Best Practices

By Tom Drummond

2018 – The age of hackers, data collectors, and order imposters. Keeping yourself and your company secure takes intelligence, tenacity and a thorough set of safeguards.

Deciding on a security strategy takes some skill. Turning a blind eye can steer you away from additional security because you think you’ve got “good enough” security. But if your plan to stay safe is the cyber version of padlocking the doors, leaving off the lights, and pretending the place is vacant, then fear and paranoia are preventing you from taking advantage of the vast advances technology has made in the past few years that allow us to run our businesses from anywhere at any time, fix intrusions and attacks in real time, and create secure connections separate from your everyday users.

Work-From-Home

Work is work, and in today’s environment, it can be done from anywhere in the world. Some days the kitchentable and an early morning cup of coffee is the command center for the day’s decisions. Others, a night of sleeplessness becomes a productive time for collections or forecasting. The important factor in that environment is access. The key to working remotely is that once you do get to the office, the transition is seamless. If you deny remote access to your network out of fear of strangers tapping in to your system from afar, you are also denying yourself the benefit of today’s technology. The intelligent safeguard is to set up a virtual and private network, allowing you or others out-of-office to send and share data across any network you may be on: your home, the airport, or the hotel you’re staying in on the other side of the world.

Managed Services

Of course, getting to the office for collaboration, management and non-cyber work is critical to being productive, but without the right security strategy, even components of these are slowed or outdated. Viruses and malware are constantly trying to attack systems, you’ve got to make your world functional despite those threats. Implementing a remote managed services regimen with your infrastructure is the best way to prevent a work stoppage in office. Anti-virus monitoring, system back-ups, and preventing hacker intrusions are just a sampling of how a Managed Service Provider can keep your workplace free of fear, and focus on being successful with your team.

Guest Networks

Guest Networks are another perfect representation of appropriate security. When someone enters your workspace, you want to be accommodating. Companies often deny network access out of fear of exposing their business to outside parties, only to have employees, in a desire to please their visitors, simply give out the Wi-Fi or network password, completely opening the network to intrusion. Even after that device leaves the local network, it’s got what it needs to gain access again. Work to ensure security for both networks equally. This will lay the groundwork for a reliable and secure IT environment, while providing the same security coming and going for temporary visitors or part time collaborators. A guest network is the right solution to provide outsiders with network access, but still keep your business’s information secure.

My companies DII Computers and DII Cloud are experts at making your systems safe and secure without sacrificing the productive edge current technology delivers.