Articles by Davis Merrey

With the release of Windows 11, Microsoft has touted several features that might entice you to upgrade your PC.  You may be asking yourself, “Should I upgrade or stick with Windows 10?” There are several factors you will want to consider.

Security awareness training is a great front-line defense against social engineering. The idea is to continuously stay aware of the latest techniques being used by hackers, how to identify them, and what to do when they are recognized for what they are. Employees are routinely tested on their awareness and defensive actions. Ask your MSP or IT manager about this, and if your budget allows, sign up for it. Your investment will likely be on the order of a few dollars and a few minutes of your employee’s time per month; it’s well worth it for most businesses.

According to a report from Verizon, 58% of malware attack victims are categorized as small businesses. According to a report by Ponemon, cyber attacks cost small and medium-sized businesses an average of more than $2 million. Some small businesses don’t survive the negative impact of a security issue, either due to cost alone or damage to their reputation.

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…