The IT Experts

The Impact of Remote Work

There have been plenty of positive effects brought on by the implementation of remote work policies for businesses to only embrace it further. A recent study by Intermedia surveyed the owners of 250 businesses and revealed a telling selection of these effects, including:

• Increases in employee availability in 19 percent of these businesses
• Increased job satisfaction—15 percent—and life satisfaction—seven percent—alike
• Decreased overhead costs
• Improved employee attitudes
• Reduced work-related stress
• Increased engagement

Out of these businesses, 85 percent had primarily functioned in a centralized office space, but with remote work exploding in prevalence as social distancing has been adopted, that number has gone down to 26 percent. Simultaneously, video conferencing increased in use by 27 percent, from a rate of 57 percent to 84 percent.

This only makes sense, as businesses must continue their operations to remain open. If remote work is the only way to do this without jeopardizing the health and safety of their employees, clients, and customers, the smart play is to embrace remote operations.

Will Remote Work Last Longer than the Pandemic?

Admittedly, it can be hard to even think about the time after the current health crisis is over, as so much has changed in the relatively short time we’ve all been living this new normal. We don’t think that remote operations will go away, though. Consider the list of benefits that businesses reported seeing. The biggest concern that many of these businesses had was the matter of engagement: how could they attract and convert clients when face-to-face conversions were once their de facto strategy?

However, these concerns were not fueled due to any influence by technology restrictions, as the explosion in conferencing we discussed above goes to show.

As a result, we can confidently conclude that many businesses won’t shift away from remote operations when they are no longer required for survival. The benefits—increased team satisfaction and at least the same levels of productivity—are just too good to pass up.

KB Technologies can help you embrace the remote capabilities that can help your business survive these challenges, along with many other IT tools and resources. Give us a call at (954) 834-2800 to learn more about what we can do for your business technology.

Hardware Needs and Capabilities

Your hardware needs will largely depend upon how you intend to design your IT infrastructure: are you going to keep your solutions on-site in a server, or will you choose to make use of the cloud for most of your needs? Will you operate with company-owned devices, or will your employees be able to do their work on their own technology?

To determine this, you need to fully understand what is required of the hardware that your team members use to complete their tasks successfully. This is a relatively simple process, but KB Technologies is always available to help, if need be.

Features

Based on your business’ procedures, what are the most important tasks for your hardware solutions to be able to handle? Will your team need to do any specific tasks, like print documents from a mobile device? Will point-of-sale systems be needed in bulk? What kind of workload will their network infrastructure need to support? Fully understanding these conditions will be key to ensuring that your intended hardware can deliver what you need it to.

Storage

Data is crucial to your success, so you need to have a plan prepared to deal with that which you collect. How much you will need to store, how you intend to back this data up, and how you’ve planned for business continuity will all impact how your storage infrastructure is built up. In turn, this outcome will dictate your hardware needs.

Performance

Again, what processes will your business’ hardware need to support as your daily functions are carried out? Word processing and video editing are very different processes and have very different hardware requirements to work properly. Working with an IT provider to ensure your business’ hardware has enough processing power for its intended use is crucial.

Budget

Here’s the thing, hardware investments can very easily run out of control, expending much more of your available funds that you would want to. Whether you need to purchase a new workstation, a new server, or any other IT component, you should go into the process completely understanding what it is you need. That way, you can find the vendor who offers the best value for your purchase, stretching your budget.

Mobility

Remote operations are increasingly popular amongst businesses, so it only makes sense that you seek out hardware solutions that can support mobile work when it is called for. This may be the difference between investing in a laptop over a desktop workstation, or the reason you elect to adopt cloud solutions.

Security

Whether you’re considering adding biometric authentication to your access controls, or you’re simply seeking to avoid data loss, there are hardware solutions that are involved in these processes that you need to consider as viable options. Consider any in-house infrastructure you might implement—what’s the one thing that it all needs, constantly?

Electricity.

An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) device can often be crucial to avoiding data loss and hardware damages, helping to protect your data by reducing the threat that a power outage could cause. CCTV cameras are another example of a piece of hardware that can significantly boost your business’ security.

Hardware Ratio

Finally, you need to make sure that you have the infrastructure in place to support your various solutions. This will help to keep your operations running smoothly, and with this reliability supporting them, your team will be able to be more productive.

KB Technologies is here to assist you with your IT needs, including any hardware challenges you may encounter. To learn more about the services we offer and how we can help you with these considerations, give us a call at (954) 834-2800.

What Is Changing?

This year has been far from typical, but it started out “normal”. Businesses had time to set their technology budgets for 2020, but when the pandemic hit those plans were either tabled or thrown out entirely. Unfortunately, in times of crisis, cybercriminals strike, and with many businesses looking to cut costs where they can, security was, somewhat surprisingly, one place businesses borrowed from, weakening security at a time when most would assume that attacks were about to increase.

What has happened in the interim has surprised many industry analysts. While many businesses cut their security spending, businesses have continued to invest in the right places to mitigate attacks. Businesses actually saw data breaches fall by a third in the first six months of 2020. This has led many businesses to question whether all the capital they were pumping into their cybersecurity strategies are actually necessary. 

Tried and True Solutions

With thoughts about cybersecurity spending shifting, there are some strategies that are imperative to keep your business secure from threats. They include:

• Endpoint protection - setting policy that works to secure entrypoint onto your network is essential to keeping threats off your business’ network. Today, there are some very sophisticated attacks and being able to detect, analyze, thwart, and contain attacks is extremely important. 
• Employee training - phishing attacks account for the majority of cyberthreats companies encounter. Ensuring that employees are cognizant of what constitutes a phishing threat, and what to do (and not to do) with it once it is received is paramount to keep data and networks secure. 
• Encryption for remote connections - If your business relies on remote workers, keeping the connection they use secure is extremely important. You never know what your staff has on their PC, and if you don’t want to find out you need to find a reliable remote access software or outfit each member of your remote team with an enterprise VPN. 
• Mobile access management - The smartphone has become more important than ever for businesses, but any environment that is being used as much as most people use their mobile devices needs to be secured against. 

These four platforms will go a long way toward helping your business maintain security of its digital assets. 

Where We Go From Here

Now that organizations are being a little more selective about what they spend their capital on, you will see strategies emerge that are designed to combine the lessons from the past several years with the stripped-down financial obligations they’ve been working with during the first half of 2020. This means that businesses will be looking to build their cybersecurity platforms on efficiency. Here are three strategies you will see more of in the future:

• Building resilience - In order to be successful building cyber-resilience, companies will want to tear down the barriers that separate departments. A unified strategy for all to comply with reduces support overhead and promotes continuity throughout your organization.
• Establish good cyber-hygiene - Many organizations are disorganized when it comes to managing access to their digital resources. Moving to more consistent methods of managing access is advantageous for workers and administrators, alike.
• Lean on cooperation - One notion that has been reinforced during the pandemic is the need for cooperation between departments. Strategies in combating cybercrime and other nefarious actions can work to mitigate the effectiveness of bad actors. 

Cybersecurity is going to continue being a point of emphasis going forward. If you would like to talk to the Florida experts about how to protect your business now, and do it more effectively than ever, call KB Technologies today at (954) 834-2800.