Managed Service Provider Blog Articles and Best Practices

Is your office still housing a server closet? If so, you’re likely sitting on the most expensive, non-productive square footage in your building. Between the specialized cooling costs, the constant hardware maintenance, and the looming threat of mechanical failure, physical servers have become an expensive anchor for the modern business.

Forward-thinking companies are ditching the hardware in favor of the cloud—a solution that eliminates your physical footprint while maximizing your agility.

The dream of a company-only device policy died about five minutes after the first smartphone hit the market. Whether you officially allow it or not, your team is likely checking Slack from their sofas and answering emails in the grocery line on their personal phones.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is no longer a perk; it’s the standard. But without a solid strategy, it’s also a security nightmare waiting to happen. Here is how to embrace the flexibility of BYOD without handing the keys to your kingdom to every malware-laden app on the app store.

Every business owner knows that a new hire’s first few weeks set the tone for their entire career with the company. While you’re busy teaching them the ropes of their new role, there is something else just as vital to cover: keeping your company data safe.

Building a security-first culture doesn’t have to be intimidating. Here is how to navigate the first 30 days to ensure your new team members start off on the right foot.

The short answer for why your login needs to be more complex is that hackers leveled up.

While the ongoing development of quantum computing is a real threat—since it’s capable of testing nearly infinite keys simultaneously—you do not need a supercomputer to break a weak password today. A modern graphics card, the kind found in a standard gaming PC, can shred a basic 8-character password in under sixty seconds. If a hobbyist can do it, imagine what a professional syndicate can do.

You’ve seen the demos. Dashboards filled with green bars, heatmaps of employee activity, and productivity scores that promise to tell you exactly who is working and who is watching Netflix.

To you, it’s monitoring: A way to protect your assets and ensure you’re getting what you pay for. To your team, it’s spying: a digital leash that says, "I don’t trust you to do the job I hired you for."

Security can be challenging, even when you have the requisite protections in place. Passwords are too easy to forget, and a fob or token can be misplaced. One thing that’s a lot harder to forget or lose, however: your fingerprint.

Why not take advantage of what you and your entire team inherently possess to help protect your business? Let’s dive into how biometrics—who you are—is quickly overtaking “what you know.”  

Most small business owners don't wake up thinking about network patches or endpoint detection. You’re focused on growth, your team, and your customers. Unfortunately, there is a persistent myth that “small” means “invisible” to hackers.

The reality isn't that hackers are out to get you specifically; it’s that they use automated tools to find any open door. If your door is unlocked, they’ll walk in. It’s not personal—it’s just a math problem for them.

Toys are an essential part of our development as people, whether you’re talking about baby toys that teach color recognition and empathy, collaborative toys that teach sharing and teamwork, or creative toys that encourage imagination and outside-the-box thinking. Just imagine what the toys of the future will be able to accomplish… assuming, of course, that the security issues we’re currently wrestling with are dealt with appropriately.

Unfortunately, this hurdle still needs work to be cleared.

With a vulnerability appearing on the scene, we felt it was an appropriate time to peel back the curtain on a technology we all use daily but rarely question: Bluetooth. Given the nickname of King Harald Gormsson, who famously united disparate Scandinavian tribes back in the 10th century, the technology unites our headphones, mice, and keyboards. Unfortunately, even the strongest alliances have their weak points.

One question businesses have been asking over the past couple of years is: “Is crypto a viable payment system?” With the maturity of digital asset markets and the rise of regulated stablecoins, the landscape is more professional than any time in the past, but still carries with it substantial risks. If you are considering adding digital assets to your checkout or B2B payment flow, here is the current breakdown of the pros and cons.

As your business has grown, have you fallen into the tech trap of DIY IT solutions? While you might have started with just a handful of employees, the infrastructure you’ve built is no longer sustainable or reliable. You need professional help if you want your business to stay competitive, and we have just the thing for you.

Can your team recall what you discussed during your last mandatory cybersecurity training session? We doubt it, and not because you did a bad job (we’re sure you did an excellent job on that PowerPoint, champ). It’s just that small business security training is far from engaging by default, and it’s seen as more of a requirement than anything else. If you want to shift this “annual compliance” perspective, you’ll have to make some changes, and fast.

Do you actually know which of your coworkers is one click away from getting the whole company hacked? It’s surprisingly easy to get into a business’ IT system. All it takes is one person falling for a fake email, downloading a sketchy file, or giving up their password to a scammer.

If you aren't testing your team, you’re basically just waiting for a disaster to happen. Here is why simulated phishing tests—sending out fake scam emails—are actually a great way to protect your business.

We’ve all been there. You’re flying through your inbox, trying to reach inbox zero before a meeting, and you click a link in a shipping notification. The page doesn't load quite right. You stare blankly and your anxiety spikes.

That moment happens a lot and it is a fork in the road for your company’s security. In many organizations, that employee’s next thought isn’t: “I should report this,” it is: “If I tell anyone, I’m going to get fired.”

We’ve seen our fair share of convenience vs. security trade-offs, but few consumer devices sit at the center of that Venn diagram quite like the Ring camera. To the average user, it’s a doorbell that significantly reduces package thieves. To those of us that work with technology, it’s a sophisticated Internet of Things (IoT) sensor with a direct, persistent uplink to one of the world’s largest cloud infrastructures.

Does this sound familiar? Your business is growing, but you haven’t changed your server hardware since you began operations. It’s hindering growth at this point, and you don’t know what to do. The best solution out there is to turn to the cloud. With the right implementation of a cloud-first model, you can effectively future-proof your business so it can grow unhindered.

How much control do you really have over your IT assets? Oftentimes, businesses will consider other priorities, like sales, operations, and customer service, before they focus on IT systems and resources. The problem with this is that it creates a significant burden for your business, both in terms of the hidden financial drains and serious security vulnerabilities that undermine your business’ stability.

We all have too many accounts nowadays. Between our personal lives, work, and practically all the entertainment we consume, there are dozens to keep track of and manage… and then there are the ones that charge us for a service they offer. The stacking costs of these services are bad enough, but if you see them start to double or even triple in a given month, you may be experiencing a common problem that is simple enough to solve.

To do so, we need to clarify the difference between creating an account and logging in.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a solution that has grown more popular over the past decade or so, primarily because more employees already own devices capable of running work-related applications. The employee gets to use a device they already know and love, while the employer saves money from the cost of equipping that employee. That said, the security risks associated with BYOD can undermine an ill-prepared implementation and open the door to potential legal action.

Have you ever considered investing in smart technology for your office? We’re talking, of course, about the smart appliances, lights, thermostats, and so on, all of which make your office feel like you stepped into a sci-fi movie. As IT experts, it would be wrong for us to let you implement all these shiny new solutions without considering the security implications.

Our question to you is this: are you willing to leave glaring security weaknesses in your infrastructure for the sake of being considered “high-tech?” We hope the answer is an emphatic “no.”