Reduce Operational Complexity with Managed IT Services

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In today’s fast-paced business world, organizations must focus on their core competencies to stay ahead of the competition. However, managing IT infrastructure can be a daunting task that distracts from those core competencies. This is where managed IT services come in – as they offer businesses an efficient and effective solution to reduce operational complexity.

Discover the potential of managed IT services and how they can revolutionize your business operations. Benefit from streamlined processes, reduced costs and maximized productivity.

How Managed IT Services Benefit Businesses

Managed IT services have become a vital part of the modern business world. In an era where technology is essential to operations, businesses are leveraging remote monitoring and management platforms to manage their IT infrastructure more effectively than ever before. One of the most significant benefits that managed IT services provide is reduced operational complexity. By outsourcing your IT needs to experts, you can focus on your core competencies without getting bogged down by technicalities.

Another benefit that managed IT services offer is cost-saving potential. By having a team dedicated solely to managing your technology, you eliminate the need for in-house staff or costly equipment purchases while also avoiding unexpected repair costs or downtime. Managed service providers often work on a subscription basis, relieving businesses of upfront capital expenses and providing predictable monthly costs with easy-to-understand billing systems.

Outsourcing your IT needs can help guarantee security compliance and data protection measures are put in place seamlessly – this reduces the risk of expensive data breaches which could wreak havoc on any company’s reputation and finances.

The Advantages of Outsourcing IT Management

Outsourcing IT management provides several advantages for businesses of all sizes. One significant benefit is the reduction in operational complexity and associated costs. With managed IT services, organizations can focus on their core competencies while leaving the complexities of IT infrastructure management to experts who specialize in it.

Managed IT services also provide enhanced security for businesses. Cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated, and outsourcing IT services enable companies to access advanced cybersecurity technologies that they might not have otherwise been able to afford or maintain themselves. In addition, with around-the-clock monitoring by a team of skilled professionals, potential vulnerabilities can be detected and addressed proactively before they turn into bigger problems.

Outsourcing also enables companies to remain flexible when responding to market changes while keeping up with new technological advancements within their industries without having to acquire specialized skills or invest heavily in hardware and software purchases. By reducing overhead costs through outsourced service providers who leverage economies of scale, smaller firms especially get an opportunity to enjoy perks previously only available to big corporations with sizeable budgets allocated towards technology investments.

Steps to Optimize your Business’s Productivity

Maximizing productivity is a crucial factor in ensuring profitability and growth for any business. While there are many ways to achieve this, implementing managed IT services can be extremely beneficial for reducing operational complexity. The first step towards optimizing your business’s productivity with managed IT services is understanding the specific needs of your organization. This includes assessing your current IT infrastructure, identifying areas that need improvement and determining which IT functions can be outsourced.

Once you have identified what aspects of your IT operations should be managed by a third-party service provider, it’s important to carefully evaluate potential candidates based on their expertise and track record in the industry. Choose a vendor who has experience working with organizations like yours and offers customized solutions that align with your long-term goals. Implementing best practices such as regular backups, maintaining security protocols, monitoring network performance, upgrading software applications will also contribute significantly to improving productivity while minimizing downtime.

Choosing the Right Provider

Choosing the right provider of managed IT services is crucial for organizations that want to reduce operational complexity and stay competitive. The first step in choosing a provider should be evaluating your organization’s specific needs and requirements. This assessment will help you determine what areas of your IT infrastructure require support, such as network security, backup and disaster recovery solutions, hardware maintenance or software licensing.

After identifying your needs, it’s important to research potential providers and evaluate their experience in providing similar services to other clients. Look for a service provider who has experience working with businesses similar to yours or within the same industry. Check their track record by seeking feedback from previous clients about their overall level of satisfaction with the managed IT services provided.

To make an informed decision when selecting a managed IT service provider, also consider factors such as scalability, availability of technical expertise within the team, quality customer support and pricing models offered. It’s essential that you partner with a reputable service provider that can offer your organization proactive approaches towards managing technology risks while ensuring high levels of system uptime to avoid disruptions during critical business operations.

Conclusion

Utilizing managed IT services helps companies refocus on their core competencies while allowing for scalability and growth. Organizations no longer need to worry about maintaining costly infrastructure or hiring specialized personnel to manage it. Instead, they can rely on their partner MSPs’ extensive expertise and experience to keep up with technological advancements while avoiding unexpected downtime.

from: https://reciprocaltech.com/blog/reduce-operational-complexity-with-managed-it-services/

Tip of the Week: How to Turn Your Excel Sheets into Heat Maps

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My team and I are big fans of a good spreadsheet, just as a simple way of organizing and contextualizing your data. Therefore, we’re all for sharing some neat ways that you can make these visualizations even easier to communicate your findings through.

Let’s talk about how you can make your Excel spreadsheets into a heat map, giving you this kind of increased visibility.

What is a Heat Map?

Simply put, a heat map is a way to represent data in a way that quickly communicates the deeper context that the data provides.

Think of it this way…let’s say that you had a collection of data that you wanted to summarize in such a way that a quick glance could give you a pretty good impression of what the data was trying to communicate. A heat map is one of many ways that Excel allows you to do so.

Let’s run through a scenario to demonstrate how to use this feature.

Maybe You Wanted to Be Sure that Your Team Was Using Their Available Time Off…

Let’s say that you had a team of 15, who were all accumulating paid time off. Now, there are various reasons you should want your team to use their available time, and that you’d want a way to keep track of where your team was concerning that goal.

Microsoft Excel gives you an easy option. In whichever workbook you want to use to keep track of this data, create a list of your employees’ names and the number of vacation days each has taken. 

Highlighting the names and their number of days taken, select Format from the menu and click into Conditional formatting.

Once the Conditional format rules window opens, select + Add another rule and then select Color scale.

You’ll then see your selected range defined in the Apply to range box, with Format rules available for you to fill out. Under Minpoint, make sure Min value is selected, and select the color that will best communicate to you what this means. For this example, we’re trying to determine which employees have used the least number of their available days, so we’ll go with red, as it’s a bit of a red flag. Under Maxpoint, do the same, but select Max value and select a different color. Since these employees are the ones who are using enough of their vacation days, we’ll use green.

For Midpoint, use the number between the highest and the lowest. For our example, we’ll estimate that this value is 7.

Click Done, and you should see quite a nice and legible result, making it clear who needs to use more of their time and who is in good shape.

Of course, you can use this trick for a huge assortment of data types and purposes.

Hopefully, this little trick will give you a bit of utility moving forward. Don’t forget to consistently check back for more useful tidbits, and remember that you can always lean on the team at Reciprocal Technologies for the technology assistance your team will need.

from: https://reciprocaltech.com/blog/tip-of-the-week-how-to-turn-your-excel-sheets-into-heat-maps/

Automation Is a Vital Part of Running a Modern Business

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Automation continues to play a major role in business operations, but some companies have more trouble than others with implementation. Most businesses just don’t think out their strategy before implementing it, so we wanted to bring to your attention what businesses tend to automate, as well as the tools used to do so.

What Do Businesses Tend to Automate?

Businesses will generally assign people to perform tasks that they think are in the company’s best interest, but the act of automation allows businesses to have these same tasks carried out by technology, thus freeing the human resources of a business to spend their efforts elsewhere. Automation is introduced into an infrastructure in an attempt to automate time-consuming tasks and allow employees to spend more time on tasks that better the company in other ways, like creating better products or better experiences.

Let’s go over some of the ways that businesses automate processes:

Marketing

Businesses want to make sure their products are seen by potential customers. To this end, marketing uses automation for several tasks:

• Social media posts: Social media helps businesses connect with potential customers and advertise their products. This is made easier through automation. The right content management system can push content to social media platforms when it is published, allowing companies to remove steps from the equation and post more frequently.
• Website traffic analysis: Google Analytics is a great tool that can help you with automated traffic analysis that gets delivered to the ones who need the reports the most. This keeps people from spending too much time fixating on data when they can instead be working on something else.
• E-commerce or event registration: Automation tools that can send information through email, like event information, products, services, or offerings, are extremely helpful for connecting with users. The right automation service can contact countless consumers at once, making your life much easier as a result.

Finance

Finance is imperative for any business to stay operational, so you can take advantage of these two technologies to make it much easier and more efficient to manage:

• Payroll: Payroll can be expensive and time-consuming, but with automated tools, you can take payroll away from HR while making sure that everyone gets paid on time.
• Accounts receivable: Businesses that want to make sure they get paid on time (at least most of the time) will want to have an automated invoice system that can notify users when they have a bill due or an outstanding balance.

Administration

Automation also makes running a business easier than ever, including the following administrative tasks:

• Data backup: Having data backups is crucial to your business’ longevity, and a modern BDR (Backup and Disaster Recovery) device will allow you to streamline the process, from backup to restoration.
• Email management: If your staff get too many emails and are exhausted from managing them all, you can set up automated filters and folders to help them stay ahead of it all.
• Task management: Platforms that automatically track time spent on tasks and scheduling can be remarkably helpful for companies that want to streamline processes.

Reciprocal Technologies can equip your business with all the tools it needs to succeed. To learn more, call us today at (317) 759-3972.

from: https://reciprocaltech.com/blog/automation-is-a-vital-part-of-running-a-modern-business/

Should You Consider Upgrading Your Workstations to a New OS?

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The operating system is the most important piece of software in computing. It is the bridge between the user and the resources needed to get work done. Many businesses make technology purchases and pay for support, so they don’t always know when is the right time to upgrade the OS on your organization’s computers. Let’s take a look at some of the variables you should consider to better understand when it is time to change the operating system on your employee workstations. 

You Have Frequent Performance Issues

As your technology ages, its ability to perform will dip. This has been true for the entire history of the personal computer. As your employees’ workstations get longer in the tooth, the software that once ran seamlessly will start to slow. Older workstations tend to lead to more performance issues, higher support costs, and lower employee productivity. This isn’t necessarily an OS issue, but if your computers can’t run your OS effectively, you’re going to have some unhappy employees and lower than expected productivity. 

OS Support Coming to an End

All good things come to an end, and that is no different in computing. Most businesses rely on their computing and if their OS is old, it probably doesn’t have the new features that newer OSs bring, but that’s not the huge issue. The major issue is that once the OS is no longer supported it won’t get the security updates that are necessary to give your workstations the security they need. If you don’t update your workstations and continue using the OS with extended security updates, it will cost you a pretty penny to use the same old computers. 

Check Your Compatibility

New tools are more resource intensive than ever before and if you are actively adding to your organization’s software roster, you will want machines that can handle the programs you need. Conversely, some programs won’t run on newer OSs, so you have to do a full assessment of your current and future OS capabilities to ensure that you don’t run into a situation where you are paying for software that does no good for your business. 

If your business is in the market for an IT refresh the IT professionals at Reciprocal Technologies can help. Give us a call today at (317) 759-3972 to talk to one of our knowledgeable professionals about your organization’s technology.

from: https://reciprocaltech.com/blog/should-you-consider-upgrading-your-workstations-to-a-new-os/

Tip of the Week: Customize the Size of Your Desktop Icons

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Your desktop can often become cluttered with files and programs while you’re going about your workday, and those files and programs will all have desktop icons associated with them. It’s a good practice to clean it up from time to time, but you can get immediate relief from the clutter by adjusting the size of the icons.

Why Adjust Your Icon Size?

Adjusting your icons lets you see them better, particularly if you have poor eyesight or you have a desktop background that interferes with your ability to see them. You can make your icons larger to compensate for this difficulty.

On the other hand, however, you can make the icons smaller to make more space for things on your desktop; however, it should be mentioned that this will really only perpetuate the problem further by giving you more space to store icons. Be careful when storing files on your desktop so that it doesn’t get too busy for your liking.

How You Can Adjust Your Desktop Icon Size

The default size for your Windows desktop icons is Medium, so you have a couple of options to choose from. You can right-click anywhere on the desktop that isn’t already preoccupied with an icon and use the View option to adjust the size. You can select from Large, Medium, or Small icons, so just pick whichever seems right for you.

If you are using Windows 11, however, you have some other options available. You can hold down the Ctrl key and use the scroll wheel on the mouse to make icons bigger or smaller according to what you require. This includes making them bigger or smaller than the predetermined sizes.

It’s as simple as that—now you can adjust the size of your icons to your liking. For more great tips, stay tuned to our blog.

from: https://reciprocaltech.com/blog/tip-of-the-week-customize-the-size-of-your-desktop-icons/

4 Security Topics to Keep In Mind During the Onboarding Process for New Hires

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All companies have policies in place which govern how their employees use their technology, so it makes sense that any new employees should be onboarded in accordance with these expectations. Let’s go over how you can make sure your new employees know and understand your organization’s policies as they relate to business technology.

Data Management

How your organization manages its technology has just as much to do with your employees as it does with your central infrastructure. You’ll need to ensure that your new hires know how and where to store information, as failing to do so could lead to files being misplaced, lost, or mishandled with potentially devastating consequences.

Removable Media

Removable media used to be much more common, but thanks to the cloud and network-attached storage protocols, it’s not nearly as useful… or as secure. If employees use external media sources to transfer data, they should be using one supplied by the company, period. Other removable media devices should stay off the company network.

Internet of Things

New employees will bring with them plenty of connected devices to the workplace, like fitness trackers, smart watches, and so on. It makes sense that you have a policy in place to govern these devices, and especially one that is easy to understand and visible to your new employees. These devices are endpoints, just like computers, and they could potentially be used to find a hole in your company’s defenses.

Cybersecurity

Whenever you have an employee who first joins your team, you’ll have to educate them on how to go about their duties in a safe and secure manner. This includes online resources, email, and even social media. It will always be risky whenever there is an Internet connection, so emphasize that all it takes is one simple oversight for even the most seasoned employee to fall prey to a phishing attack. Here are a couple of ways you can educate your team to understand cybersecurity in the workplace.

• Understand how phishing attacks work: Phishing attacks are the biggest threat to businesses, as they skirt your security measures to target your users—a much more vulnerable point of entry for your network. 
• Understand the idea behind authorization: Authentication methods like strong, unique passwords, in combination with multi-factor authentication tools, will be crucial to protecting your business. Educate your new hires on what these terms mean and why they are so important.
• Understand the dangers of unauthorized software: Any solutions used by your team should be authorized and approved by your IT department. New hires should know that they should not be installing or using applications that are not authorized and deemed safe to use.

Remember that employees play a vital role in protecting your organization from threats of all kinds. Take the initiative today and get in touch with Reciprocal Technologies. We can help train your team and equip your organization with the tools it needs to protect itself. Just reach out to us at (317) 759-3972.

from: https://reciprocaltech.com/blog/4-security-topics-to-keep-in-mind-during-the-onboarding-process-for-new-hires/

IT Has Changed and Your Business Can’t Afford to Lag Behind

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IT support is crucial to the success of any company in today’s fast-paced technology-focused business environment. Some organizations have an internal IT administrator, while others choose to rely on outsourced resources. Both of these are perfectly acceptable responses to the problem at hand, which is guaranteeing you have access to IT resources to keep your business running effectively.

Let’s Provide Some Context

Businesses using technology have historically had a couple of different options available to them. They could hire someone to handle their technology maintenance and management, they could wait until the technology breaks before taking any action, or they could rely on their current resources to address issues as they pop up. Let’s look at each of them and why they all contribute to the need for more affordable outsourced IT support.

Internal IT Resources

Many businesses invest in internal IT resources, like internal technicians who can handle any and all issues related to technology. This is a great investment for businesses that can afford to add another salary to the books, as the internal resource will generally always be there to help. The average IT technician makes over $50,000 per year, but those with more specialized skill sets or certifications could demand a much higher rate of compensation. Suffice it to say, many organizations cannot afford this option, and even then, only one individual managing an entire infrastructure can be difficult at best.

Break-Fix Technology Maintenance

Believe it or not, this was the preferred way of handling technology maintenance for quite some time. Technology eventually breaks down, and when it does, it needs to be repaired. Rather than take proactive measures and steps to keep breakdowns from happening, it was seen as more cost-effective to simply address problems when they occur. However, the return on investment here just doesn’t add up, as broken technology leads to other hidden costs, like downtime. Remember that any time your business isn’t operating as intended can be considered downtime, and as such, quite costly to your bottom line.

Relying on Employee Troubleshooting

This is a potentially troublesome practice, as it puts your staff—almost certainly untrained in how to handle IT challenges—in charge of their own problems, which could lead to downtime, frustration, or worse. This set of businesses is more likely than others to experience downtime and other technology problems that could get in the way of operations.

Managed IT Solutions are Just Plain Better

Let’s face it: managed IT services are just a better solution for most businesses. 

Managed IT is a model that can effectively replace an in-house IT infrastructure, or work to supplement current resources, in an effort to keep IT solutions as effective as possible. This is made possible through remote monitoring and management tools that can assist with solving issues if and when they occur, thus eliminating the downtime associated with problems while you wait for someone to address them.

Proactive IT solutions are great for businesses that want to get the most value out of their IT assets. Here are some ways your organization benefits from managed IT:

• Expert technicians: You’ll get the same level of support and skill from a managed IT vendor, but for a fraction of the cost. You’ll work with a team of trained and trusted technicians who know how to help your business get value out of its technology.
• Budgetable monthly payments: You know exactly what your IT help will cost you. No surprise fees or unexpected costs here.
• Vendor management: Managing vendors can be exhausting, but with the help of an outsourced team, you won’t have to worry about all that. A managed IT team can be your single point of contact for all of your vendor needs.
• Backup and disaster recovery (BDR): BDR gives businesses the ability to bounce back from any horrible situation with confidence that their infrastructure is redundant and protected.
• Hardware support: If our technicians can’t resolve the problem remotely, you can count on dedicated hardware support as quickly as possible according to our service level agreement.

In short, managed IT is designed to make technology maintenance and management easier, more accessible, and more affordable for businesses. You can count on us to solve your technology challenges. To learn more, call us today at (317) 759-3972.

from: https://reciprocaltech.com/blog/it-has-changed-and-your-business-cant-afford-to-lag-behind/

What is Downtime Costing You?

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Business owners try to avoid downtime like the plague, but it’s often a challenge to do so. The impact of downtime can be devastating for even the most stable business, and this is even more so the case when you bring profits and bottom lines into view. We’ll take a look at how you can calculate the cost of a downtime event.

It’s critical to keep in mind that downtime can have various impacts on your business, all of which are exclusively bad for your organization. In terms of customer relationships, there are two major ones:

• Customer dissatisfaction and displeasure
• Decreased loyalty to your business and brand

You need revenue to make your business work. Downtime affects your ability to make revenue. Period. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. Your business will also experience the following directly rather than through your customer base:

• Cost of recovering, repairing, and/or replacing IT solutions
• Lost or wasted materials
• Compliance and regulatory issues
• Repercussions to your supply chain
• Overtime costs to make up for lost time so deadlines can be met
• Decreased employee morale and increased stress
• Lost internal productivity and the costs of still reimbursing your employees

How to Successfully Calculate Downtime

Calculating downtime can be a bit tricky, as it requires you to estimate the utilization percentage of each employee and the amount they use the technology that is affected by an outage. You then need to multiply this number by each of the employees’ salaries per hour. Multiple employees with the same salary grade and utilization percentage can then be used by multiplying this by the number of employees affected by downtime. This gives you your total lost productivity per hour.

Thankfully, calculating recovery costs and intangible costs (or the costs associated with damage to your reputation) is much more simple. All it takes is some simple addition. If you combine all of the costs detailed above, you can easily calculate the total hourly cost of the incident.

This number will shock you and should immediately serve to reinforce any thoughts you have about the amount of lost revenue and opportunity that results from downtime.

Reciprocal Technologies can help your business reduce downtime through our bevy of proactive IT services. We know how to keep your technology up and running. To learn more, give us a call today at (317) 759-3972.

from: https://reciprocaltech.com/blog/what-is-downtime-costing-you/

Ensuring Your Organization Meets Compliance Standards

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Protecting your clients’ and employees’ personal and financial data has to be a consideration for every single business. Not only do you have a responsibility to protect this data, you also may have to do so to remain in compliance with regulations mandated by governments, industry organizations, and even your own business. With data privacy becoming a growing concern, we thought it would be useful to discuss the basics of compliance a bit in this month’s newsletter. 

Type of Regulations

Business regulations typically fall under two categories. They are:

• Government Mandates – These are regulations brought forth by some form of government. This can be from the federal government, state government, local government, or even a foreign administrative body (e.g. the General Data Protection Regulation enacted by the EU). Most government mandates are focused on the protection of data through network security and effort. Many of them demand regular audits and reporting to show signs of compliance. 
• Internal Mandates – With data being so important nowadays, many businesses are setting their own regulations to ensure that their policies, processes, and procedures are working to protect their digital assets. This includes some common policies such as:
  • Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or Mobile Device Management policies to control which devices can access your network.
  • Employees that are looking to access a company’s network remotely must do so using a secure, virtual private network or VPN.

Some other considerations that organizations should make when thinking of compliance include;

Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery

Most government IT compliance mandates are going to require some form of data redundancy insofar as it is extremely important to any continuity efforts. Our backup and disaster recovery solution is a great resource for any organization that is looking to protect its digital resources from loss. Another important consideration is a roster of all technology including every piece of hardware, software, and users that have access to which technology. 

Sufficiently Monitored IT

Most regulations will call for some type of oversight of a computing infrastructure and network to ensure that they are doing everything they can to protect the data they store. One of the best parts of using a managed service provider is that our technicians are monitoring and managing networks around the clock, so if your business only operates from 8-to-5 each day, you can be confident that your network and hardware is protected at all times. 

Regular Audits 

Testing your business’ network and infrastructure for vulnerabilities is one of the most important functions that will keep your business compliant. Most regulations are steadfast in that network and infrastructure has to be thoroughly tested regularly. At Reciprocal Technologies, our technicians frequently do vulnerability assessments on networks to ensure that they are strong and up to the demands of regulatory mandates. One of the best ways to complete this is through penetration testing. 

No matter what the requirements your business operates under, you can be sure that the IT professionals at Reciprocal Technologies can help you get and stay compliant. Give us a call today at (317) 759-3972 to learn more. 

from: https://reciprocaltech.com/blog/ensuring-your-organization-meets-compliance-standards/

Are You a Cybercrime Target?

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We focus a lot of our attention on securing our clients’ computing infrastructures from the large amount of threats that are out there. We look to legitimately protect the entire network and infrastructure with our tools and expertise. The hackers, on the other hand, understand that they are more apt to be successful if they target certain users of your organization. Let’s look at a potential profile of someone that a savvy hacker would like to target.

What are the True Motivations of Hackers?

The first thing you have to ascertain when looking at what hackers look for is what motivates them. Typically, the motivation for hackers is financial gain. In fact, according to some studies, up to 85 percent of all Internet-based crime is financially motivated, so it stands to reason that any security strategy you decide on will have to take that into account. 

Of course, theft of money is not the only way that hackers can hurt your organization’s pocketbook. A successful (for them) hack can lead to malware infestation (including ransomware), prolonged downtime, and loss of customer reverence. This can not only hurt your pocketbook immediately, it can keep your organization from creating the relationships needed for sustainable growth. 

How Do Hackers Choose Their Targets?

You’d think with the amount of phishing attacks that are sent out every day that there are just indiscriminate attacks that are looking to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. That’s not the case at all. Most hackers do their own research and due diligence before setting out targeting the organizations and users they end up targeting. This research typically includes:

• Scouring the Dark Web – Hackers will look to the Dark Web to find places to target. Studies have shown that over half of the sites on the Dark Web support some kind of illegal activity. On the Dark Web hackers will gain access to accounts and data, and can sell off their spoils to shady buyers. 
• Cash-Rich Businesses – A lot of hacking is putting themselves in a good position to get money and data. This means taking money from organizations that have it. Most hackers that are looking for ways to steal money will target workers that work at high-revenue companies.
• Small or New Businesses – On the other side of the coin, with businesses that are new to hanging out their shingle just trying to get everything in order, hackers tend to take advantage of that inherent chaos. 

What Industries are Most Targeted?

If you work in some industries, the data that you work with is much more valuable than others. Let’s take a look at the most commonly hacked industries to give you a good idea how much demand there is for your business’ data.

• Healthcare – The most frequently-hacked businesses work in the healthcare sector. In fact, nine out of every ten hospitals have been victims of cyberattacks in the past three years. That’s a ridiculous coverage rate. Most cyberattacks in healthcare manifest as malware attacks (including ransomware) and can cost providers millions of dollars.
• Nonprofits – You’d think, with the title of nonprofit, that there would be little demand for hackers to try and infiltrate this market, but it is one of the most hacked markets there is. The reasons are that, despite their name, they hold a fair amount of valuable data (such as fundraising data). They also presumably don’t have the capital to invest in high-end cybersecurity and are therefore low-hanging fruit for hackers. 
• Finance and Insurance – Finance and Insurance companies are basically the opposite of nonprofits. They hold financial resources as well as extraordinarily valuable data.

If your industry doesn’t fall into these categories, it doesn’t mean you are out of the woods, virtually any business can be a target, and smaller businesses are just as susceptible.

What You Need to Do to Protect Your Organization from Hackers

Obviously, you can never be 100% confident that your organization won’t become a target for hackers, but you can do some of the following things to ensure that, if you do become a target, you are prepared:

• Cybersecurity training – Nowadays, there are platforms that can teach and test your workers so you know they can identify phishing messages, create and store secure passwords, and do the things necessary to keep your network and infrastructure secure. 
• Deploy tools – Today, there are a lot of security tools that your business can use to keep unauthorized individuals off of your network and your infrastructure free from threats. 
• Data backup – Having your data and applications reliably backed up can give you some insurance should your network or data be exposed. 
• Monitoring – One of the best ways to ensure that you are able to mitigate threats is to constantly monitor the network. 

At Reciprocal Technologies, we can help your organization create the policies, procedures, and training strategies needed to keep your business up and running and your network and infrastructure free from threats. Give our IT security experts a call today at (317) 759-3972 to learn more. 

from: https://reciprocaltech.com/blog/are-you-a-cybercrime-target/

All Organizations Need to Take Ransomware Seriously

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The headlines hyping up ransomware as a dangerous threat are not exaggerating. It really is as bad as it seems, although there is often a fair amount of embellished information on what ransomware exactly is and what it does. Let’s take some time to review what ransomware is and how your business can handle it in an appropriate way.

Ransomware is a Common Threat That Needs to be Taken Seriously

If you need a statistic to prove that ransomware is on the rise, consider the fact that it has grown by 13% over the past few years, and that there are 1.7 million attacks (an average of 19 per second) happening every day. Ransomware is remarkably effective, so this should come as no surprise.

In 2022, approximately 20% of breaches could be attributed to a ransomware attack.

No matter how you look at it, this number is sizable and of some concern. You should be prepared to handle ransomware attacks against your business, and so should your employees.

In case you need a refresher, ransomware is a form of malicious software that can infect a system and encrypt data found within it. The attacker will then demand a payment, or ransom, in exchange for its safe return. In many cases, the decryption key is never provided, even in the case of payment. Ransomware is often bundled together with other threats and cybercrimes, and is often stolen in addition to encrypted. In cases like this, attacks can extort money with greater odds of success, as they can threaten to leak the stolen data online or sell it for additional profit.

It’s more important than ever for your team to understand the dangers presented by ransomware, so let’s go over how you can address these challenges.

Identifying and Addressing Ransomware

The easiest way to handle ransomware is to keep yourself from coming into contact with it in the first place. To this end, you should teach your team how to identify the signs that they might be under fire from a threat. Social engineering is a popular way to spread ransomware and other threats, as it takes advantage of the human element of your defenses—your employees—rather than trying to break through your security measures. Users might accidentally download infected attachments and files, thereby causing a huge problem for your network.

Furthermore, you need to be ready for situations where your data infrastructure is not accessible. Be sure to maintain and routinely test an isolated backup of your data, just on the off-chance a ransomware attack is successful. You can thereby minimize the damage done by the attack and potentially restore a clean copy of your data.

We can help you prepare to deal with ransomware.

To learn more about ransomware and how to protect your business, contact us today at (317) 759-3972.

from: https://reciprocaltech.com/blog/all-organizations-need-to-take-ransomware-seriously/

Tip of the Week: Protect Your Business with Strong Passwords

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The prevalence of technology in even mundane, everyday tasks means that more scams are out there to take advantage of unsuspecting victims. Hackers will do everything they can to take advantage of vulnerabilities in your systems, as well as cracks in your employees’ technological know-how. One way you can take the fight to them is by reinforcing appropriate password security measures.

What Makes a Password Secure?

We want to share some of the best practices for password security that are often overlooked in the face of convenience:

• Complexity matters: Passwords should be complex strings of characters that include lower and upper-case letters, numbers, and symbols.
• Length matters, too: With more characters to include, hackers will have a harder time guessing your passwords.
• Consider passphrases as an alternative: Passphrases make for more complicated passwords. Start with three unrelated words, then add in special characters to make them nice and secure.
• Use different passwords whenever possible: You should never reuse passwords if you can help it. After all, one stolen password could turn into multiple compromised accounts if you aren’t careful.

These tips are a solid place to start with your password security, but you can make things even better and more secure with the right technology solutions in place.

Build a Better Password Security Policy

There are a couple of specific measures that should be implemented to achieve maximum password security.

We recommend you turn on multi-factor authentication for any accounts which allow it, which should be most of them at this stage. This provides an extra layer of security which makes it more unlikely a hacker can break into any of your accounts, as they effectively need not one, but two keys to gain access to them. A good multi-factor authentication requirement should use some combination of the following:

• Biometrics – Something you are.
• Device/Keys – Something you have.
• Password/PIN – Something you know.

Password management also makes password security much more effective, as you can store your passwords in an encrypted vault where they will be kept safe for when they are needed. Password managers also tend to come with built-in password generators, making complying with password security protocols much easier.

Reciprocal Technologies can introduce the best tools on the market to your business. Does this sound like something you want and need? Be sure to take the next step by calling us today at (317) 759-3972.

from: https://reciprocaltech.com/blog/tip-of-the-week-protect-your-business-with-strong-passwords/

You’ve Been the Victim of a Cyberattack: What Do You Do Now?

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If you find yourself in a position where your business has been hacked, it can be devastating for productivity and efficiency, not to mention the security of your company’s assets—personnel or otherwise. It’s quite easy for even seasoned professionals to expose themselves to these attacks, so how should you respond if you’re the one who has been hacked? That’s what we’re going to discuss today.

Determine How You Got Hacked

There are plenty of ways you could have gotten hacked. For one, there could be a vulnerability within your operating system that led to a system infiltration. Someone could sabotage your efforts at security from the inside. You could have clicked on the wrong link or installed malware on your device. At the end of the day, it’s hard at the moment to determine the cause of the hack; all you know is that you have been compromised somehow, and you have to take action to prevent further damage.

What Should You Do?

Once you’ve figured out you have been hacked, you need to take appropriate action. Here are two ways you can keep a hacking attack from creating too much pandemonium for your organization.

Change Your Passwords

If you have access to your account, then the first thing you should do is change your passwords and give anyone who has infiltrated your account the boot. This will often be enough to prevent further damage from being done. Just keep in mind that if you’re one of those people who use the same password for everything, you’ll have to change the password everywhere you currently use it (and set up different passwords for each account while you’re at it).

Your passwords should be strong and backed up by multi-factor authentication. If you use a password manager, you can more effectively take advantage of strong passwords for maximum account security.

Ask for Help

The fact of the matter is that it’s really hard for people to determine how they were hacked in the first place, making it also quite challenging to take action. You’ll want to get in touch with your IT security resources, if they exist, to help you figure out what went wrong and what you can do about it. Furthermore, you should take preventative measures for the next time you encounter situations like this, like training your staff or yourself, and implementing innovative security tools that can keep threats at bay.

If you think you have become the victim of a hacking attack, don’t hesitate to call the professionals at Reciprocal Technologies. Our dedicated team of technicians will walk you through the process of recovering from such an attack and help you navigate this stressful situation. To learn more, call us today at (317) 759-3972.

from: https://reciprocaltech.com/blog/youve-been-the-victim-of-a-cyberattack-what-do-you-do-now/

Avoid Ransomware at All Costs

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It sincerely seems that every other day features news of another cyberattack, and it isn’t uncommon for the word “ransomware” to be tossed around an awful lot. Let’s take a few moments to go over—or review—what ransomware is, and arguably more importantly, how to handle any you or your team encounters.

Ransomware is an Unfortunately (But Understandably) Common Tactic

Ransomware has increased by 13% over the past few years, with 1.7 million attacks happening each day (that’s an average of 19 every second, by the way). Unfortunately, this only makes sense once you consider how effective ransomware is.

In 2022, approximately 20% of breaches could be attributed to a ransomware attack.

That’s a pretty significant number, which makes it all the more important that your team members know how to deal with a ransomware attack.

Ransomware, just as a refresher, is a form of malware that infects a system and encrypts the data contained within, demanding payment in exchange for returned access—although it is very common that a decryption key is never provided, even if payment changes hands. Ransomware is also commonly paired with additional cybercrimes as well. Oftentimes, data will be stolen as well as encrypted, allowing the attacker not only to extort money through the initial infection, but also demand further payments for them not to leak the data they’ve stolen. Alternatively, they could very well just sell the data they’ve stolen for others to abuse.

This makes it more crucial that your entire team understands the dangers that ransomware poses, and what they need to do to prevent it from being a problem.

How to Spot and Mitigate Ransomware

First off, it’s important to avoid contracting ransomware in the first place, so you and your team need to be aware of the risks each day brings. Social engineering is a common way that ransomware is introduced to a targeted system, through malicious downloads and attachments. Educating your team to keep an eye out for potential threats will help you to prevent your infrastructure from being infected.

However, since infection means that your data will be rendered inaccessible, you need to be prepared for that outcome. As a result, you also need to maintain a comprehensive, up-to-date, and (most critically) isolated backup of your data for safekeeping. That way—should a ransomware attack successfully strike—you have the option to minimize the damage done and restore a clean copy of your data.

We can help you prepare to deal with ransomware.

Give us a call at (317) 759-3972 today to learn more.

from: https://reciprocaltech.com/blog/avoid-ransomware-at-all-costs/