Nomad Tech

4 Statistics Every Business Ought to Know About Data Backup

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Every business needs to have a business continuity plan to keep operations going after experiencing a disaster. The centerpiece to every plan is having a backup and recovery solution in place for your company’s data. If something happens to your data, your business may not recover. Here are four backup statistics that show the importance of backing up.

6% of All Computers Experience Data Loss Each Year

Data loss doesn’t just happen when a system crashes, even a small loss of data, like one workstation’s hard drive going down, can cost your business time and money. Taking a chance on a figure like 6% is kind of like playing Russian roulette with twelve-chamber revolver. It’s only a matter of time before the bullet goes off, and when it does, things will get messy.

Concerning Businesses that Do Backup Their Data, 34% Never Test It

While it’s vital to have a backup solution in place, just the act of backing up isn’t enough, you will also want to regularly test your backup solution to make sure it can perform under pressure. For the businesses that do test their backup solutions, 77% find that their backup solution fails on some level. Regular testing of your backup solution will give you the opportunity to take care of any shortcomings so your business can be prepared for anything.

A Company That’s Down for 10 Days After a Natural Disaster Will Not Survive the Next Year

Your business may be able to easily bounce back from a minor disaster like an hour-long power outage, but are you prepared to withstand a major natural disaster that will disable your business for days? Think back to Superstorm Sandy, this storm left America’s Northeastern seaboard without power in 2012; and in some places the outage was as long as two weeks. Many businesses were unprepared for Sandy and paid a high price. A strong business continuity plan will make provisions to keep a business in operation after a bad storm, which must include a way to access your data.

Tape Backup is Found to Have Discrepancies or Completely Fail 77% of the Time

Not all backup solutions are created equal. While it is important that you have a backup solution in place, you will want it to be accurate and reliable. Backing up with tape has been around for a long time, and it’s fast being replaced by a more reliable cloud-based tool called a Backup and Disaster Recovery solution.

With BDR, NOMAD TECHNOLOGY GROUP takes care of the backup process for you, which includes regular testing to ensure your data is accurate, and BDR will not fail when you need it most. To learn more about how a reliable BDR solution can save your business from experiencing data loss and provide you with a strong continuity plan, call NOMAD TECHNOLOGY GROUP at 812-618-4032

Nomad Tech

5 BYOD Worst Case Scenarios You Need to Plan For

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As the mobile device market is booming, more employees are bringing in their own device to work (BYOD). Advantages to BYOD include a workforce that’s mobile, increased employee satisfaction, and more; but using personal devices comes with risks, and business owners must consider these risks before allowing BYOD in their office.

Strong risk management means being prepared for the worst case scenarios. Here are five BYOD worst case scenarios that every adopter of BYOD will need to be prepared for.

Having the Device Lost or Stolen

How much danger would your business be in if an employee lost a smartphone with your company’s sensitive information stored on it? Even a stolen contact list with your client’s and employee’s phone numbers can be a messy situation to clean up after. You may be legally obligated to notify everyone affected by the leak because you are responsible for putting their personal information at risk.

Do you think your employees are too smart to lose anything? Think again, even the best of us have brain farts and misplace things. According to a study by CompTIA, it’s estimated that every day in the United States, 160,000 phones are lost or stolen, which accounts for half of all mobile security incidents. The cost of replacing phones, time and money spent on damage control, and actual money stolen from accounts linked to the phone adds up to $30 billion per year in the US alone.

Mobile Malware

The other half of mobile security incidents come from mobile malware. As mobile devices become more popular, hackers are targeting these devices with new malware. Two of the biggest mobile scams that employees fall for is downloading malware that captures authentication information for financial accounts, and unknowingly sending SMS messages to overly priced premium-rate numbers.

Dumb Social Media Posts

An employee with a smartphone has more opportunity to post their thoughts or feelings to social media. While the majority of employees can handle this power, all it takes is one dumb social media post to hurt your company. What if an employee reacts to a work argument by airing out their grievances on Facebook? Or what would happen if an employee unintentionally leaked company secrets about an important project? A company with strict Internet usage and social media policies will want shy away from BYOD.

Blurred Lines between Work and Personal

While it’s great that your staff is now mobile and they can do work from anywhere, if they begin to feel like you are requesting them to do work outside of their contract, like bugging them at home to call or e-mail a client, then you may be hit with a lawsuit for unpaid overtime. Then there’s the issue of what happens if you let an employee go, and your company’s information is on their personal device. You can try to go into their phone and delete your company’s data, but what happens if, in doing so, you accidently delete their personal information? A mistake like this can also result in a lawsuit.

Is BYOD Worth the Risk?

All of these risks can be managed by being intentional about mobile security and having policies in place that prevents or prepares your business for these worst case scenarios. NOMAD TECHNOLOGY GROUP can help you enact strong mobile security solutions and smart BYOD policies that will help your business get the most out of BYOD. Call us at 812-618-4032 to learn more.

When it comes down to it, you have to ask yourself if BYOD is worth the risk. Will your business see a return that warrants jumping through the necessary BYOD hoops? In a study by CompTIA, it was discovered that the top benefit businesses see with BYOD is employee satisfaction, and there is actual little increase in out-of-the office productivity, and little positive monetary effect. Maybe you value your employee’s happiness enough to give BYOD a try, or maybe you can find a less risky way to improve employee satisfaction like implementing Hawaiian Shirt Day Fridays. Whatever your final decision is regarding BYOD, NOMAD TECHNOLOGY GROUP is here to help.

Nomad Tech

Can a Software Firewall Stop a Dragon?

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Having a strong firewall to protect your computer is an important investment. The casual PC user may not think twice about their firewall because they use the firewall built-in with their Windows OS, but the complexity of your business demands a stronger solution.

Your business has several workstations, servers, mobile devices, along with many different users, and each user has multiple access points. All of this will be too much to handle for the puny firewall that comes with a PC’s operating system. Even the firewall that comes with your server’s OS is no match for all the threats brought on by a complex business network.

You can think of this firewall situation like a knight (your firewall) defending a princess (your data) against a dragon (threats from the Internet). A single knight can do an adequate job defending a single princess from a fire-breathing dragon. All the knight has to do is hide himself and the princess behind his shield and the fire will be deflected.

Take the same noble knight and charge him with defending a castle full of people from a fire-breathing dragon that flies. The knight would be running all over the castle in a futile attempt to stay ahead of the dragon’s next attack, and the princess would be captured and taken to another castle.

What’s a good solution to help our overwhelmed knight? Recruiting more knights? This solution is equivalent to enabling all the firewalls on all the operating systems on your company’s network, thinking this will keep your business safe from Internet viruses.

Adding more firewalls sounds like a good idea, but it’s actually a weak solution because even an army of knights cannot totally protect a castle with all their little shields. Plus, dragons, like hackers, are smarter than they look and are good at finding vulnerabilities. Even with an army of knights protecting the city, a dragon will still find an opening and swoop in, steal the princess, and take her off to another castle.

What a castle (your business) needs in order to protect all of its princesses (files, or entitled employees), is a protective dome. One large protective dome covering the entire castle will deflect every attack from a dragon, and even attacks from multiple dragons!

NOMAD TECHNOLOGY GROUP offers what is essentially a protective dome for your entire company. This dome is a firewall hardware solution called a Unified Threat Management (UTM) tool. A UTM is a single device that plugs into your network and serves as one strong firewall to protect your entire business from all the dragons on the Internet.

Your business is a castle; don’t leave the security of your company up to a single knight with a shield made of Windows. Instead, go with an all-in-one hardware security solution that will make your castle impenetrable! Call NOMAD TECHNOLOGY GROUP at 812-618-4032 to learn more.

Nomad Tech

Save Your A-Team with the Cloud

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You have worked hard to gather and develop the perfect team and build a profitable business. It may have taken years to train your team in the intricacies of your business, and teach them to work together as a cohesive unit. Then life happens and messes up everything. When life hits, what can you do to save your team?

Major life changes tend to hit people hard, and at a moment when everybody least suspects it. It can be something worth celebrating, like maybe the spouse of a team member is getting a promotion that requires a move across the country. In a life event such as this, your team will lose a key member and face a major setback.

Other times, life can throw you a curveball, and the curveball tips off your bat and smacks you in the face. These curveballs might look like a parent getting diagnosed with cancer, and now your valued team member needs to move across the country to take care of them. In situations like these, it’s hard on everybody when they are forced to choose between continuing working with a rockin’ team, or leave their job to be with a loved one.

For all the talk about how great the cloud is, it’s in these hard life situations when the cloud can save the day by keeping your team together. You know that the cloud can give your employees the capability to work from anywhere, but did you know that the cloud can do more by allowing you to have a satellite workforce?

The difference between a remote worker and a satellite worker is that a remote worker will work from their homes and typically be within driving distance from the office, just in case you need them to physically show up for something; and a satellite employee is still a full-fledged team member, but they may live hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away. Cloud services from NOMAD TECHNOLOGY GROUP can give you the capability to stay fully-connected with a satellite employee, or even an entire team of satellite workers.

The value of having satellite team capabilities is obvious for any leader that has done the painstaking work of developing a dynamic team. Can you put a price on your A-Team that brings in so much revenue? It’s estimated that replacing one $8.00 per hour employee costs an average of $9,4444.47. Of course, this figure is just the starting point, it’s almost impossible to put a number on an employee with 5, 10, or even 20 years of experience working in your company.

Time spent training your employees on the ins and outs of your business, and learning the dynamics of all the different personalities that make up your team, can only be purchased with experience. Many of these experiences are unique and impossible to replicate. In the meantime, while you are searching for and training a replacement, your team won’t be full-strength. Even if you take the time and money to invest in a new team member and finally get them up to speed, there’s no guarantee that life won’t hit you again and rob you of all your hard work.

Cloud computing from NOMAD TECHNOLOGY GROUP can empower your local team to work remotely, and your satellite team to work and around the globe. To learn more about connecting your team with the cloud, give NOMAD TECHNOLOGY GROUP a call at 812-618-4032.