Best practices Archives - Sound Computers | Westbrook, CT

It seems that nearly as long as passwords have been around, they have been a major source of security concern. Eighty-one percent of security incidents happen due to stolen or weak passwords. Additionally, employees continue to neglect the basics of good cyber hygiene.

For example, 61% of workers use the same password for multiple platforms and 43% have shared their passwords with others. These factors are why compromised credentials are the main cause of data breaches.

Business owners often face a battle between productivity and cost efficiency. This is especially true when it comes to the question of replacing their employees’ desktops and laptop computers. At the end of the day, you want to get the most out of these expensive devices. However, if you don’t upgrade your hardware regularly then you actually run the risk of your older devices costing even more than brand new ones due to the expenses of downtime, repairs and maintenance. There is also the intangible losses of harmed employee productivity to consider. 

Aging servers are a huge risk to company profitability and productivity. If you don’t proactively upgrade your servers regularly, you may find that you face unplanned downtime because your server breaks down out of the blue. It costs you time and money to fix a broken server and that downtime eats away at your profit margin. In fact, it can cost about $5,600 per minute according to estimates! 

Modern video surveillance systems contain a number of critical components including IP (Internet Protocol) cameras. IP surveillance cameras (that transmit and receive information through a computing network and via the internet) offer organizations a range of advantages over analog closed-circuit cameras. They can watch and manage their video security system remotely and store video footage in the cloud to allow for significant cost savings.

The holiday shopping season is taking off. This means that scammers have also revved up their engines. They are primed and ready to take advantage of all those online transactions.

With the end of 2022 fast approaching, business owners may have started planning for the following year. Therefore, it is important to do a year-end technology review to have a clear picture of how the current year was spent and know what to prepare for in the future.

You know how it goes. We are working on our PC's at one moment and enjoying how things are going. The next moment there is a notification that pings. You need to allow the most recent updates. Without thinking, we hit the "remind me later" button. We say we are busy and there is so much to do today. We say we can always do it later. 

Many small businesses make the mistake of skipping policies. They feel that things don’t need to be so formal. They will just tell staff what is expected when it comes up and think that is good enough.

This way of thinking can cause issues for small and mid-sized business owners. Employees are not mind readers. Things that you think are obvious might not be to them.

Large companies and small businesses are seeing an ever-growing number of cyber threats that attack their endpoints. Their regular endpoint security software may fail against advanced cyberattacks and render them ineffective and outdated. According to a report by Ponemon Institute, 2018 placed a destructive hit on 64% of organizations due to endpoint attacks. 

You have completed your annual phishing training. This includes teaching employees how to spot phishing emails. You’re feeling good about it. That is until about 5-6 months later. Your company suffers a costly ransomware infection due to a click on a phishing link.