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Showing posts from May, 2019

BYOD: Why is This Concept So Attractive to Employees?

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BYOD: Why is This Concept So Attractive to Employees? Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD, to work was an idea a few years ago that is becoming a reality very fast. To use your personal smartphone, tablet or laptop for work seems increasingly natural. Employees are embracing this concept without any serious reservations. As more and more business activity becomes technology driven, to have electronic gadgets right by your side all the time make sense. According to a survey conducted by Logicalis about 75% of employees in high growth markets such as Brazil and Russia and 44% in developed markets bring their own devices to work. Let's examine all the factors causing people to want to use their own devices at work. Familiarity: This may be the most relevant reason for someone to bring their own tablet or laptop to work. It may be the operating system, web browser, or other apps on their devices that they know so well and feel comfortable using. Convenience: Companies have been pr

VoIP: A New Dimension in Communication for SMBs

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VoIP: A New Dimension in Communication for SMBs Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP is about a decade old technology that is gaining popularity among individual subscribers and businesses. In conventional systems, phone calls are made using telephones or handsets that are connected by phone cables. These calls are routed using the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) carrying a signal from one telephone to the other. But instead of connecting telephones to the phone cables through phone jacks in the walls, VoIP uses the internet where phones can be connected to broadband devices, adapters or PCs using broadband. With this system, voice is converted into a digital signal and carried over the Internet. Let's take a look at all the options that are available to make calls using VoIP. Make Calls from a PC: Using this platform a call can be placed from your PC. Your computer is connected to the Internet via broadband. A specially designed software app allows you to place and recei

SMBs: It is Hackers v. You - Don't Let Them Score

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SMBs: It is Hackers v. You - Don't Let Them Score Selling stolen IDs and other personal data is a lucrative trade for hackers. They are always looking for sources where vital information is stored. As a small to midsize business you store your client's personal information, collected from different sources, on your computers and servers. Your Point-of-sale (PoS) terminal and some website transactions can be completed by use of electronic banking, credit cards or debit cards only. Your customers have to key-in their pins or passwords to make payments. That information has to be saved. Also, depending on the kind of services or products you provide, you may be collecting Social Security numbers, addresses, driver's license numbers and DOBs of your clients. Information that personal is as important as it can get. Any source of that information is like a gold mine for a hacker. All this means only one thing for you: A data security nightmare. Here are the channels hackers can u

Business Disaster: What Threatens Small Businesses the Most?

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Business Disaster: What Threatens Small Businesses the Most? There are many threats to the integrity of a small business, and not all of them are as dramatic as a cyberattack or a hurricane. Every small business needs to do a risk assessment to determine all the threats that exist that could bring harm. External threats are the ones that get the the most attention. These can be big snowstorms or hurricanes that bring down power lines and network connections. They can also be man-made. A power outage due to a grid failure, or an act of terror. Also in this category are phishing scams, cyber attacks and data theft from external sources. All of these are the ones that make the evening network news, and every business needs to plan how to handle them. However, there are some internal threats that can be just as serious, but are far less attention getting. For example, human error. Stolen data can occur because someone forgot about changing their passcode, or they left a smartphone containi

Data Protection and Bring Your Own Device to Work

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Data Protection and Bring Your Own Device to Work BYOD refers to a firm's policy of allowing employees to use their own personal phones, tablets and laptops for all their work applications.This is a pretty common policy, and it has many benefits, but it brings along risks. How are you addressing these risks? Here are some of the issues raised by BYOD A lost device - If you issue company phones, you have the ability to remotely wipe the unit clean if it is lost or stolen. With employee's personal devices, do you still have that ability. If not, your data is at risk. Software updates - Is the employee responsible for updating all the software and virus protection programs on their own devices? If that responsibility transfers to them, you are at the mercy of their willingness to keep track of such tedious tasks. If you accept responsibility for it, do you have the in-house staff to handle all the extra work? Back ups - with data being entered on many different devi