Author Archives: Maria Koblish

There are times when you, as a business owner, might receive unsolicited emails from organizations asking you to try a product or asking for your input on something. More likely than not, the one responsible used data scraping to get your contact information. If it’s used appropriately, data scraping can be an effective marketing tool, but it can also be utilized by scammers to make your life miserable.

What is Data Scraping?

Data, or web scraping, is when you export data from a web page to a spreadsheet or local file. Chances are that this is the method you’ve used when taking data off the Internet or a web page. Basically, it’s as simple as data transfer, taking it and moving it to a different location in the form of a file on your computer. This file can be manipulated and adjusted as needed. It’s not the best method of transferring data, but it’s useful for certain situations.

How Can It Be Used?

Here are some of the ways an average business might use data scraping:

• Comparing the costs of various goods, products, or services in one single document.
• Conducting market research to generate new leads; this is primarily for public data sources, as depending on the location, data scraping of directories, websites, or social media can be illegal.
• Researching web content for the purposes of building up your business.

There are other uses for data scraping, but this should give you a broad general understanding of how it might be used by businesses. It can help you find the best deal on a product, research your competitors, compile data from a web source, and so on. There are plenty of tools out there that can make the process easy and efficient—just get in touch with us and we can point you in the right direction.

What About Hackers?

Data scraping can be used by people for email harvesting, particularly when it comes to scammers and hackers. Many organizations house employee contact information in a publicly available directory on their websites. If someone can scrape this information, they can sell it to spammers and hackers, and you don’t need us to tell you that this information being used in spam and phishing campaigns is bad news. Plus, depending on the location, using this information for commercial purposes is illegal, and it leaves a bad taste in peoples’ mouths. This doesn’t stop scammers and spammers, though, so you’d best be on your guard.

We want to make sure that you stay apprised of the latest practices in business technology, so be sure to follow our blog! We cover interesting topics such as this, as well as other topics related to Managed IT Services, cybersecurity, and technology best practices.

Businesses are different than ever before and that means that their employees have to do things differently. What do we mean by this? Well, as companies have been toying with the notion of removing the restraints of traditional work and allowing a larger percentage of their staff to work remotely, it changes the strategies somewhat. Today, we’ll identify a couple of ways remote teams need to lean on their technology and two steps you can take to get significant contributions from collaborative platforms.

The Role Technology Plays in Remote Collaboration

Nowadays, every business uses some sort of information technology to complete the basic tasks that running a business demands. Whether that be just for payroll or to manage inventory, or if you utilize IT to run your entire business, understanding the value it has to your endeavor and how to get what you need out of it is pretty important. Rolling out a comprehensive collaboration suite and integrating tools that allow for additional collaboration makes businesses more secure.

Unfortunately, the days are long past where each person on your team is satisfied doing the same thing over and over and over again. In fact, most modern workers will be glad to allow computers to do a lot of the more mundane and repetitive work. This is exceedingly evident when you have a remote workforce. Remote workers tend to want to get right down to business, which is why reeling them in to ensure they are doing the things you need them to is important. Most businesses that follow this model need to rethink how they are deploying their technology dollars and ask if they are doing the right things for their business.

What a Business Needs to Do to Get Collaborative Results from Remote Workers

There are plenty of things a business can do to help their remote workers align with their goals. Let’s go through a few of them:

• Provide equipment – Today computers are expensive and with no two people agreeing on the effectiveness of any individual collaboration tool, it can be problematic for a business to get remote workers on the same page. If you provide the equipment that a remote worker needs to do his/her job, it can standardize some things pretty quickly. Not only can you install the software you are using, you can also have an easier time managing these systems; even if they are being used far from the central office.
• Improve communication – Another great tip for the business that is dependent on remote workers is to build your communications platform with the remote worker in mind. Sure you are going to use email and the integrated tools that the system presents, but you can also enhance remote worker collaboration by using communications tools designed specifically for remote collaboration. Collaboration apps do a good job of doing so, but the most valuable is a Voice over Internet Protocol telephone system. VoIP can help you save money and give your remote teams the tools they need to communicate effectively.
• Be involved – This may have to be by proxy if you run a larger company, but it is important that remote teams understand that their managers and business leaders are committed to the program they have laid out and will do what needs to be done to reach a satisfactory outcome.

If your business relies on remote workers, oversaturating their day-to-day tasks with more minutiae isn’t going to work. Having a successful remote team dictates that you find a balance between laissez-faire leadership and micromanagement.

A Two-Step Process You Can Use to Improve Remote Team Collaboration

When we write about collaboration, we typically do so by telling you about the tools and services that are available. These tools really do make a massive difference and save a whole lot of time and effort for project managers, decision makers, and other administrators. On the other end of this strategy are remote workers; most of which work from the confines of their home. Let’s not pretend that it’s simple to get the best work out of someone who is constantly dealing with personal distractions. This is why it is essential to get your team—the people who are responsible for the success or failure of your projects or service delivery—involved in said project or service delivery strategy early.

You can do this pretty easily if you follow this two-step process:

Collaborative Vision for Product or Service Delivery

In order to get a remote team invested the way an in-house team would be, you need to communicate and allow feedback. Part of the collaborative process is getting ideas from people who actually work on a job. One of the best ways to do this is to ask your staff the following three questions:

1. How would you describe what we are trying to accomplish?
2. What are some of the problems you see with the project as it currently stands?
3. How would your approach differ from the one laid out?

By engaging the worker before the project commences, you not only give them the confidence that their opinion matters, you will get them thinking critically about the project that is being undertaken. Sure, ultimately your staff is going to have to do it the way that is best for your company, but getting the perspective of the people responsible for a successful conclusion to your project could not be more valuable.

You may want to split your team into groups and ask them to collaborate on individual adjustments they would like to make. This saves time over going through the whole process individually and will get better answers to the questions above. If you bring them back and identify the common issues presented by each group, you will have a pretty good idea of what concerns your team has. This is collaboration at its best.

Focus on the Problems

Once you have a list of group answers, you can pretty easily identify what problems your production or service delivery staff are considering. Then you can start collaborating on how to fix the would-be problems. For remote teams, you can do all of this with technology. Collaboration apps have been developed that integrate necessary software with a message board and instant messaging applications, making it a great tool for end-to-end collaboration, even if your teams are working from across the country. Integrations for these collaboration apps can include video messaging, collaborative production applications, and more.

Obviously, without technology, managing remote collaboration can get frustrating quickly. This is where Thrive comes in. We can set your business up with collaboration tools that are secure, reliable, and dynamic. If you would like to talk to one of our IT professionals about the technology behind impressive collaboration, contact Thrive today.

With over 26 years working in the channel, John Holland oversees all sales, marketing, and customer success efforts at Thrive as Chief Revenue Officer. He will be joined at the show by Erik Young, Thrive’s VP of Channel Sales who has over 20 years of experience working in the channel. If you’d like to schedule a time to talk with Thrive at the show, contact us or reach out to Stephanie Farrell at sfarrell@thrivenextgen.com.

In addition to John and Erik, you’ll also get to meet the latest member of the Thrive team. We’re proud to welcome long-time channel pro Rick Ribas as Channel Chief of Thrive’s Channel Partner Program! A channel industry veteran and proven leader in the space, Rick will be responsible for driving revenue through the channel and bolstering the Thrive brand with channel partners. He will also work to identify and strengthen Thrive’s competitive differentiators while also promoting Thrive’s potential forthcoming disruptive technologies. Working from Thrive’s headquarters in Massachusetts, Rick is excited to bring his experience with Fusion Connect, LogMeIn, and Intelisys to this new challenge.

What Is the Thrive Channel Partner Program?

Thrive’s Channel Partner Program is the perfect way for Agents and Technology Consultants to bring their clients NextGen technology services. Thrive’s focus is a comprehensive approach to managed services, building custom solutions to meet an array of complex needs. Working side by side with other best-in-class channel partners in the US and UK as a trusted advisor, we are proud to help our channel partners fill in the gaps for their clients.

Thrive’s Channel Partner Program operates on four key pillars to ensure dedicated service to our channel partners and satisfied joint customers. They are:

Responsiveness

Thrive promises a 24-hour response time to new opportunities to best serve your customers and respect your valuable time.

Education

Evolving educational resources are always available to Thrive’s channel partners to ensure you have the most up-to-date information for your clients.

Commitment

Thrive focuses on understanding your business and operations to improve channel alignment, meaning channel partners can continue to deliver the level of service their clients rely on.

Support

Your focus as a channel partner is to be a trusted advisor to your clients. Our goal at Thrive is to assist our channel partners in that objective.

A dedicated Channel Manager at Thrive connects channel partners with the appropriate members of the Thrive team to best serve their clients. Aside from addressing the initial pain points of our channel partners’ clients, Thrive excels at expanding that relationship to deliver services up and down the IT stack, meaning increased residual monthly commissions for those partners.

Click here to learn more about our Channel Partner Program or, for general questions on the Thrive Channel Partner Program, please contact channelquestions@thrivenextgen.com.

Businesses largely rely on their information systems and other technology tools, so you need to make sure they stay secure and far from the many threats out there. To this end, we recommend that you implement security systems that prioritize business continuity and data security. Let’s examine three ways you can keep your business’ IT safe and secure.

Promote Strong Password Practices

Many users still practice the use of poor passwords, and unless you are deliberate in making them strong, chances are your passwords are not strong enough. Here are some tips to help you choose better, stronger, and more reliable passwords:

Password Length

Longer passwords are harder to guess simply because the greater number of characters makes for more possibilities. Passwords should be at least 12 characters long, but when they are this long, they can easily be forgotten. You can create easy-to-remember passphrases that use a combination of upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. For example a password of “elephantredfootball” will usually be secure, but one that is written: “3l3ph@ntr3df00tb@ll” is even more secure.

Unique Passwords

Some people use the same password for every one of their accounts, but this is dangerous. Remember that if one password is hacked or stolen, it can be used on all of your other accounts, too. It’s best to use unique passwords for each of your accounts.

Use Software Tools

Password managers and multi-factor authentication tools are great software tools you can utilize to both augment password security and reduce the downtime associated with forgotten passwords. Depending on the tool, it might even allow you to randomly generate a secure password, and with multi-factor authentication, you dramatically increase the security of your accounts by increasing the number of layers of defense your systems are protected by.

Train Your Staff

One of the greatest challenges for any organization’s Managed  IT security  is the internal threat that certain employees can pose when it comes to a negligence or misunderstanding of security practices. Remember that all it takes is a phishing attack to make it through once to create problems for your business, and if an employee doesn’t know any better, they might be the weak link a hacker is looking for. There are over three billion phishing emails sent every day, so you need to be intentional with protecting your organization from them. This is why it’s so important to train your staff to identify them.

A phishing attack will look like a person or organization with whom the company has dealings with, usually someone who demands a certain amount of authority. Scammers will routinely use these tricks to make their way into your organization’s network, and they may impersonate insurance companies, software providers, financial institutions, and even executives within the company. These messages might ask users to click on links or download attachments. Here are some of the variables you might ask your employees to look for in a phishing message:

Demands for Immediate Action

Phishing attacks are largely successful because they instill a sensation of fear, anxiety, or excitement in the recipient that causes them to make questionable choices. The best course of action is not to instinctively respond but to verify and scrutinize potential messages.

Inclusion of Unprofessional Spelling Errors and Grammatical Faux Pas

Phishing messages are often from people in countries whose first language is not necessarily that of the recipient. They may include demands, spelling errors, and grammatical errors that no professional would ever consider acceptable.

They Come From Unrecognizable Accounts

Phishing emails might look legitimate, but it’s only on the surface level. Look at the email account it originated from and you’ll see that they come from suspicious destinations. Think twice before clicking on links or downloading attachments from unrecognizable accounts.

Keep Your Software Updated

While phishing might be one of the most common threats out there, there are plenty of others that steal the spotlight from time to time. Many hackers choose to exploit vulnerabilities in software, and even though companies try their best to keep up with patches and updates, there are always going to be those that don’t get patched on the user end. If your business doesn’t take steps to implement patches as soon as possible after their release, you’re putting yourself at risk of hacking attacks.

Businesses that use a lot of applications might see patch management as a full-time job, but there are automated solutions out there that can handle this burden for you. You will also want to test each patch to make sure that they don’t interfere with the functionality of your software solutions. Furthermore, you need to ensure you are regularly updating your security tools like antivirus, firewall, and spam filter.

Thrive can help you maximize your company’s security. To learn more, contact us today. 

Cloud technology has changed the way we do business, and it has provided countless opportunities for companies to achieve their wildest dreams. Granted, different businesses will use the cloud in different ways, but one fact remains the same: it makes financial sense to implement the cloud, no matter what type of business you are. Let’s go over some of the benefits.

Money Isn’t All the Same

When it comes to breaking down your business’ finances, there is more than one way to categorize them. Here is how you might typically look at investments for your company:

• Capital expenditures: A capital expenditure is one that is typically quite high, and it is usually a one-time investment that can be used for many years to come. That said, it’s not really planned or budgeted for (although it should be).
• Fixed-expense expenditures: These are predictable expenses for something which expires in the short term. For example, you might pay for advertisements or Software as a Service. The price will be independent of your sales, and the intent is usually to result in a sale down the line.
• Costs of goods sold (COGS) expenditures: These expenses are directed proportionally to the revenue your business generates; the higher your COGS, the more money you are bringing in. This assumes that the ratios between COGS and revenue are low.

How These Expenses Relate to the Cloud

If we assume that you need a new data center, you might look at options for building one on-premises. While doing so might incur large sums of capital expenditures, it’s a one-time expense for its construction and maintenance, along with the costs associated with its upkeep. On the other hand, if you were to outsource management of a cloud solution to a managed service provider, it would be a fixed-expense model, as you are paying for a monthly fee that can be terminated or adjusted at any time as you see fit. Basically, you have to look at it in terms of what your organization wants and needs, particularly if you think flexibility and scalability will play into your cloud solution in the future.

Thrive can help your organization make these tough calls regarding the cloud. To learn more about what we can do for your business, contact us today. 

When your business experiences a significant disruption, a disaster recovery plan is critical to getting back to normal. Some disasters are the result of external threats, while others come about from internal problems with your company’s operations. Here are some things you should consider when looking into potential disaster recovery solutions to help you get through a data disaster.

Disaster recovery, as far as IT is concerned, focuses on protecting your data and information systems, but it can also refer to the broad overarching strategy you use to keep your organization operational in difficult times. Companies today handle more data than ever before, and customers are much more cognizant of when companies don’t appropriately manage or protect their data, so it’s more important than ever to have a strategy in place to keep it safe and protected. Here are three things you should properly manage for your disaster recovery plan.

Planning is Imperative

First, we want to dispel the misconception that disaster recovery is a big, complicated process and strategy that needs to be handled before you take care of general, everyday business. This is not true; many small businesses can leverage a comprehensive data backup and recovery plan with relative ease, although larger organizations might require more details to be addressed, specifically how systems are to be recovered, as well as applications and working conditions.

It doesn’t matter what type of company you are–there are certain aspects of data recovery that always need to be addressed. For example, you’ll need to know how your backup system works, who is in charge of it, and what the responsible recovery point objective (RPO), or the amount of data you need to back up, is. Furthermore, knowing these details can dramatically reduce the time it takes to get back in business following a disaster to help you meet your specified recovery time objective (RTO).

Test Your DR

One major problem that organizations have with their disaster recovery processes is that they aren’t routinely testing them. Nearly a quarter of businesses have never tested their disaster recovery plan, and considering the dire consequences of a failed data recovery, this should be a major cause for concern. You should test your platform regularly, whether it’s once a month, once a quarter, or even once a year.

Testing your disaster recovery system can interfere with your business’ operations and potentially even cut into productivity, depending on when it takes place. Whenever you test your systems, you’re bound to find something wrong with it, so you’ll find your DR strategy changing over time as you address these issues. If you can appropriately address these issues during the testing phase, you’ll have a better chance when you actually need to seriously use your DR strategy.

The Human Element

While it might seem like your disaster recovery strategy is governed by your IT infrastructure, remember that your IT infrastructure is governed by people. You’ll want your DR strategy to take human behavior into account. For example, if your company’s location is compromised by a disaster, do you have the ability to get your business’ employees access to the data they need to effectively do their jobs?

The COVID-19 pandemic made it that much more apparent, as organizations that did not have contingencies in place to handle the remote operations struggled to adjust to the new normal. Businesses that did not have the capital to implement the appropriate technologies and accommodations for remote employees had significant problems in the early days of the pandemic, many of which could have been prevented if they had ensured continuity through work-from-home strategies and other possibilities in the event your office is inoperable short or long term.

Thrive can help your business implement and test a business continuity solution. To learn more, contact us today. 

Cybersecurity is incredibly important for any organization that requires IT to remain operational (basically all of them), so it’s time to start thinking about your own strategies and how you can keep threats out of your network. One viable solution your business can implement is a Security Operations Center (SOC). What is a SOC, and how can you use it to keep threats off your network?

Defining SOC

Your business’ Security Operations Center is very similar to a Network Operations Center (NOC), but the entire premise is to keep watch over your computing networks and devices with the intention of eliminating threats. It might seem simple on the surface, but considering how complex most networks and business infrastructures can be, it should come as no surprise that it’s more complicated than it seems.

Today’s business infrastructures are always on, meaning that a SOC needs staff to keep up with the 24/7/365 demands that many have for their security and monitoring services. The SOC will work with your NOC and other IT resources to manage your cybersecurity strategy. It’s a best practice for your business’ IT to align with how you want your business to function, and it becomes critical that you maximize uptime and keep threats away from your network. Even a single vulnerability could put your organization at risk under the right circumstances. Your SOC will offer tools that can identify and address these weak points in your infrastructure in an effort to stay ahead of threats.

How the SOC Operates

We mentioned this before, but the SOC works just like a NOC in that its primary goal is to provide comprehensive monitoring and notification in the event of a security breach. If something happens, the SOC will log the issue and address it accordingly. The IT administrator will also be notified of the issue to keep them on top of things. Let’s examine some of the services provided by the SOC:

• Complete assessment: Threats are found in the discovery process, and the SOC will examine hardware, applications, and other tools on your network to make sure they are all monitored around the clock.
• Continuous monitoring: The SOC will monitor software and traffic trends, but also user and system behaviors.
• Thorough logging: With such a large computing infrastructure, it’s hard to keep tabs on everything. Logs can help to ensure that the appropriate steps are taken whenever an issue arises. Plus, it provides exceptional oversight and security that is helpful, especially in regard to compliance and regulations.
• Comprehensive incident response and investigation: SOC technicians are able to respond quickly and efficiently to any incident, meaning they can get to the root of the issue and address it in a timely manner.

Thrive can serve as your company’s SOC. To learn more, contact Thrive today. 

When you run a business, you have so many variables to balance and so little time to do so that technology inevitably becomes an essential cog in your ability to manage everything. Unfortunately, technology isn’t cheap and the technology that you think you need may not be a viable purchase this year. Today, we thought it would be good to identify three strategies that can help you save money, while also getting the benefits that technology brings.

Identify Inefficiencies

When you need to make every dollar count, it’s hard to pull the trigger on big-ticket technology purchases. The best way to stretch that money is to identify the places within your business that could benefit the most from some technology spending and target the solutions to those problems. The best way to do this is to take some type of baseline measurements of your business’ operations. The more moving parts your business has—and they all have plenty—the more work identifying these inefficiencies will be. Once you find what ails your business, however, it won’t take long to find the technology that can help reduce those inefficiencies.

For example, if your business has ten employees and two of them have two displays on their workstation, and they are getting 50 percent or more done than the rest of the crew, it tells you it probably isn’t the worker’s fault with one display that they aren’t pulling their weight. By investing your money in eight new monitors, you can expect a certain amount of increased productivity, and therefore returns that will satisfy that investment. There are situations all over your business that can be made more efficient by some type of technology, you just have to find where to slot it in.

Invest in Training

If your business has a shortage of resources available to purchase new technology, investing your money in training your employees on using the technology you do have can go a long way toward making your business the well-oiled machine you need it to be. Of course, training itself is a costly endeavor, but if your business is looking for ways to stretch your capital, focusing on efficiency and security training is a great way to redeploy funds.

The better trained your workforce is, the better they will be at their jobs; or at least that’s the sentiment. You know something? It’s not far-fetched. Think about all the inefficient situations that a worker could get into. Think about how they interact with the technology that is in place in your business. Think about how many times work has been ground to a halt because an employee wasn’t as prepared as you want them to be. By investing in their training they can only improve. In fact, according to a study conducted by the Association of Talent Development, companies that invest in comprehensive training programs see 218 percent higher income than those that don’t.

Additionally, with today’s threat landscape the way it is, it’s essential that your whole staff has knowledge about how to identify and confront phishing attacks and other exploits coming in from outside your business. As far as security goes, investing in training isn’t just about boosting your revenue metrics, it’s about keeping threats from decimating productivity through negative situations that happen when your business gets hacked; not to mention the ding in customer relationships that can happen when your business is exploited.

Outsource

In 2022, outsourcing is a great way to mitigate financial exposure brought on by demand. In fact, partnerships are quickly becoming standard operating procedure for many companies that are looking to get more from less and control costs. When it comes to technology, outsourcing typically means partnering with a managed service provider such as Thrive and utilizing cloud services rather than purchasing and managing all of your IT infrastructure yourself.

There is some debate whether utilizing a cloud-based platform helps your ROI, but what isn’t up for debate is that using hosted services will allow your business to gain access to computing that wouldn’t be possible on a shoestring budget. Since the cloud platform typically charges per user or per GB used, you can actively control your technology expenses and get the computing you need as an operational expense.

Partnering with a company like ours allows you to do the same, but also provides your organization with several services that are aimed to increase the value of the offering. Some of these include:

• Comprehensive backup and disaster recovery
• Remote monitoring and proactive management of all IT
• Best in AREASERVED technology procurement
• Dynamic cybersecurity tools
• Patch and licensing management
• Vendor management

And more.

Your business doesn’t have to have a massive IT budget to be innovative. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you transform your business’ technology and training platforms.

Recently, Connecticut has become the third state to incentivize best practices in cybersecurity for businesses with HB 6607, “An Act Incentivizing the Adoption of Cybersecurity Standards for Businesses”.

This new law prohibits the Superior Court of Connecticut from assessing punitive damages against an organization that implements reasonable cybersecurity controls, such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework or CIS Critical Security Controls.

Essentially, as long as the cybersecurity approach utilized by a business is up to industry standards and considered reasonable in its capacity as a security platform, then neither the cybersecurity firm nor the businesses utilizing their services can be held legally liable in the case of a damaging cyberattack that exposes PII or other sensitive information.

This law, along with federal laws under discussion, highlight that C-Level Executives and Boards of Directors need to be as concerned with cyber risk as they are traditionally with fiscal risk. The stakes are just as high and proper approaches to risk mitigation are required to maintain business solvency.

So if your business is located in Connecticut, Ohio, or Utah (or if you want to proactively follow best practices to help protect personal data and shield your company from legal harm), what steps should you be taking?

1. Assess Your Current Cybersecurity Security Posture Against the NIST or CIS Frameworks

Both the NIST and CIS frameworks provide valuable direction to an organization’s overall approach to assessing and improving its cybersecurity posture. Beginning with the identification of vital assets in need of robust protection, these frameworks serve as actionable guides to enhancing the defense of that data & continually evolving protocols as more information becomes available. These frameworks lay the ground for organizations to begin by implementing essential security services and further implement more full-spectrum advanced engineering coverage.

2. Prioritize Solutions and Services that Help Comply with the Framework

The CIS framework takes a priority-based approach with regards to security protocol, whereas NIST is considered to focus more heavily on assessing and reducing overall risk. Whichever framework you choose for your organization, prioritizing and protecting your most valuable assets first is the goal. Complying with your chosen framework may include implementing a NextGen firewall, end-user workstation security, or advanced patching services. Thrive offers these services unbundled to enable the creation of a custom solution tailored to the needs of each client.

3. Create a Plan to Stay Up to Date as Frameworks Evolve

To help keep organizations protected, the CIS and NIST frameworks are continually updated, which is reflected in HB 6607. Organizations have six months from when the changes are published to re-comply with the frameworks to maintain compliance under the law.

Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of working with a security-first MSP is that their team of Certified Information Systems Security Professionals (CISSPs) can focus on staying up-to-date on the latest threats and breaches while you focus on your organization’s operations. In an ever-changing technology landscape, keeping up with best practices can be a headache. But no matter what approach you take, ongoing testing, validation, management, and reporting are key to its effectiveness.

Conclusion

By financially incentivizing adherence to well-established frameworks, these laws make cybersecurity a C-level, and even board-level, area of concern. They help establish clear targets for companies, which is critical in an era of non-stop marketing hype around new technologies and the constant news cycle around the latest attacks and bad actors. Plus, these laws should ultimately help safeguard all of our data, making criminal actions less of a moneymaker.

If you’d like to talk with a Thrive cybersecurity expert about how to navigate laws like Connecticut HB 6607, please contact us today and request a free assessment.

If you are someone who gets stressed out easily by people having access to resources they shouldn’t, then you probably have heard much about how to keep your data and internal resources safe from external threats. However, access control is much more than just cybersecurity; you also need to take into account the physical space when considering your access controls.

What is Access Control?

At the root of it, access control is all about restricting access to specific resources within your organization based on user or role. Certain users might be authorized to view specific information or be required to verify their identity before being allowed access. Basically, you must ask the network for permission before you are allowed onto it, and once the network has given you permission, you can access the resources located on it.

Access control can basically be split into two groups: digital or cyber access control and physical access control, both of which have benefits and different types of solutions available on the market today.

Cyber Access Control

Your business has parts of its infrastructure that should only be accessed by specific individuals. Some of the data included on these parts of your infrastructure might include employee data, applications, resources, financial records, and more. This information should only be accessed by specific individuals who need it for their day-to-day responsibilities. The logic for this is simple: the fewer people who have access to this data, the less likely you will experience a data breach. Access control tools can help to limit access to this data.

Physical Access Control

You might also want to keep specific individuals out of certain parts of your office, too. Physical access controls might involve key cards, code-guarded doors, or biometric scanners to keep intruders out of your office, or specific parts of it. For example, you might store sensitive records in a specific part of your office guarded by card readers or code-authorized doors. Even keeping the door locked can be an effective deterrent.

Get Started Today

We understand that security can make things complicated for your organization, but you need to take it seriously before it comes back to bite you. If you want to implement access control systems for your office, be they digital or physical, Thrive can help. To learn more, contact us today.