Datalyst Blog

It doesn’t take much to get us to start ranting about the dangers of phishing, and it’s a topic that we won’t stop talking about for some time. Unfortunately, phishing comes in enough forms that it isn’t always so simple to spot. For this week’s tip, we just wanted to run through the different formats phishing can take, focusing on how to identify each type.

Remote work has seen unprecedented adoption in the past few years. While we’re all for the benefits that this trend brings, it is critical that any business that embraces remote or hybrid work does so securely.

Let’s discuss a few measures that your business can and should implement to achieve this security.

For all the benefits that remote work offers, it does come with some challenges. Fortunately, there are different strategies that can be applied to help overcome them. Let’s break down something called structured problem solving, and how equipping your team members appropriately can help you with it.

Cybercrime has grown rapidly over the last several years. We’ve seen more and more businesses get hit by crippling ransomware, data breaches, and other types of attacks. End-users are inundated with common, but deadly phishing attacks and other threats that are so easy to fall for, even IT experts could get tricked. Let’s look at these trends for 2023, and how your business can prepare for them.

Most organizations are trying to figure out how to secure their IT against the constant flood of threats out there. Unfortunately, the biggest threat out there isn’t something that you can actively protect against. Can you guess what it is?

Unfortunately, it’s your employees, and their potentially lax password practices—and while you can’t really protect yourself against insecure passwords, you can minimize the likelihood that they’ll be used.

Whether or not you believe acronyms are an acceptable form of speech, some people might use them habitually or instinctively even for business communications. Of course, they don’t have much place in this context, but habits are hard to break. To address this issue, one innovative thinker has created a tool that can help determine if the acronym “LOL” is sincere or not.

Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur, largely because there’s a lot that can pop up and cause problems that need to be addressed. Let’s discuss how successful business owners rally through tough times to help attain this kind of success.

Technology is complex, and it’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. This is more the case for business technology than consumer technology. Even those who consider themselves tech-savvy might be lost when it comes to managing business-grade technology solutions. How can you make sure that your business technology is receiving the service it needs to stay operational long-term?

Nobody wants to spend their weekend doing paperwork. Nobody wants to spend several evenings in a row sitting over a laptop and slowly digging through every online account they have, resetting every password and carefully documenting everything in a secure password manager. I know this better than anyone, because I forced myself to do it.

Here’s the thing though, EVERYBODY should do it. As soon as possible.

Small businesses have a lot to worry about in terms of technology, but one of the things that often gets overlooked is network security. Some small businesses feel that they are too small to be considered a viable target for hackers, but they are wrong; all businesses have data valuable for hackers in some form.

There has been a lot made about the Internet of Things (IoT) recently. The IoT is basically technology that connects to the Internet or your network and offers some sort of specialized task. Think smart light bulbs, mobile devices, monitoring tools, and other appliances that traditionally aren’t connected to the Internet. For today’s businesses this can bring several pros and cons to the table. This month, we thought we would take a brief look at some of the pros and cons of deploying IoT technology in the workplace. 

When security breaches and data breaches are mentioned in the same breath so often, it’s easy to look at them as one and the same. However, we want to take a moment to explain the differentiating factors between the two, as it could be all the most important for protecting your business in the future.

While there are some aspects of business technology that are quite simple, there are other parts that are complicated and difficult to understand, even for experienced users. In this month’s newsletter, we want to go over how you can keep the complexity of your IT to a minimum so that you have as few headaches as possible.

A decade or so ago, IT security was as simple as buying antivirus software for each computer in a business. As long as you kept renewing your antivirus, kept it updated, and ran regular scans, your business would avoid 99 percent of the threats out there.

Over the last several years, things have changed and become much more complicated.

We talk a lot about different types of technology, securing your technology and your accounts, and a lot of other technology-related issues on this blog, but because of the generalities of whatever technology (or strategy) we’ve chosen to write about that day, we never confront the thing that is most important to a business: How does any technology fit into what we do here? What value do we get from any type of technology? Today, we thought we’d talk a little bit about what you need to do to find the right technology for your business and how to come up with those decisions. 

Has your business been targeted by hackers? Do you even know? Let’s face it, small businesses don’t typically worry all that much about cybersecurity. To many small business owners, they might see it as a luxury for their perceived risk. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is that hackers and scammers are targeting small businesses more regularly than they have in the past and without some kind of dedicated cybersecurity strategy, there could be a good chance that your business could run into some problems because of it. 

Cybersecurity has been such a growing problem for individuals, organizations, and businesses over the last several years, and at least in Massachusetts, it has become a crucial concern for lawmakers. While we’ve been seeing some businesses start to take these threats more seriously, there’s still a long, rough road ahead of us all before cybersecurity can be a passive thought.

Simple passwords are just not an effective security practice, so if you’re still using credentials like Password, 123456, Guest, or Qwerty, listen up. You need better password hygiene practices before you suffer from a data breach. Here are some ways you can make a better password to protect your business from threats.

There’s no beating around the bush with this one; moving data from one place to another, also known as data migration, is critical to get right the first time. If you create and follow a migration strategy, evaluating here and there to make sure it’s all going according to plan, you’ll see great success in this effort. Let’s go over how you can make it happen.

When times get tough, businesses are pretty quick to start cutting costs wherever they can…and frequently, the business’ IT is the first thing to hit the chopping block.

While we contend that IT is the last thing you want to cut back on when times are tough, you may not have a choice. Therefore, we wanted to take a few moments to explore how you can resist some of these cuts—and if not, what you need to prioritize.