Articles by Davis Merrey

Last month’s column about cybersecurity explored the idea of viewing your IT infrastructure in layers. The idea is to establish cybersecurity protections for each layer of your systems: the human layer, perimeter, network, endpoint, application, data, and the mission-critical layer.

We are frequently asked about best practices on how an organization should prioritize its cybersecurity defenses.

I am often asked, “My business is a small one, why should I be concerned about a cyber attack? What’s in it for the attacker?” Cybercrime is big business, earning its perpetrators trillions of dollars a year. Companies like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and others have all fallen victim in recent years. Yes, these cases are…

Co-MIT is one of the most recent among the many IT industry acronyms. It stands for co-managed IT, which is when an organization outsources some, but not all, of its IT responsibility to another organization, and it’s typically a managed services provider (MSP). Why would an organization want to do this? Whether you are the…

Suzanne Massie, an American scholar, taught President Ronald Reagan the Russian proverb Doveryai, no proveryai (Russian: Доверяй, но проверяй; Trust, but verify), advising him that, “The Russians like to talk in proverbs. It would be nice of you to know a few. You are an actor—you can learn them very quickly.” Reagan used it frequently when discussing U.S. relations with…

More now than ever, having a reliable, secure way of meeting remotely is a must for most organizations. Microsoft Teams and Zoom are among the most popular video conferencing systems in use today. While you can participate in meetings held on either platform, I recommend standardizing on one of them if you are hosting meetings.…

Recently, a business leadership team asked my team to assess their technology infrastructure. They were particularly concerned about security but had also been experiencing some “sluggishness” in their network. The company was due for a technology audit by one of its largest customers, and their Errors and Omissions (E&O) insurance was up for renewal. We…

I recently met with a business owner who asked about a cybersecurity audit. A consultant approached him and suggested he might need one, but he didn’t understand what it entailed. The familiar question “Why?” popped into my head. Being proactive is almost always a good idea; anticipating problems and preventing them before they harm your business will…

I was recently asked to speak before a group of non-profit organizations about IT matters. These were CEOs and executive directors of agencies aligned with The United Way of Central Oklahoma. They were kind enough to provide a list of topics of interest, including the following. Remote working best practices How to host a successful…

My friend Bob had reached the end of his rope with his bank. Getting an answer to a simple question had become a nightmare; being switched from one person to another, taking up precious time, and still not getting a logical explanation for the answer. Somehow his bank seemed to have forgotten how to make…