Coleman Technologies Blog

Admittedly, it can be easy to roll your eyes at statistics like these. If a method works consistently for a business, why go through the trouble of changing it? Why is it that you have to adjust how you do business, just because someone else has?

Well, there are a few reasons.

First, I want you to consider why we use computers today, rather than typewriters, or send emails and instant messages instead of carrier pigeons. It isn’t that the more traditional alternatives were inherently bad, it’s just that the technology that replaced it is better.

The technology that we all use today is still improving - becoming faster, more powerful, and more capable than what was introduced not all that long ago. 

Technology follows something called an s-curve - gradual improvement as a new method is introduced, sudden acceleration in the improvements that are made, and then it peters out as the technology reaches its limits. At this point, a new technology is presumably introduced, and the process resets.

Each time a new improvement is introduced, you have the opportunity to use a better tool than your competition does… but the same can go the other way, too. If your competition pulls too far ahead of you in its capabilities, your customer service capabilities won’t matter when compared to a service that is just better.

Using up-to-date technology solutions makes your business more efficient. When you’re dealing with a business, how long are you willing to wait to receive your promised services? 

Not only do inefficient services wear down a client’s patience, longer operations are inherently more expensive - so, in a way, you wind up spending more money to deliver a less satisfactory product or service.

Not good - but again, easily fixable with more recent solutions, like automation. Automation makes operations a lot quicker by eliminating rote processes, accomplishing this as your employees work on other things. 

Finally, you have to consider your business’ security. When so many cyberattacks are now run almost completely self-sufficiently, the protections that your business relies on will have to work far faster than any human being could.

On the other side of the coin, an increasing amount of cyberattacks are relying on human fallibility in order to take root. When phishing attacks (think the Nigerian Prince scam, but more refined and directed to your users) targeted a reported 76 percent of businesses in 2018, you need to know that you and your employees can spot them. By helping you implement the security solutions you need to protect your business on the digital side of things, and by educating your employees on how to spot threats and issues, Coleman Technologies can help keep your business safe and competitive.

Our team would be happy to talk to you about implementing the IT solutions your business really does need to remain competitive. We can also remotely maintain it for you, allowing you to go about your business without having to worry about it. Please, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428 to learn more.

Innovation Technology

Information technology systems are the foundation of the many processes that a lot of businesses rely on. These systems enable you to store data efficiently, putting it to use and interfacing with it collaboratively - but as these systems are so crucial, they must also be properly monitored and maintained.

After all, without its technology, a business that relies on said technology isn’t going to be able to accomplish much.

This has been a driving force behind innovations to technology - boosting reliability, introducing transformative tools, and advancing both business and society at large. However, since this isn’t particularly easy to put into practice, various industry thought leaders have been actively attempting to transform a variety of considerations, including:

• Applications
• Infrastructure architectures
• Service delivery
• DevOps
• Production operations
• Security
• Compliance

This has effectively been accomplished by developing solutions to meet assessed needs. As a result, new solutions are being thought up to help expand IT from its role in support to actively promoting key business tasks.

Leveraging Cognitive Computing Investments

Cognitive computing is the processing of business data through a combination of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other powerful computing resources. With these systems, patterns can be recognized, data mined, and language processed far more efficiently than without. With more information, businesses that leverage cognitive computing can see considerable benefits:

• Enhanced business agility via quicker decision making
• Consistent process scaling to meet operational and budgetary demands
• Improved business performance and efficiency

Using these technologies also allows you to support various other aspects of your operations, both internally (filling out your operational structure) and externally (automating customer retention efforts). By making a business more “intelligent,” these investments can provide a competitive advantage, as well as more diverse means of generating revenues.

Smarter Security

A data breach can be catastrophic for a business - and attacks happen far too often today to be ignored. Quite a few tools have been developed to help block out these threats, as well as improve internal data security initiatives.

Of these tools, many leverage AI and machine learning to adapt a cybersecurity policy to better match the threats a business contends with. However, these systems aren’t impervious to threats, which means that business owners need to identify their potential risks, including:

• Remote access - With the rise in remote workers and other mobility enhancements that allow data and applications to be accessed from outside the network, the connections that enable this access need to be secured.
• IoT - The Internet of Things has seen an explosive growth in popularity, but with the unfortunate side effect of bringing insecure endpoints into your business. You need to have a strategy to minimize the risks they present.
• Regulatory requirements - Some businesses and industries have additional rules that they must abide by passed down by the government. You must ensure you are meeting any conditions that apply to you.
• Hackers and cybercriminals - While businesses now have access to better tools, so do hackers. This requires you to remain vigilant in your network security.

It is also important to mention that this list is far from comprehensive - there are many more threats out there to resist, avoid, and otherwise defend against. Today’s tools are the most effective way to accomplish this.

To learn more about how you can adopt technology that helps your business succeed, reach out to the IT professionals at Coleman Technologies.

Upkeep is Simplified Via Network Monitoring

It is a well-established fact that, for a computer network and other IT solutions to continue working effectively, it helps to maintain them. In turn, this requires them to be monitored so that potential and developing issues can be resolved… which means that someone will have to be responsible for that monitoring.

Now, you could hire an additional employee to handle that part, but one person just isn’t going to be able to both maintain your business and see to the other considerations we’ll cover here. A better option would be to hire that employee, supplementing them with an agreement with Coleman Technologies. We can handle the network monitoring aspect, allowing your internal resource to help you strategize how your strategy will develop - but more on that later.

Updates are Managed Per the Managed Service Agreement

Between performance improvements and heightened security, it isn’t as though software developers stop improving the solutions they release until the official end-of-life date passes. However, while these improvements may be available, do your employees know that they are?

This could be one more thing you don’t have to worry about with Coleman Technologies on your side. We keep our ears open for industry news and will install updates for our managed service clients… we’ll even do so after hours, so as to not interfere with your operations. 

Upgrades are Strategically Prioritized

It isn’t uncommon for people to turn to an expert opinion for assistance in making a decision. As the IT experts around British Columbia, we’ve fielded a lot of questions about improvements to existing technology. As we said before, we can help you come up with a strategy for your technology that allows you to make optimal use of it, and this strategy includes the upgrades you should make. Upgrades keep your business safer, more efficient, and as a result, help you to be more productive.

We can help you decide which upgrades you need to adopt next, referencing your current solutions and needs to inform your strategy. Then, we can handle your vendor relationships on your behalf, possibly getting you a better deal than you would have otherwise.

Reach out to us to learn more about these solutions and services, or any of the others we offer. Call (604) 513-9428 today!

Preventing Phishing

Phishing has been becoming more and more of a favorite tactic by hackers, meaning that you and your employees need to look at any messages that come in via your email (or other solutions) with a critical eye. Here are some practices to help you minimize the influence of phishing on your business:

• Watch for “Urgent” messages (or, for that matter, “URGENT!!!!!!” ones). Many phishers will try to manufacture urgency to make sure you click without taking a moment to consider it may be an attack. Resist this knee-jerk response.
• Review in detail. Many phishing messages show distinct warning signs, such as blatant spelling or grammar errors (but this may just be the person you’re talking to as well). You can find other, more reliable signs by giving any links or the email address of the sender the “hover” test. Without clicking on anything, hover your cursor over the links and a small pop-up box will appear. This box will show you the address that really sent the email, or the link that you would actually be redirected to. Check to make sure all the details are kosher. For these reasons, it’s recommended that you don’t click on any links in emails. Instead, retype the URL into your web browser.
• Double-check with the sender. If you have access to another means of communication with the supposed sender of an email, reach out to them using that other means to confirm that they sent it. If they didn’t, it’s a pretty safe bet that the email is fraudulent.
• When in doubt, assume the worst. If you just aren’t sure how legitimate a given email is, don’t click around in it. Assume that it is a phishing attempt, and report it to your IT provider.

Establishing Safe Browsing Habits

Unfortunately, there are plenty of threats that reside online, and it is only too easy for a user to unwittingly allow them in. Make sure your users abide by the following policies to minimize the threats you’ll potentially need to deal with.

• Think before you click. Similarly to links found in emails, there are plenty of opportunities online to let in a threat. Consider what you’re clicking on before you do so. (The “hover” trick works well here too… check out the bottom of the window.)
• Reserve business computers for business purposes. Non-work-related browsing can bring users to websites that can host threats without the user realizing. Discourage your users from surfing the web, downloading content, and doing other things online unless they are work-related.
• Moderate access. Use firewalls and content filtering to keep unwanted content off of your network, and users from accessing unwanted content, respectively.
• Trust your IT resource. If you are even the slightest bit unsure about something, whether it’s a program you’ve been prompted to install or making sure your settings are focused on maintaining security, reach out to IT for assistance.

Enforcing Strong Passwords

It seems that everything requires a password these days, which makes it all the more important that you and your users are aware of how to keep them safe - especially in the workplace.

• Don’t recycle passwords. Once a password has been used and replaced, it is best to not use it again - this is why you’ll often find a “you have used this password too recently” message if you attempt to use it again within a certain timeframe. This is the same reason that passwords should not be used for more than one account - if that password is compromised, you’ve just lost control of multiple accounts.
• Avoid easily-guessed passwords. As a way to try and come up with a password that is easy to remember, many people will resort to using common elements in their password - pet names, maiden names, birthdays or anniversaries - or use a simple phrase or a string of numbers. The entire point of a password is to make it so that others are unable to access one of your accounts, so making it something that can be guessed is counter-productive.
• Consider leveraging passphrases instead. Passphrases are not only typically more secure than a password, they also have a tendency to be more memorable. Let me ask you this… which of these two would you find more memorable, “F4njUJ29S5” or “pearquiethigh?” You can also use basic substitution to make you passphrase more secure, turning our example into “pe@rqu!e+h!gh” instead.
• Use a password manager. One of the main reasons that people reuse passwords so often and neglect to change them is the fact that they are scared of forgetting them. A password manager can help reduce this by securely saving all of your different passwords behind one master password. 

Protecting Your Business’ Data

Finally, there are many threats out there to your business’ data - including any you have on your clients or your employees. You have a responsibility to yourself, as well as these clients and employees, to make sure that this data is as secure as possible.

• Make sure your business’ data is backed up. There are so, so, so many ways that your business could lose its data. While it may be attacked, it could just as (if not more) easily be lost due to equipment failure, user error, weather conditions… the list goes on and on. If your on-site data is lost, you will want to make sure you have an up-to-date copy squirreled away in the cloud to reference.
• Protect your assets with access control. You need to be concerned about both the security of your digital files, and of your actual business location. If you’re using multi/two-factor authentication to secure your online resources, or requiring identity confirmation in order to enter certain areas of the business… you need to be doing both.
• Maintain your security solutions. The thing about security software is that it isn’t something that you can just set up and count on indefinitely. Attackers are always examining these solutions to find vulnerabilities, so it is important that you regularly update and patch the ones you use to keep them safe. Every solution you have should actually be set up with security in mind. A glaring example is your company’s wireless. Not only should that be secured with a password, it should be hidden away from outside users.
• Keep your payment options compliant. For your sake, and the sake of your clients, you should make sure your business is compliant to whatever regulatory standards that apply to it… including the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

Following these guidelines is a great start to ensuring your company’s security. Coleman Technologies can help get you this far, and beyond. Reach out to us at (604) 513-9428 to learn more about what we can do.

The two vulnerabilities were patched off of Microsoft’s typical “patch Tuesday” due to the urgency. Most Microsoft patches are released on the second Tuesday of the month. The fact that these two were released ahead of time might seem like an insignificant occurrence, but the reality is this event is a major red flag.

Internet Explorer Zero-Day

The most significant patch was for a zero-day vulnerability that was found in Internet Explorer. It may be hard to believe, but people are indeed still using this antique browser to surf the web. The term zero-day suggests that the vulnerability that was discovered, had already been exploited by ill-minded cybercriminals. 

While not much information has been released on the event, Microsoft did call it a remote code execution exploit that, if accessed, could have given a user control of another user’s account. The attack requires phishing someone who is exploring the internet on Internet Explorer, and luring them onto a malicious website. Once there, an attacker would be able to gain access over the victim. 

Internet Explorer is such a forgotten browser that the event did not spark a lot of controversy. This is largely due to the fact that Internet Explorer makes up just two percent of the active market share. However, for the relatively small amount of users that continue to surf, an event like this is still a huge disaster. 

Microsoft Defender DOS Bug

The second patch that Microsoft expedited was a denial of service vulnerability in Microsoft Defender. The antivirus program comes standard in all Windows 10 PCs, and truly is the core of Windows 10’s sterling security record. 

The bug that was discovered wasn’t necessarily obvious, or easily exploitable. In order to do so, the attacker would need the ability to read, understand, and write code. Doing so would allow them to disable Windows Defender components, giving the attacker access. This would give them free rein to do whatever malicious act they chose to deploy. 

Patches aren’t optional. If you are worried about your business’ vulnerability, speak to one of our experts at Coleman Technologies. We have the know-how to keep your software up to date. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 today!