With recent revelations showing that the personal accounts of our national leaders are just as vulnerable to compromise as anyone else, it is now more important than ever to make cybersecurity a top priority.

Although it is easy to think that the personal password, replete with a simple alpha-numeric key is all that is necessary to protect our information, but Alex McGeorge, a senior security researcher at Immunity Inc, suggests otherwise, “There is no way to be truly secure… But the State Department at least has teams whose job it is to detect a hack as soon as it happens — there is no indication so far that Hillary [Clinton] had this kind of active defense.” (Business Insider)

Classified government information is extremely valuable in the right hands. Thus, top-level hacker organizations attack servers around the clock for the chance to access. Though most security experts agree that being attacked is fairly common, the focus should be whether hackers can succeed in breaking the data encryption or not. The difference between success or failure in this endeavor is related to the dedicated (or in some cases, not-so-dedicated) security team of that network.

Whereas Clinton narrowly avoided a compromising situation, The Federal department of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was actually victimized by an attack.  According to the New York Times:

“Chinese intruders executed a sophisticated attack that gave them “administrator privileges” into the computer networks at the Office of Personnel Management, mimicking the credentials of people who run the agency’s systems, two senior administration officials said. The hackers began siphoning out a rush of data after constructing what amounted to an electronic pipeline that led back to China, investigators told Congress last week in classified briefings.”

– David E. Sanger of The New York Times.

With the continuously increasing incentive for cyber-criminals to launch attacks on networks, it has become imperative to have the right security team in place.

“America’s economic prosperity, national security, and our individual liberties depend on our commitment to securing cyberspace and maintaining an open, interoperable, secure, and reliable Internet. Our critical infrastructure continues to be at risk from threats in cyberspace, and our economy is harmed by the theft of our intellectual property. Although the threats are serious and they constantly evolve, I believe that if we address them effectively, we can ensure that the Internet remains an engine for economic growth and a platform for the free exchange of ideas”

– Former President Obama, referencing his Administration’s Priorities on Cybersecurity

The US National Intelligence Council agrees that data encryption is the “best defense” for computer users to protect their data. In fact, Edward Snowden’s cache of documents that he released contained a report, which has been widely cited in the global encryption debate, highlighting the importance of data encryption efforts. “We assess with high confidence that security best practices applied to target networks would prevent the vast majority of intrusions,” it concluded.

What We Can Learn

How can a business be expected to protect itself when, according to that same report, “cybercriminals” have “capabilities significantly beyond those of all but a few nation-states”?

You may not be emailing the prime minister of a foreign nation (or maybe you are, depending on your industry), so what could be the big deal about routing your work email to your Gmail?

First, your company could need a record of those emails for legal reasons. If you’ve bypassed the company inbox and then deleted those emails, it could look like you’re hiding something.

Second, companies install higher levels of security on their servers than personal emails do, with good reason. If you were to open a personal email and the Cryptolocker virus compromises your company records, you can bet there will be trouble.

If that’s not reason enough, failure to pay attention to network security can lead to lost revenue, business opportunities, reputation, and credibility. Managed IT Security protects your inbound and outbound email communications against viruses, spam, phishing scams, and email policy breaches to help protect your assets and ensure compliance.

Managed Security Monitoring can:

• Watch over and protect your network
• Manage threats before they disrupt your business
• Alert you to suspicious activity

Telx takes data encryption efforts very seriously. Our reputation for delivering comprehensive network solutions to your business ensures the protection of your data and recovery of your system in the event of an attack. Let our team of dedicated support professionals managing your network security is a necessary step for a successful organization. To expand the scope of your network’s data solutions, contact a representative today!

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Grow your business with social media with these four steps:

Identify what’s trending on social media

From global events like the WannaCry and Petya ransomware attacks to the Super Bowl halftime show that took the internet by storm, content marketers need to know what consumers are talking about on social media.

For example, when Steve Harvey read the wrong name at Miss Universe in 2016, Burger King wasted no time tweeting a picture with the caption: “At BK, everyone gets to keep their crown.” This clever and timely message resulted in almost 100,000 retweets, likes, and replies.

Knowing what’s trending helps marketers fine-tune content to ensure better engagement and higher conversion rates. And, it can even help establish relevance in larger conversations and engage new groups of potential customers.

Understand what’s happening locally and globally

Content marketers should stay on top of what’s happening on both a global and local scale, and then share what they’ve learned with their teams. For instance, children’s clothing companies can combine the latest trend with the back-to-school season to attract more students and parents.

Leverage user-generated content

According to a recent Bazaarvoice report, shoppers who interact with consumer-generated content are 97 percent more likely to make a purchase than shoppers who don’t. Customer-generated content helps drive awareness among non-customers who may be persuaded by positive and authentic customer’ experience. Social data derived from user-generated content also helps marketers address content pain points.

Incorporate social data into your marketing strategy

Put the social media data you’ve gathered to good use by integrating them into your current marketing strategy. They immediately provide a better understanding of the customer and highlight the type of content audiences are currently engaging with. This can be used to help develop and execute better content and marketing campaigns.

Social media has changed the way small- and medium-sized businesses operate. In order to get ahead of your competitors, it’s imperative that you understand how to leverage it to your business’s advantage. Feel free to contact us about what we can do to help.

Published from TechAdvisory.org

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Security professionals should be beefing up your network security, implementing advanced firewall software, and identifying risks for possible breaches. In reality, they spend a huge chunk of their time troubleshooting issues on individual personal computers (PCs). That workflow is not ideal, but that’s what normally happens in many organizations.

Cost of fixes

According to a survey of technology professionals, companies waste as much as $88,660 of their yearly IT budget as a result of having security staff spend an hour or more per work week fixing colleagues’ personal computers. The ‘wasted amount’ was based on an average hourly salary of IT staff multiplied by 52 weeks a year. Other than knowing how much time is wasted, what makes things worse is that IT security staff are among the highest paid employees in most companies.

The fixes have mostly to do with individual rather than department or company-wide computer problems that don’t necessarily benefit the entire company. The resulting amount is especially staggering for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) whose limited resources are better off spent on business intelligence tools and other network security upgrades.

Other Costs

All those hours spent on fixing personal computers often means neglecting security improvements. The recent WannaCry ransomware attacks, which successfully infected 300,000 computers in 150 countries, demonstrate the dangers of failing to update operating system security patches on time. It should be a routine network security task that, if ignored, can leave your business helpless in the face of a cyberattack as formidable as WannaCry. It didn’t make much money but had it been executed better, its effects regardless of size.

Profitable projects could also be set aside because of e would have been more devastating to businesses, employees’ PC issues. For SMBs with one or two IT staff, this is especially detrimental to productivity and growth. They can easily increase their IT budgets, but if employees’ negligible computer issues keep occurring and systems keep crashing, hiring extra IT personnel won’t be very effective.

What businesses should do

The key takeaway in all this is: Proactive Miami IT support eliminates the expenditure required to fix problematic computers. Bolstering your entire IT infrastructure against disruptive crashes is the first step in avoiding the wasteful use of your staff’s time and your company’s money.

Even if your small business has the resources to hire extra staff, the general shortage of cyber security skills also poses a problem. Ultimately, the solution shouldn’t always have to be increasing manpower, but rather maximizing existing resources.

Having experts proactively maintain your IT eliminates the need to solve recurring small issues and lets your staff find a better use for technology resources. If you need Managed IT Services in Miami, contact us here for advice or call 305-935-3876 now.

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Today, we have more information than ever before. This paradigm shift isn’t just about knowing more, or being more informed. It’s about the ability to garner insights from data, take decisive action, and pave new worlds.

Big Data

Big Data is just one of the many new technologies sweeping the planet, however, as Technology Review states, “No area of human endeavor or industrial sector will be immune from the incredible shakeup that’s about to occur as big data plows through society, politics, and business.”

Employment

The new world of massive data bumps up against two areas of public policy and regulation. The first area is employment – new technologies can challenge existing global infrastructure – such as white-collar industries, and innovate existing workflows. Although disrupting, new technology inevitably brings great changes to society; and eventually bettering livelihoods.

Privacy

The other area is privacy. Privacy is one of the biggest concerns for the big data era. Securing personal information from internet piracy can be difficult, attacks are being launched every second. Additionally, privacy law is more difficult to enforce in this arena, as users seldom know when their privacy is being violated in the first place.

So, how do you take advantage of future business technology, and remain safe? Telx Computers employs world-class encryption and verification to safeguard personal information. With powerful firewalls and monitoring, our team can diagnose patterns before they become problems – saving your team money and minimizing risk.

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With mandatory updates, Microsoft hopes to make the platform more secure, “The license terms for Windows 10 require Automatic Updates be enabled as a part of keeping our customers secure and delivering Windows as a service.” Some organizations will be provided wiggle room around this verdict, such as enterprise companies that need more control in this arena.

The benefits of mandatory updates include not only security best practices but extend to performance enhancements for the popular operating system. Now users will not have to worry whether new updates will impede functionality to their systems or pre-existing applications.

The most recent Windows 10 licensing agreement, from build 10420, states the following:

“Updates. The software periodically checks for system and app updates, and downloads and installs them for you. You may obtain updates only from Microsoft or authorized sources, and Microsoft may need to update your system to provide you with those updates. By accepting this agreement, you agree to receive these types of automatic updates without any additional notice.”

Windows hopes that such a move will prevent migration nightmares like what happened with the Windows version 8.x, where several users stayed with the old version of the software despite the new edition, Windows 8.1, being offered for free.

By making automatic updates mandatory, Windows hopes to keep a more efficient platform, with fewer processing glitches or security issues. Some speculate that windows software will automatically update when new versions are released.

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