IT Connect

Have you ever asked, “How much should I budget for IT?” The answer to this question depends on how you plan to use Information Technology and how much it plays a part in your overall business strategy. According to TechTarget, small businesses (2-19 employees, in this context) spend, on average, 6.9% of their revenue on information technology, while midsized companies (20-100 employees) spend around 4.1% of their revenue on IT.

Hurricane Ian savagely marked the end of a relatively quiet storm season for the east coast of America. Businesses from Florida to New Jersey will spend the next weeks, months, and possibly years recovering. Here in Oklahoma, we are hardly affected by coastal hurricanes, but we surely have our share of damaging weather effects in the form of tornados, flash floods, and ice storms. Business disruption can be highly unpredictable—and severe—and technology-dependent organizations (all of us) can never rest when it comes to the need for disaster planning.

After one of the most sophisticated spoofing and phishing attacks we have ever witnessed, a CFO reached out to us for help. A criminal pretending to be him sent an email to his customer requesting that they pay by ACH rather than the usual method of paying by check. The criminal followed up with the customer several times over the next few days after not receiving a response and copied others in the CFO’s accounting department.

In our hyper-connected world, cybersecurity has become an everyday concern, especially for businesses. Most people have heard about the common culprits like ransomware and phishing, but employee training and extra attention can protect your business from further harm. It’s not a matter of if you will be affected by security issues, but when. 

An escrow company in northern California was forced to close its doors and lay off its entire staff when cybercriminals nabbed $1.5 million from its bank account. After penetrating the network and finding a way into the firm’s bank account, the hackers wired $432,215 from the firm’s bank to an account in Moscow. That was followed by two more transfers totaling $1.1 million, this time to banks in Heilongjiang Province in China, near the Russian border.

I recently met with a prospect considering firing his IT Managed Services Provider. Often, this is due to a recurring service delivery failure of some sort, but more frequently, the reason is a breakdown in communication. In those cases, it is usually a problem between the business owner and the MSP’s management. In previous columns, I have advocated for frequent and regular meetings between the client and the service provider to avoid such misunderstandings.  

I spoke recently with a business leader who, following advice from a technology advisor, had replaced a server because it was nearing “end-of-life,” only to find out the provider of his most important line of business software was upgrading to a version the new server would not support. Can you imagine how much this cost in hard dollars and lost time? Were the business leader and the technology advisor following a technology road map or simply reacting to something they had no control over?

A customer recently asked me, “Why do I need this service to backup Microsoft 365? Doesn’t Microsoft already do that?” Actually, no. Microsoft’s Shared Responsibility Model clearly states that Microsoft is responsible for application uptime and the underlying infrastructure, while it is the customer’s responsibility to manage and protect their vital business data.

Recent world events and the latest news headlines have brought more concern than ever over the possibility of international cyberattacks. Cybersecurity experts report that there are more than 26,000 cyberattacks daily, about 20 every minute! Unconventional means are being used by hackers to attempt to steal our data, disrupt our processes and even ruin our businesses and take away our quality of life. The conventional defenses of patching, anti-malware, and data security are not winning the battle.

Microsoft has announced changes to their Office 365 and Microsoft 365 programs beginning March 1, 2022. Microsoft is calling this change the NCE or New Commerce Experience. The largest components of NCE that will affect end-users are a price change and the option for a discount with a 12-month commitment. This will be Microsoft’s first price increase since they launched the program in 2011.