The IT Experts

Let’s discuss the basic tenets of business continuity for a while, and how your backup and disaster recovery (BDR) preparations should be shaped to be most effective.

What Does a Proper Business BDR Strategy Involve?

Our first recommendation is that your backup strategy should follow a policy known as the 3-2-1 Backup Rule. This rule has three parts:

• You maintain at least three copies of your data
• You store these copies in at least two different storage media
• You keep at least one of these copies offsite, preferably, in the cloud

This is the most basic way to describe the policy. However, we can share some deeper insights regarding quality backups.

What a Success-Driven BDR Implementation Should Include:

Layered Redundancies

Admittedly, while “redundant” isn’t typically used as a positive descriptor, your BDR preparations are a notable example. In this case, redundancy simply means you have extra copies of your data to fall back on if needed. You don’t need to stop there, either. Your backups need to receive power in order to work, so providing redundant power supplies helps insulate you further. The same can be said of your Internet connection. Maintaining multiple connections makes it less likely that you’ll be without access.

Image-Based Backups

It shouldn’t be a surprise that migrating over a complete copy of your data is faster than trying to rewrite each file that was impacted by data loss. This is how an image-based backup functions. The speed that this approach provides is a real asset in an actual data loss event.

Comprehensive Protections

Clearly, your backups are important—it certainly wouldn’t help you to find out that someone had managed to infect your backup with malware, or had been stealing your data as you backed it up. To prevent this from happening, your backups need to be just as protected as your original data copies should be, with all data encrypted as it is sent to them for added safety.

We’re Here to Help!
Reach out to KB Technologies Managed IT to learn more about how we can help you deal with your data backups, as well as the rest of your business’ essential IT. Give us a call at (954) 834-2800 today.

How You Can Make a Secure Password

Here are four ways you can keep your passwords safe and secure:

• Use complex strings of characters: Make sure your passwords use a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols.
• The longer the password, the better: More characters make for more complex passwords that are harder to guess.
• Use passphrases instead: Passphrases are basically more complicated passwords that are easier to remember, but difficult to guess. You should use multiple words that don’t have anything to do with each other.
• Use different passwords for each account: Finally, make sure your passwords are unique so that one stolen password doesn’t completely put all of your accounts at risk.

These practices should help you keep more complex and secure passwords, but there are other opportunities to improve security, too.

How to Make the Most of Password Security

If you want to make the most of your password security measures, then we recommend you implement additional measures, like multi-factor authentication and password management solutions.

Multi-factor authentication is a powerful tool that works wonders alongside password security policies. MFA allows you to add additional measures to protect your accounts that augment and reinforce your passwords. A good MFA system will utilize two of the three security methods: something you are (biometrics), something you have (smartphone, USB keys), and something you know (a password, PIN, or passphrase).

Password management also gives you the opportunity to apply password practices on a grand scale. The password manager will securely store your passwords and provide them to the sites and applications that need them when requested. It makes using complex passwords even easier—especially with the built-in password generator.

Want to make the most of your passwords? KB Technologies Managed IT can help! To learn more, call us at (954) 834-2800.

A Recent Report Points to Meetings—Amongst Other Factors—As an Aspect that Could Stand to Improve in Business

Asana recently released a report, titled The Anatomy of Work Global Index 2023, that discussed a variety of modern business realities. The unifying focus of this report, however, was clearly rooted in the topic of collaboration and how to improve it. In this report, meetings (as many currently understand them, at least) were placed in the crosshairs.

More specifically, the report posits that modern organizations could see some significant benefits from reconsidering their processes…including the meetings that they hold.

Stop Me When This Sounds Too Familiar…

According to The Anatomy of Work, unnecessary meetings are up 2.8 hours each week for the average knowledge worker, with those in leadership positions spending an average of 3.6 per week. Those in leadership roles were also shown to be 30% more likely to miss deadlines due to calls or meetings.

These stats are closely related to some others that the report cited. Take, for instance, the fact that 58% of surveyed knowledge workers reported that what the report called “work about work” (unneeded meetings, duplicated work efforts, and all the other tasks that aren’t technically in the job description but are assumed to come with it) took up 58% of the workday. Compare this to the 33% of time that skilled work takes, and the 9% used on strategic work, and there’s a lot of time that is being—to be frank—wasted in all these meetings.

What the Report Suggests Can Be Done

Asana’s document suggests that companies should “Focus on smart collaboration. Look for ways to streamline processes, not add more meetings.”

Or, in other words, collaborate more effectively, while “collaborating” less.

So, How Does a Business Collaborate More Effectively?

Fortunately, Asana’s report gives us a simple punch list to describe, as they put it, “how leaders can turn data into action”—the quote above referencing the streamlining of processes is actually the first entry on that list.

The rest of this list includes a few other insights, including one interesting concept in particular:

Giving Everyone Goals that Contribute to the Company’s Shared Objectives

One of the biggest misconceptions about collaboration is that it’s something that has to be accomplished together, in a group setting. At least, that’s what is heavily implied.

However, two people in two entirely different departments can easily collaborate on a project or goal without ever communicating with one another. If they are each given goals that will help bring a project to a successful conclusion, they are, by definition, collaborating—and doing so more productively than they likely would be if they were sitting in a meeting.

We Can Help Your Team Collaborate Outside of the Conference Room

From shared digital workplaces, to a complete assortment of communication tools, to yes, the means of holding a meeting with dispersed participants, we can supply your team with the technology that will help them collaborate more effectively. To learn more about the platforms we can help you get set up with, give us a call at (954) 834-2800.