Over the years, IT security has been a big concern among many business organisations. In 2015 and 2016, a large number of cyber incidents involving ransomware were registered at Kaspersky lab. A large ransomware family including ExPetr, WannaCry, Bitman, Onion, Shade, Mor, Locky, CryptXXX, Zerber, Shade, Crysis, Cryrar, Snocry, Cryptodef and Spora tried to extort money from businesses in exchange for their sensitive data. According to an IT Security Risks 2016 Survey, more than 42% of small and mid-size companies were attacked by ransomware. One-third of the enterprises had to pay the ransom demanded by attackers and only 18% of the companies were able to restore their lost data even after paying ransom. That’s why there is an urgent need of a smart and secure anti ransomware solution to prevent any security breach that can bring a business to a standstill.
Most organizations know the risk of security attacks and hence they usually have a IT disaster recovery (DR) plan to protect their businesses. Chances are, you are also following a DR plan for the safety of your business. How would you recognise that your DR plan is robust that it will stand a deadly ransomware attack? Do you recall the Brisbane, BEC Scam 2016 where scammers targeted the Brisbane city council through series of fake invoices? In this scam, the city council lost close to $450,000. This is a clear case of a disaster that happened in terms of cyber-attacks. Business organisations should stay vigilant at all times. A strong DR plan is always recommended for businesses to prevent their data from any kind of security breach.
In today’s highly dynamic work environment, Cloud Computing is a proven technology to make your business more efficient and thus, profitable. According to different researches and statistics numbers, incorporating Cloud technology to any business, big or small, results in high quality of services with the lowest expenses on operational needs.
27% of the larger organisations have already shifted their ERP to the Cloud and 78% are more likely to switch. However, small businesses are still stuck with old traditional systems and don’t want to move on. It can be due to multiple reasons. Let’s dig deeper into this issue:
According to a popular research, 80% of companies including SMBs that adopt ‘Cloud Computing’ see improvements in their IT spend within six months. Another report by ‘Telsyte’ forecasts that the total market value for Public Cloud infrastructure services in Australia will reach up to $775 million by 2019 from $366 million in 2015.
These facts are a clear indication that SMBs can achieve lower operations cost by replacing their regular IT systems with public cloud offerings, even business in critical areas such as business intelligence, customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP). Increased flexibility with Cloud computing allows SMB employees to be more mobile - both in and out of the workplace. This generates the need of expert managed service providers that can bring mobility to your organisation.
Let's take a deeper look into the top five drivers for hiring managed service providers (MSP):
Cybersecurity is one of the biggest concerns for businesses today. Small and medium size companies try to follow their larger counterparts by adopting new skills to manage security but usually fall short because of several reasons. It can be due to the lack of infrastructure they currently have, the tools they deploy or the process they adopt to drive these services.
Check out these three major drawbacks that SMB’s face when trying to resolve IT issues on their own:
(1) Lack of Skills: Finding an expert who is proficient with the skills is always an on-going challenge in the business world – specifically when it comes to IT security. You may be amazed to know that close to 45% people are unaware of threats to their Cybersecurity. One reason could be lack of training, certification, or hands-on experience. Nevertheless, lack of skills has become one of the biggest obstacles to defend the business from unstoppable threats.
Many of us are still trying to recover from the recent Ransomware ‘WannaCry’ attack that affected almost 150 countries and 4,00,000 machines across the globe. If you were one of the victims and are still contemplating a security and backup solution, you are stretching your luck too much.
According to computer security experts, the first thing you need to identify is - What are the key solutions that you need to implement for making your cyber security strong?
Ransomware is the biggest money maker for cybercriminals in current day and age. According to the latest report by European authorities, Ransomware Attacks has impacted over 10,000 organisations and 200,000 individuals in over 150 countries. These cyber-attacks are real threats to any business including small & medium size companies (SMBs).
Many SMB enterprises think that they are too small for hackers to target. According to an Internet Security Threat Report by Symantec, almost 60% of all cyber-attacks target SMBs, and approximately 75% of all spear-phishing scams were directed at small companies. As they are totally unprepared towards these threats, the damages can be monumental and recovery path tough.
Office 365 offers a full range of tools to make you and your organisation more productive. Although, you might be used to your old interface but Office 365’s amazing features can revolutionise the way you work, collaborate with your team-mates and do business.
Office 365 is a Cloud based environment but it can be installed on your computer for best experience of MS World. Installing onto a computer allows you to use features of ‘Office Online’ i.e. online-only version, available free of cost. The best thing about using Office 365 is that Microsoft automatically adds new features. You don’t need to pay extra charges other than your subscription.
Planning to migrate to Office 365 or ‘Cloud’ from an on-premises environment will bring an impressive array of enterprise level functionality to your small/mid siz business. An organisation can utilise compelling benefits by migrating their emails or docs to one single server, hosted in Microsoft Public Cloud i.e. ‘Office 365’. Office 365 is one of the hottest trends to create, communicate and share any information on Cloud. You may be wondering if it’s needed at this point in your company? Is it even right for small/mid organisation? What happens to all third party applications that we are currently using?