IT Articles

Our technology specialists share their in-depth IT knowledge and expertise.

Freight Forwarder Keeps Business Moving Through Cloud Upgrade

Importing and exporting goods involves a maze of complex trade and border security regulations that require careful attention, timeliness and accuracy. Fortunately, US Customs forms and processes are now all electronic. So for a company like Export Import Services, a robust and reliable IT environment is mission-critical: without it, they can’t operate.

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Opening Our Network Security Playbook Part 5

USER EDUCATION – Some of the most difficult attacks to mitigate leverage social engineering where the bad guys are taking advantage of people’s good will. The most common example of this is a scenario where the attackers will call people at random and claim that they are a legitimate IT company.

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Opening Our Network Security Playbook Part 4

LIMIT END USER RIGHTS – When I get the opportunity to speak at industry events I talk about our security best practices a good amount. The concept of running the users that we support without administrative level privileges definitely raises eyebrows. In some cases this can create more work for us because our end users […]

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Opening Our Network Security Playbook Part 3

PATCHES, PATCHES and MORE PATCHES – Over the years we have refined our patch management strategy many times. It is very important that you have a strong strategy that involves testing patch deployments for issues and auditing the deployment. Making sure the operating systems that you are supporting are up to date is an important […]

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Opening Our Network Security Playbook Part 2

Here is the next installment of our best practices for the month of April: GATEWAY DEFENSES – The security measures that we deploy on the gateway level serve as our first line of defense against the bad guys. We consider this multi-tier approach absolutely mandatory in our client networks.

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Opening Our Network Security Playbook

With all the ransomware and security exploits running around these days, we have been very busy strengthening our defenses. For the month of April I am committed to sharing some of our best practices around network security to raise awareness. Here goes: STANDARDIZATION – We are big believers of standardization for many reasons.

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How Thorough Onboarding Guarantees Long-Term Success

Selecting an IT managed services provider is a lot like buying a house. When you purchase a home, you take a leap of faith. While the home inspector covers the major stuff, it’s not until you move in that you find the front door sticks in humid weather, the hot water heater is inadequate to support three showers or the rushed tile job in the basement was done improperly and the tiles are all cracking. Enough small issues can add up to big problems down the road, severely impacting the value of your investment.

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It Pays to Be Selective About Clients

Sales is a critical part of any business. Even a business that isn’t looking for rapid growth needs a steady flow of potential new clients to keep up with rising costs, replace clients that aren’t succeeding and help keep staff engaged and up-to-date.

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Should Your IT Provider Assume Responsibility for Mitigating a Ransomware Attack?

It’s not a virus, but ransomware is an epidemic anyway, taking company after company to their knees for days at a time and costing hundreds or thousands – especially for those paying the hackers. According to a report from McAfee, researchers saw more than 4 million samples of ransomware in the second quarter of 2015, including 1.2 million that were new, and expects those instances to grow in 2016.

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