Office 365 Helps Solo Entrepreneur Scale His Brand

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We’re excited to show you how #Office365, a productivity tools that lets you do your best work, gives Bryce McDonald what he needs to do his best work.


He is a solo entrepreneur who relies on an extensive network of vendors and partners to help him scale DAY 1 Wake, his wakesurf board making business, out to the world. No matter your size, business or industry, Results Matter Cloud Services can help you work easily and flexibly, just like Bryce. Check it out!

These tools need to always be up-to-date. They also need to have the information that matters most to you, available and accessible – anywhere, anytime.

5 Cyber Security Tactics for 2019

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Cyber security issues were more severe than last year. The number of attacks and breaches increased as did the tools and processes for defending against them.

The number of police-reported cybercrimes in Alberta has increased by 185% between 2014 and 2017, according to a recent Statistics Canada report. This represents the largest increase in Canada.

Here are some of the numbers for 2018:

    • Marriott Starwood Hotels reservation system, personal information of 500 million customers over four years
    • Bell Canada hackers accessed personal information of around 100, 000 customers
    • Bank of Montreal and CIBC’s Simplii Financial were hacked
    • Ransomware attacks on the municipalities of Wasaga Beach and Midland, Ontario, along with Mekina, Quebec

More challenges require us to adopt multiple tactics.

Cyber security spending is increase at a rate of between 9 and 12 percent each year.

  1. Have a Plan: Know how you will recover from ransomware because we are all targets.
  2. Create a Security Culture: Make security a core value. Building security in at the start, leaders that are engaged, and holding teams accountable for compliance are part of creating the culture.
  3. Adopt MFA: Multi-factor authentication is needed beyond more than just VPNs and privileged accounts.
  4. Use a Password Manager: This will ensure unique passwords across platforms and ensure business credentials are different from personal ones.
  5. IT and Business Aligned: Ensure the team managing your IT security has solutions aligned with the RTO (recovery time objective) and RPO (recovery point objective) that meet your business needs.

We have to fight against complacency and keep working at it.

 

Sources:

The Importance of a Basic Backup Strategy

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Are you prepared with a basic backup?

It doesn’t always take someone malicious to hack your computer system, but regardless of the reason, if a business is shut down for any matter of time, revenue is lost. The first step in running any business is ensuring there are basic backup plans in place.

Picture this; a freak September snowstorm sends the city into panic. Tree branches are breaking from the weight of the snow, and one just happens to fall on the power line closest to your downtown office. The power goes out and your building is plunged into dark.

Power goes out, operations stop. All your files are now gone and without any way of getting them back, you’re starting at the bottom again.

When breaches occur, for any reason, operations and finance are the first things to be affected, and the network outages caused usually have long-lasting impact. Most businesses cannot come back from even three days spent at a standstill.

So what can you do?

By following the 3-2-1 rule, when it comes to a basic backup strategy, your company will be laughing during the next storm.

Your backup plan should be thought of like this; there should be 3 total copies of data, 2 of which are local, but on different mediums, and at least 1 copy that is offsite.

The local copy is what users rely on for primary access.

  • One of the easiest ways to create a backup is to store copies on any network attached storage, an external hard drive, or a USB drive.

Backup local copy to a local avenue.

  • Gives user immediate, instant access to whatever data needed, despite if it’s been deleted, overwritten, or lost.

Store a copy of all files securely offsite.

  • This helps in the aforementioned disaster. Regardless if something happens to the physical place of business, all data is still safe and secure.
  • There are many cloud-based solutions, which store information on remote servers which are accessed through the Internet.

Regardless of how you are backing up your data, the first step in protecting your business is having that backup plan. Every minute your team is without access will cost more than just revenue.

Take a look at how much it would cost your business if your systems were unavailable.  Try our online calculator yourself or give us a call 403-455-5969. The results might surprise you.