Data Net Blog

The Verizon Data Breach Investigations report states that emails are the primary source of two-thirds of malware. Email is an easy target simply because there is more human touch involved in the case of emails. There’s always a stray chance that someone will end up clicking on a phishing link or downloading the wrong attachment or simply including sensitive, confidential information in an unencrypted email. The first step to securing your email systems is training your employees. Train your employees to identify harmful email messages and to be aware of your firm’s IT protocols and rules. There are 4 major ways in which your employees may end up compromising your email security. These are

Have you ever left your laptop open on a table or a desk and return to see that your cat is draped across the keyboard? It may seem like a cute anecdote, but the truth is that while having pets enhances our lives, they can be a problem for your technology. In fact, some studies put the repair/replace bill of pet-induced technology problems at around $3 billion annually. In this week’s blog, we discuss how to protect your computer from your four-legged friends. 

Despite annoying challenges presented by the abrupt shift to the WFH model thanks to the pandemic, there were some tech heroes that saved the day. These two made WFH possible.

Look, we know that thinking about disasters can be a nerve-wracking experience, but you need to acknowledge that your organization is constantly in danger of becoming subverted by challenges outside your control. While you might not be able to stop a disaster from striking, you can be prepared for when it does strike, as well as how you respond to it. Let’s go over some of the methods you can use to ensure you have a plan in place.

When you’re using the Internet, how often do you find yourself using so many bookmarks that the bar simply cannot display what you want it to? You can make things a bit easier by saving some space on your bookmark or favorite bar by only showing the sites’ favicons. Don’t know what a favicon is? We’ll cover that too!

Software matters. What your employees use can impact your firm and your customers. Pay attention. Make rules.

For the growing business, doing the right things to secure your network and data is a constantly evolving situation. For larger businesses, they tend to approach the situation with a different perspective. They plan out the whole process. This is what is called enterprise security.  Let’s take a look at what enterprise security entails and how the little guy can benefit from doing things like larger companies do them. 

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a multitude of lessons along with it, on both the personal and professional fronts. From the business perspective, the pandemic turned things upside down across almost every industry. One of the biggest trends that the pandemic brought was remote work. While working from home (WFH), or telecommuting as it was called earlier, existed in some industries, the pandemic made WFH mainstream for everyone. From doctor’s offices to SMBs to IT companies, almost every industry had to resort to remote operations to stay in business. This shift from on-site, brick-and-mortar offices to WFH brought along with it some serious challenges. This blog discusses 2 ways businesses leveraged technology to overcome the various challenges businesses faced with the sudden shift to the remote work environment.

Projects are a big part of doing business. When we mention projects it’s typically in reference to IT projects, but for your average business, when they think of projects it means specific jobs coordinated for specific clients. In this environment it is essential to get the people on a project team on the same page and working towards a shared end. In this week's blog, we thought we’d discuss the importance of solid project management and how certain technologies can help project managers improve their turnaround times. 

If you’re anything like me, you’ve always got a thought in the back of your head regarding your business and how you can make it more productive. While there are a lot of different ways you can do so, we wanted to focus on one that might not be the first to come to mind: communicate more.

Outsourcing today simply involves using external entities to handle specific, specialized business functions so that organizations can focus on their core competencies. The idea of seeking outside support for areas that are not core to a business is many decades old. However, seeking support from external providers can make a lot of sense, especially in fields that involve considerable complexity. One example, as human resources becomes increasingly complex practice, especially in areas that involve often complex and arcane laws such as benefits and employment law, many smaller companies are increasingly outsourcing some or all of their HR tasks.

One of the leading printer manufacturers, HP, has been actively attempting to disable any ink cartridges that they didn’t produce, which is causing some strife among users of the products. Let’s take a look at what this means for users and for businesses that rely on HP printers. 

Outsourcing HR, real estate portfolio management, tax audits, etc is fairly common nowadays. This whitepaper discusses another function which, when outsourced, can bring greater efficiency and effectiveness to your business’s overall functioning--IT.

There are a huge number of apps available on the various app stores—3.5 million and 1.6 million on the Google Play store and Apple’s App Store, respectively—and, while most of them are sufficiently secure to use, many of them aren’t. It can be hard to tell the difference between the two at times, so it is important that you and your team are protecting your business however you can. Let’s discuss the topic of security, as it pertains to mobile app stores, and why the issues have transcended security.

Cybersecurity has gradually become more and more of a focus for modern businesses as threats to their data and general operations have mounted over time. This means that businesses need to approach their security with a multifaceted strategy, involving a combination of the right tools and IT support and the training to use them. Let’s take a few moments to dive into security training and why it is so critical.

Outsourcing has become a fairly common element in business processes today. What started off as a means to cut business costs and take advantage of cheaper resources based offshore has now become an essential part of running a business today. (Its definition doesn’t necessarily include offshore outsourcing, of course) This blog looks at two additional areas where IT outsourcing can dramatically improve revenues. In particular, outsourcing can avoid high-fixed costs when you are trying to meet peak demand periods or have 24/7 coverage available.

Most businesses leverage the cloud in at least some capacity, whether cloud-based apps or cloud-based infrastructure. In any case, using the cloud comes with inherent security questions that must be addressed during the planning, implementation, and launch phases of any solution. Let’s go over some of the ways you might protect data and applications stored in the cloud.

IT is one of the core functions of any business. There’s no aspect of a business that is untouched by IT. Outsourcing IT is a big decision and it is not surprising that many organizations choose to manage their IT in-house rather than relying on outsourcing. However, outsourcing your IT to a managed service provider offers numerous benefits. Here are two areas where outsourcing at least some of your IT can be especially beneficial.

Zero-day vulnerabilities are never fun, but this is especially the case with popular devices, like the many that use the Samsung Exynos modem. Google’s Project Zero has discovered 18 such vulnerabilities in these chips, four of which allow for remote code execution. Why should you be concerned about these vulnerabilities and what can you do to minimize your risk?

Technology has done some incredible things, especially in the past couple of decades, so it’s wild to imagine that someday, innovative new tools like ChatGPT will no longer be as cutting-edge as they might seem today. The reason is simple: most technologies today were once world-shattering and innovative, but with time they have become normalized.