Feb 18, 2016 | News, SMB Technology, Technology News
Moving to the Cloud requires a fast, reliable network to ensure high availability to Cloud applications and their data. Critical systems including Cloud backup, SaaS, VDI, VoIP and other critical systems need consistent broadband access to ensure employee productivity, compliance and keep customer service levels high. This begs the question, is your network ready for the Cloud? Network Assessment for Cloud Readiness When moving to the Cloud it is important to understand where you may have points of failure on your network before they happen. Consider starting with a Network Assessment. By simulating peak loads for voice and data on your network, you can identify weaknesses in a controlled environment. By proactively monitoring your network, you can ping to measure packet loss, latency and uptime; also, you can identify bottlenecks for failure, allowing you to fix problems before they happen. Avoiding unnecessary downtime and/or data loss improves employee productivity and helps ensure compliance. Maintain Network Security and Compliance for Consistent Computing Access Malicious attacks, including cyber threats and unauthorized access to your network, will not only expose you to loss of critical data. They may also degrade your network performance. Unauthorized network use by employees may also consume bandwidth that slows down your network. Unauthorized video streaming and access to unauthorized websites contribute to a slow network. Upgrade or Improve Network Performance There are many options to create an affordable wide area network. Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is an emerging option to create secure, reliable access to your Public or Private Cloud Services. This new technology, which provides centralized management and policy-based enforcement, makes it faster to...
Feb 11, 2016 | News, SMB Technology, Technology News
Should you care about how your employees protect their personal passwords? Depending on your password protection policy in the workplace, your employees may create passwords based on familiar passwords they use for personal use. Cybercriminals often hack personal websites for privacy information, including username and passwords, so they can gain access to internal systems. Offering tips to your employees on creating strong passwords may help you protect your valuable corporate data. Passwords are essential for keeping information safe. Since they are a fact of life, we need to know how to keep our systems secure. This takes individual and corporate responsibility. First, individual responsibility. What best practices can individuals establish to keep login credentials safe? Start with a Strong Password Create a strong password, instead of using easy guesses: Though they may be hard to remember, they are also hard for someone else to guess—and hack. Use combinations of capital and lower-case letters; if possible, include numbers and other special characters if your system allows. Numbers can replace letters (3 for “e”, @ for “a”, etc.). Avoid passwords using names of family members, pets, employers or favorite bands. Completely avoid default passwords like “password” or “admin.” Change Your Passwords Frequently Just like you change your smoke alarm batteries, you should change passwords even more frequently. According to a 2014 CompTIA Network+ training blog, change passwords every 30, 60 to 90 days or so. Even if a hacker or malicious site (“malware”) gets the old password, that password cannot be used. Tagging a number to a previous password or using a similar password isn’t safe enough; the new password needs...
