’s local telcos (like AT&T and Verizon) have relied on the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to connect calls. Today, while telcos provide both plain old telephone service (POTS) and VoIP, they will soon quit offering POTS to subscribers. Like it or not, change is coming.

Just think what would happen if a ransomware attack hit your business and locked all your end-users out of their computer systems. What would the impact be on your business if your customers found out? How much revenue would you lose?

If your company develops applications for internal use or to interact with customers, how well your DevOps processes function is critical for ensuring smooth business operations. Developers need to deliver new applications quickly, and IT operations must keep those applications running at peak performance. When it’s time for updates, the two teams should be able to work together seamlessly to roll out application revisions as quickly as possible.