In today’s fast paced world, it’s social media, viral videos, celebrity news and the latest trends. Generally, these boil down to a single word or two which in and of itself, becomes Pop Culture. In the business of information technology, it’s all the acronyms and buzzwords. Some of these buzzwords end up sticking around and become much more than we could have imagined just a few years ago. One of them that’s stood the test of time is, “Cloud Integration.”
It’s become very clear in the past few years that the ever present, and often talked about, “Cloud”, is here to stay. Many people still don’t grasp how important the cloud has become, in both your business and your personal life. It’s now more important than ever to take a look at how your business is leveraging the cloud.
In January of this year, Forbes published an article entitled, “83% of Enterprise Workloads Will Be In The Cloud By 2020.” It’s definitely time for businesses of all sizes to take a step back and assess the state of their Cloud Integration…it’s now more than a trendy new buzzword.
Implementing a Business Continuity Plan
The major disasters this past year made people aware of a lot of things including the manner in which businesses assess risk and devise plans to deliver critical services in the event of a disruption. Although catastrophic events have a minimal probability, the businesses that plan carefully for business continuity are the ones that stand the best chance of continuing their services in the event of a disaster.
It does not take a monumental catastrophe to disrupt daily operations of a business. Sometimes it can be something as simple as a power outage or intermediate interruptions that result from a storm or an attack instigated by cybercriminals.
Having a business continuity plan in place means arranging to continue to deliver services which are the most critical to business operations and identifying the resources which are needed to support business continuity. In order for a business continuity plan to be effective, there are key critical components that must be present during the planning process.
To Outsource or Not to Outsource your Cyber Security? That is THE Question.Today’s cybersecurity landscape is changing at a pace we’ve never seen before, and the ability for companies of all sizes to keep up is becoming increasingly difficult.
So that begs the question, and one that myself and my colleagues get very frequently, why would we outsource our security?
There are so many reasons why companies should very seriously consider enhancing what they’re doing internally by partnering with external experts, but I will lay out the Top 3 we’re seeing in the marketplace today.
- Time & Cost
- Breadth of Knowledge
- Business Acumen
When’s the last time you took a step back and took an honest look at what you and your organization were doing to address IT security? In the first of this four-part series we discussed a few things you should be concentrating on regarding email security and training your end users to know what is and what is not a phishing attempt, while also keeping your machines fully patched. In the second part of the series we will focus on Next Generation Firewalls (NGFW), Web Application Firewalls (WAF), and Denial of Service (DoS).
The firewall(s) in your environment(s) are the first line of defense. What does this mean?
Thrive Named to Elite 150 of CRN’s 2018 MSP 500 List!
CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company, has named Thrive to its 2018 Managed Service Provider (MSP) 500 list in the Elite 150 category. This annual listrecognizes North American solution providers with cutting-edge approaches to delivering managed services. Their offerings help companies navigate the complex and ever-changing landscape of IT, improve operational efficiencies, and maximize their return on IT investments.
The list is divided into three categories: the MSP Pioneer 250, recognizing companies with business models weighted toward managed services and largely focused on the SMB market; the MSP Elite 150, recognizing large, data center-focused MSPs with a strong mix of on-premises and off-premises services; and the Managed Security 100, recognizing MSPs focused primarily on off-premise, cloud-based security services.
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Microsoft Compliance Manager Review
Before I begin the review, here is the link to the product so you can look for yourself: Microsoft Compliance Manager
Easing compliance tasks is on the wishlist of many companies not only for the upcoming GDPR readiness date but for several other regulations. Microsoft has made a great attempt to solve some compliance problems but the amount of work to complete the process is still fairly large.
The Compliance Manager’s aim to give you a scorecard of your current status. At first login, you’ll be faced with several areas to complete documentation. Many of these are overwhelming, for instance we had a couple hundred activities to complete for NIST 800-53 alone. These activities equate to points which makes the thousand point “scores” a bit easier to take. (more…)
Top 5 Reasons to Consider Outsourcing your IT Needs
As technology continues to be a driver of success in today’s business, turning to an external IT outsourcing firm is a good way to help enhance your IT roadmap and identify critical issues facing your business. A great number of organizations have been utilizing outsourced IT consulting services to give them an edge over their competitors. Many companies that offer IT consulting services also offer a wide range of managed IT services. This will allow many different services to be managed and developed with greater efficiency, thus providing better ROI. IT consulting companies usually focus on the needs of your businesses, and how technology helps meet those needs. They are operating in almost every industry in the field of network infrastructure, and applications.
The GDPR Deadline is Approaching, are You Ready?
How Managed Firewalls Can Help Fill Compliance Gaps
Firewall management is a necessary but tedious and time-consuming effort. It also requires industry-specific expertise in order to avoid costly security breaches which can jeopardize compliance requirements.
Meeting compliance requirements for your specific industry can occupy a significant amount of your IT professional’s time. Additionally, it can be difficult to find an IT expert with the appropriate industry experience to ensure all of your compliance requirements are met and your network is protected against unauthorized access.
When you choose to manage firewalls in-house, this requires a resource-intensive effort since it involves device deployment and configuration, constant upgrades and security patching, in addition, to monitoring upgrades to ensure the appropriate controls are installed to meet necessary changes in business processes. Then the network traffic must be continually monitored for threats so these can be acted upon in a timely manner to avoid costly breaches.
Improvements in vSphere 6.5 and what will version 6.7 bring? – Part 1
VMware released vSphere 6.5 to General Availability on November 15th, 2016. The release had its fair share of issues and wasn’t fully compatible with VMware’s full product set including NSX. Update 1 was released on July 27th, 2017 and allowed for anyone running 6.0 Update 3 to update to 6.5 Update 1.
Many improvements have been made to the scalability of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) since 5.5 which now puts it on equal footing with the venerable Windows installation option. With 6.5 Update Manager has been rolled in as well which previously required a separate Windows Server. VMware has steadily been eliminating the objections around running vCenter as an appliance.
What is your Security Plan? (Part 1 of 4)Have you taken a step back to look at what you and your organization are doing to address IT security today? This four-part series will highlight the a few major areas that need to be assessed when reviewing your security plan.
Years ago, when looking at IT security, the scope normally would have been limited to where a company had physical office locations as that is where all the IT infrastructure was located. Most companies today no longer fit this mold which means that when looking at your Security Plan you must take a hard look at where your data and end users reside. The times have changed to say the least, in a very substantial way.