It’s easy to think of a data breach as something that only happens to massive companies like Netflix, Target, and Equifax. The reality is that, more often than not, small and medium-sized businesses are the target of cyberattacks, which makes the nonprofit sector a prime target as well. Here are three ways to protect your nonprofit from a bad actor.

Disaster recovery is one of those platforms that businesses don’t want to have to use, but need to spend ample time planning in case they do. This is rather unique in business, so only by truly understanding what you need to get out of your disaster recovery strategy can you create the comprehensive DR system that your business requires. 

You would be surprised what types of things can disrupt your business’ ability to operate. It could be something as benign as a power or Internet outage, something inevitable like a hardware component failure, or something so nefarious as ransomware. Regardless of what happens, every business should have a plan in place to respond to any situation and recover quickly and effectively. For the business that depends on data, having it properly backed up solves one major issue. This month, we thought we’d go over some of the basic questions you need to answer about your data backup and recovery process. 

Cybersecurity has become front and center due to a rash of ransomware attacks hitting businesses, and more and more high-profile attacks happening every year. Despite the understandable concern, your business doesn't have to be a victim. By enabling 2FA, you can significantly reduce your exposure. Unfortunately, many companies feel that 2FA is too much of a hassle to implement and opt out. If you think this way, give us five minutes to convince you why 2FA is worth it.

As the tax season ends, many financial institutions and professionals alike take a breather. Unfortunately, now isn’t the time to let your guard down. As cyberattacks increase in frequency, you need to make sure you are doing everything you can to protect your clients’ data.

If I were to take away all of your computers and workstations, would your business still have all of its data? What if I were to take your server out of the equation? What if I were to take your backup device? How long would it take for you to gain access to your files again?

This is exactly what ransomware does—your data across multiple devices can be lost instantly and hackers will extort you to get it back. But even if you are properly backed up, a disaster like this can do serious damage to your productivity and take a long time to recover from, if your backup solution isn’t properly implemented.

Backup strategies vary. Some companies choose theirs for its value. Some back up everything. Some ignore it all together. While we definitely don’t advise the latter, we do understand that it is a financial investment for what is essentially insurance. What’s more effective is building a backup plan that fits the type of data you create and store. 

As Maryland businesses increase their reliance on technology, they have gained the attention of cyberhackers. The hackers are now holding networks hostage and demanding a ransom to release them. While any business can be a victim of a ransomware attack, there are currently three at-risk industries: hospitals, schools, and manufacturing. Here are tips to prevent ransomware attempts from succeeding.

The threat of ransomware has struck home to Maryland residents. Recently, classes for 115,000 Baltimore County public school students were canceled due to ransomware attacks. If your organization is not investing in security protocols, you too may find access to your critical systems under the control of a bad actor. As such an event can place your organization’s very survival at risk, you must take steps to prevent it from happening.

If you are a regular visitor to our blog, you know just how important we think data backup is for any business that relies on data. If your business stores and creates data, you need to have a backup strategy in place. It’s that simple. Today, we want to discuss how to improve your data backup strategies with a BDR.

How are you protecting your data from disaster? If you don’t have a backup and disaster recovery platform in place you are missing one of the most crucial parts of managing your business’ data. Think about it, if your organization were to suddenly lose a significant portion of its data, would it be able to continue to function effectively? 

Comprehensive IT support can often be defined by an alphabet soup of abbreviations, acronyms and technical jargon describing the variety of services offered. While the different services an MSP offers can sometimes seem unrelated, in today’s technologically-integrated business environment, all technology needs to be able to support each other.  The goal of comprehensive support is to develop an environment which allows your business to leverage its technology. Here are three services comprehensive IT support offers that will benefit your business.

Many Maryland businesses put disaster planning on the back burner because they think an event could never happen due to their location, infrastructure, or just plain luck. What the current crisis shows us is that all businesses are at risk, and disaster can happen at any time and that every business needs to invest in a business continuity plan.

When we start working with a new client, we’re often left surprised at their data backup and recovery strategy. It’s not always that they don’t really have a strategy for it (although this happens more than we’d like to admit), it’s just how sure many of them are that they don’t need to spend a lot of time and effort on it. This ambivalence is a major mistake that often leads to hardship. Today, we will talk a little bit about why backup is such a big deal.

It has reached the point that, if you have a business, you had better have a backup prepared. Otherwise, the digital data that modern businesses like yours rely on is vulnerable to loss. Of course, depending on the age of your business, you may have data that no longer applies to your operations. That’s why we’re going over how to select the data you should continue to back up.

With hurricane season starting in Maryland, have you taken steps to protect yourself and your business? When preparing for hurricane season, you will see that most of the steps you would do to protect your home are similar to what you would do for your business. Here are a few simple but essential steps to benefit both.

Businesses need to be prepared for the worst these days, as disasters could strike at any moment and cause irreparable data loss. One of the ways your business can break in the new year with confidence is with a backup and disaster recovery strategy that minimizes downtime and keeps your organization safe from events beyond your control. We’ll help you put together the best backup solution for your business’ needs.

Data is an asset, there’s no getting around this fact. Therefore, your business needs to consider it important enough to protect with a data backup and disaster recovery solution, as even something unlikely, like a natural disaster or hacking attack, could place your organization in peril. We’re going to take a look at some of the different kinds of data backup and disaster recovery you can expect to see, as well as four terms that you should understand.

If you’re ever asked about your data backup solution, the last answer that you want to give is that you don’t know what measures you’re implementing to keep your organization safe from a worst-case scenario. There are different kinds of data backup and disaster recovery, but they almost always depend on two specific benchmarks: Recovery Point Objective and Recovery Time Objective.

Data backup may not directly help you boost your productivity, but it is a core component of any responsible business’ continuity plan. Each year, thousands of businesses that don’t take threats into account are forced to close their doors because they didn’t have a contingency plan in place. For every business that plans for the worst there are two that don’t, either because they see the strategy as too cost prohibitive, or because they just don’t understand the amount of threats that could put their business in the position where they would need to close.