What is the Difference Between Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity?

Business leaders in Tampa that are preparing for hurricane season will likely encounter two terms, disaster recovery and business continuity, in their search for stability.  Though the two concepts are related in that they help you respond to the threat of natural or man-made disasters, they also differ in important and sometimes confusing ways.

Here’s what businesses in Florida should know about both approaches and how to combine them to minimize the chance that a hurricane will cause lasting damage.

This blog is part of a series on storm season preparedness, read the first part here.

Disaster Recovery is Focused on Business Technology

Disaster recovery is a plan that enables your business to anticipate catastrophic downtime and regain access to and functionality of your technology as fast as possible. Unlike business continuity—which helps your entire organization plan redundant human resources, workspaces, vendors, and technology—disaster recovery is tightly focused on IT systems.

Important metrics that you can use to measure the effectiveness of your disaster recovery plan include the following:

Recovery time objective (RTO)
How long can a system stay down before it starts to impact your business negatively. This metric gives you a limit to how much downtime you can tolerate, which you can use to guide the DR planning process.

Recovery point objective (RPO)
How much data loss is acceptable to your organization? Is a backup that’s 24 hours old enough to get your business back on track, if a tropical storm should strike? 12 hours? This metric helps you understand how frequently your backup systems should be creating redundant copies of your data.

Read more about RPO and RTO on TechTarget.

Why Disaster Recovery is Important

There are multiple beneficial outcomes of having disaster recovery plan, including the following:

Ensure data security
Disaster recovery isn’t just about hurricane protection. Integrating data protection and backup into your disaster recovery plans can provide your organization with a valuable backstop against ransomware and other forms of malware so that if your systems do ever get deleted, you’ll have recent production data to restore operations.

Reduce recovery costs
By being proactive about disaster and having a clear, organization-wide plan for responding to it, you can dramatically lower the cost of responding to downtime.

Responding to those events reactively means hiring hourly IT consultants to perform forensics on your damaged systems, building a plan for saving your network, then marshalling the resources to do that time-consuming work. Each of those steps comes with the potential for costly overtime charges.

Being proactive eliminates much of that reactive work, enabling you to budget for storm preparation with greater confidence.

Business Continuity Keeps Your Organization Productive

As mentioned above, business continuity planning (BCP) is larger in scope than disaster recovery. It’s designed to give you a clear plan for not just responding to a disaster but weathering that disaster and staying productive, no matter how big a storm hits our state.

To build a business continuity plan, you’ll need to coordinate people and resources from across your organization. Here are the most important steps that go into developing a business continuity plan:

Perform a business impact analysis
Start by analyzing your organization to identify critical business activities and their associated dependencies. This helps you understand which systems you need to protect to keep the business operating and where to target your work.

Develop plan and controls
Depending on your tolerance for business downtime, the next step is to develop a clear system for maintaining the health of the critical business operations.

For some small businesses, this could be as simple as sharing access to cloud-based systems. Large, more complex organizations will want to explore alternative office locations, backup telecom infrastructure, and define redundant lines of communication and chain of command to ensure smooth operations when a hurricane or other disaster strikes.

Monitor and test the BCP
The BCP isn’t a static document that you can create and then leave unattended. Your organization changes every day as personnel come and go, business functions change over time, and priorities shift. You should revisit your BCP at least once a year to keep it aligned with your goals and to make sure it still functions properly.

We’ve recently written an in-depth piece about the business continuity planning process, which explains in detail what you can do to make each step of the BCP process efficient and successful.

Business Continuity Outcomes

Important outcomes of a business continuity plan include the following:

Regulatory compliance
The benefits of business continuity extend far beyond hurricane preparation. Businesses in regulated industries like financial services and healthcare are often subject to regulatory compliance standards, like FINRA, HIPAA, and HITECH, which require business continuity in place.

Stronger customer retention
If your business takes weeks to return to normal operations, customers may go looking for other suppliers to help them, compounding the hurricane’s impact on your business. In today’s business climate where between 70% to 80% of a business’s value comes from hard-to-assess assets like brand equity and reputation, being a beacon of stability can have serious returns.

Lower insurance premiums
Businesses in Florida rely on their insurers to protect them from natural disaster and cyber threats. Many forms of insurance require businesses to demonstrate a business continuity plan to purchase insurance or to get the lowest possible premium possible.

Creating Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Synergy

To clarify, the most important difference between the two concepts is when they’re triggered.

A business continuity plan is triggered at the outset of a hurricane or tropical storm so that your team can work through the disaster with as little interruption as possible, while a disaster recovery plan is typically triggered after a disaster has taken place, allowing your team to begin the process of restoring your technology systems as quickly as possible.

But the reality is that the two concepts play an important, synergistic role in helping to keep your business safe from natural disasters. Here’s some of the benefits of combining the two strategies:

• Expose potential gaps
  Creating a holistic plan for overall resiliency—both operational and technological—makes it more likely to find weak points in each plan, leading to a more resilient overall process and a stronger business.
• Reduce recovery time
  With IT now playing a central role in most Florida businesses, business continuity means fully functional IT systems. The sooner you get your technology back up and running at maximum capacity, the sooner you’ll be profitable again.

74% of surveyed organizations have faced a disruptive event with third parties in the past few years.

Tampa’s Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Partner

For 30 years, the LNS Solutions team has been helping businesses in Tampa defend against hurricanes and other natural disasters. If your business is struggling to discover the resiliency it wants, contact our helpful team any time at (813) 393 1626 or info@lnssolutions.com. We look forward to speaking with you!

The Complete Guide to Business Continuity Planning

Serious interruptions to productivity can be a catastrophe for unprepared businesses. Even a single day of downtime can cause a small or midsized business tens of thousands of dollars in lost opportunity, revenue, and reputation.

For larger businesses, IDC estimates that operational downtime can cost up to $100,000 per hour on average.

The most effective tool that businesses have to maintain their operations when a hurricane or other disaster strikes is a business continuity plan (BCP). We wrote this article to help Florida get started with the planning process, understand how it benefits them, and answer any questions they might have.

What is Business Continuity Planning?

Business continuity (BC) planning is a tested plan that outlines everything a business must do when it faces abnormal business interruptions, such as hurricanes and natural disasters, ransomware attacks, or human error.

It is a holistic process that covers every aspect of your business, including your network technology, communications, human resources, physical workspaces, and each of their dependencies.

Triggered before disaster even strikes, think of a BCP as your first-line defense against downtime. As opposed to reactive planning, such as disaster recovery, your BCP helps you proactively maintain normal business operations with as little operational downtime as possible.

The Elements of Comprehensive Business Continuity Plan

A business continuity plan varies from company to company. But here are the components that a successful BCP will contain:

Risk Scope Analysis
Developing a business continuity plan starts with understanding the risk’s scope. This means identifying which critical business functions you are trying to protect, and what dependencies each of those functions have that might be affected by a disaster.

Keep an open mind when thinking of “unprecedented events.” While natural calamities like floods and tropical storms are top of mind in Florida, you should also consider all other risks, such as technological outage, regulatory changes, cybersecurity, and human error as well.

The scope of your plan will be the foundation for all subsequent components of the BCP.

Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
Another major component of the BCP is a detailed analysis of how every identifiable risk will impacts the core business functions from the scope analysis. Running a BIA will help you understand in detail what must be done by whom to sustain those functions when a disaster strikes.

Unlike a risk assessment, which identifies threats and the likelihood of them harming your business, the BIA goes further to define the severity of each threat and how they affect your business operations and finances.

A BIA should analyze each threat in 5 dimensions:

• Human resources
  People are central to your operations, so that your BIA must identify which workers and hierarchies are responsible for each core function and how those responsibility will be delegated when an unwanted event strikes.
• Workspace analysis
  If you’re a multi-location business, how you leverage your reach is vital. Perhaps you may have to shift swiftly from one location to another. If you’re a single-location business, then planning redundant office or meeting spaces can facilitate the continuity process.
• Business technology
  What technology will you use after disaster has struck? Will employees switch to their own personal devices, or will you distribute computers for them to use? What cybersecurity or compliance ramifications does this have? These are just a few of the many concerns that a BIA must address.
• Service delivery
  Professional services firms can switch to online-only service delivery and shut down their physical location easily, like they did during COVDI-19 pandemic. However, many businesses, such as manufacturing firms, healthcare providers, and retail businesses, don’t’ have this luxury. Knowing exactly how service delivery will be impacted by a hurricane or natural threat will help you plan failover systems.
• Health and safety
  The physical safety of your employees, partners, contractors, and customers is paramount during a crisis. You should dedicate a portion of your BIA to how you’ll ensure the health and safety of all stakeholders who are helping you stay operational during a crisis.

Communication Strategy
Communication is paramount when mitigating an unforeseen event. Your BCP should outline how employees should communicate with one another, their superiors, their subordinates, and third-party stakeholders.

In most cases, you can’t have to rely on the hierarchy you have during normal workdays, which means you may need to grant provisional autonomy to certain team members or restrict access to certain systems until your systems have been restored.

You may also choose to implement external communications and public relations as a part of your continuity plan so you can proactively manage your customer expectations and any reputational damage.

Controls and Mitigation
Disaster mitigation, among other things, requires quick decision-making. After analyzing the risks, affected personnel, location, and service delivery requirements, you can now create an action plan.

You need clear instructions on what must be done at the minimum level by every person involved in the mitigation process. The controls are also likely to vary for each disruption scenario.

Leave some room for improvisation. Since you can’t plan for everything well in advance, you should grant limited authority to your “boots on the ground” to work off the prescriptions as they see fit to meet the challenges they face.

Test and Refine Business Continuity Plan

After the continuity plan is in place, it’s time to test it. Run the teams through each disaster scenario as if your business was experiencing a real-life crisis. Repeated testing allows you to measure the plan’s effectiveness and iron out any weak points.

Testing isn’t a one-off event. Regular testing and refinement of the plan will help you achieve a more efficient and consistent result. Communicate the plan and its results throughout your organization so employees can get acquainted with each scenario and what you have in terms of expectations.

The Benefits of Having a Tested Business Continuity Plan

Business continuity planning may seem like a lot of work. But it’s well worth it, given the potentially ruinous costs of facing disaster unprepared. Here are some of the key outcomes that you can expect to reap from a well-tested BCP:

• Minimize downtime
  Most businesses are either not prepared or underprepared to deal with unknown events. 54% of businesses said they’ve experienced at least 8 hours of downtime in the last 8 years. A BCP could have helped those firms pivot more effectively and saved countless hours in lost productivity.
• Customer retention
  If you stay open during critical periods, there’s a good chance that retain or gain more customers than the competition that closes.
• Increase brand trust
  When you can serve customers even in calamities, you enhance your value in the eyes of customers and investors. You become a trusted partner, not just another vendor, which directly increases your brand’s value.
• Protect your bottom line
  All of the above factors trickle down to the bottom line. BCPs help generate more revenue, improve productivity, and cut losses.

Florida’s Trusted Business Continuity Consultant

For 30 years, the LNS Solutions team has been helping businesses in Tampa defend against hurricanes and other natural disasters. If your business is struggling to discover the resiliency it wants, contact our helpful team any time at (813) 393 1626 or info@lnssolutions.com. We look forward to speaking with you!

Protecting Your Business Technology in Hurricane Season

Every year, the Florida business community must gird itself for hurricane season, a significant trade-off for living in a uniquely beautiful state.

Since 1980, the total cost of damage done to coastal Florida by storms has totaled $450 billion in total, with Hurricane Ian alone doing over $100 billion, the costliest disaster in the history of Florida’s history.

As we approach storm season, the team at LNS Solutions thought businesses in our area would benefit from a checklist that helps them take stock for the best practices around disaster preparation and review what they should be doing to protect to minimize downtime that storms cause this year.

Becoming Proactive About Hurricane Protection

The single best thing a business can do to protect itself is take the threat seriously and start the planning process now, before hurricane season starts.

1 - Inventory Your Network
Start by creating a detailed list of all the devices connected to your network. The inventory serves the dual purpose of helping you understand your areas of greatest vulnerability while also helping you successfully file any insurance claim for damaged hardware, if the worst were to occur.

2 – Devise an Escape Plan for Portable Equipment
It’s relatively easy to secure personal computers, workstations, and company mobile devices during a hurricane. The forewarning should give you enough time to power those devices down and move them out of your premises to a safe location.

Deal with any technical hurdles you might face during that process now, which include who’s going to disconnect and move their devices and which safe, inland space they can bring them to wait out the storm.

3- Secure Servers and Immovable IT Infrastructure
For systems that cannot be moved, you can improve their chance of weathering a major storm with the following guidelines:

• Wind can cause huge damage in the opening hours of a storm, but most of the damage that a hurricane causes is in the flooding that lingers in the hours and days after the storm passes. This map from FEMA will help you analyze your company’s flood zone risk.
• When possible, place critical systems in the middle of a room or floor away from windows.
• If that’s not possible, place ground floor systems elevated at least 18 inches off the ground to help mitigate the risk of flooding. Disconnect the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) or batteries as the storm draws near. The lithium in batteries is flammable and could become dangerous if exposed to water.
• Cover your computers and devices with plastic sheeting, and document everything with photographs.
• This is a good time to ensure that the building’s safety systems are functioning properly.

Beware of what’s known as “optimism bias” in the behavioral sciences field. “I’ve been lucky so far” and “It won’t happen here” are all versions of this bias, which can be enormously costly if a disaster does strike. Assuming that your business is vulnerable saves your stress and expense.

According to the Uptime Institutes 2021 Annual Outage Analysis, 40% of business interruptions or outages cost between $100,000, and $1 million.

Disaster Recovery Systems

Strong backup and disaster recovery (BDR) planning is crucial for businesses under any circumstance. For businesses in Florida, it’s even more important that you have a functioning, tested system in place to help you recover sensitive data after a disaster.

4 - Start with the 3-2-1 Backup Strategy
The 3-2-1 backup strategy says that you should have 3 copies of your data (production and two backups) on two different forms of media, with one copy stored offsite.

When working with your cloud backup, pay attention to the vendor and ensure that the data centers that your backups are being stored in a stable location outside Florida so that your data is safe there no matter what happens.

Some businesses may want to move beyond just a single backup in the cloud, so speak to your vendor and make they provide an acceptable level of redundancy on their systems. Security-minded businesses will build even further protection into their strategy by replicating their backups to two providers.

5 - Test Your BDR System
The ability to backup data isn’t what’s going to save you from the next Hurricane Ian, it’s the ability to restore that data quickly and use those backups to restore operations at your business. We’ve seen too many businesses neglect their BDR plans, only to find that when they need them most, they’re not working as well as they need.

When testing your BDR solution, here are some things to look out for?

Build and Test Your Business Continuity Plan

How long can you go without serving your customers before the damage this downtime causes becomes permanent?

Answering this question will help you guide your business continuity strategy and set appropriate goals. For example, small professional services firms may be able to tolerate a day or two of downtime as they get their technology back to operational, while midsized financial service firms and healthcare providers often have only minutes or seconds to spare before they fall afoul of regulators or experience a significant loss of reputation and money.

To help mitigate this, you’ll need not just a plan for recovering your technology after a hurricane strikes but for keeping your team productive through a hurricane. This is known as a business continuity plan, or “BCP.” There are several steps in the continuity planning process, including the following:

1. Identify critical systems
2. Business impact analysis
3. Develop continuity procedures
4. Communicate
5. Test & Train

There are important differences between business continuity and disaster recovery, though they’re often confused. For more information about what each of the steps in the BC process means, we encourage you to read this in-depth guide, which will help you understand the entire process.

Weather Hurricane Season with a Veteran Technology Partner

For 30 years, the LNS Solutions team has been helping businesses through Florida achieve maximum stability in hurricane season and beyond. If your business could use a partner to help build disaster-proof IT, contact our team any time at (813) 393 1626 or info@lnssolutions.com. We look forward to speaking with you!

 

Multifactor Authentication is Critical to Network Security

Password-based attacks are one of the most common tools in the hackers’ toolkit, with about 81% of company data breaches directly attributable to an exploited password or network credential.

The reason these attacks are so popular is because they’re simple and effective. Instead of advanced strategies, such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting (XSS), hackers who want to access your data with phishing can simply send some emails and hope your staff hand over their network credentials.

That’s why the LNS solutions team secures all its clients’ devices with what’s known as multi-factor authentication (MFA). This article is designed to help businesses in the Tampa area understand why we’re so insistent on using MFA and how it helps stop a wide variety of common attacks.  

What Is Multi-Factor Authentication?

MFA is a way of controlling access to your network that goes beyond just requiring a simple password to log into your network. By requiring another type of proof (or “factor”) to gain access to your systems and data, MFA provides a dramatically higher level of endpoint security than passwords alone.

There are several types of multi-factor authentication, including the following:

1. Knowledge Factor – This is personal information that only the user knows, like your mother’s maiden name or the name of your first dog.
2. Possession factor – This is usually a cell phone, tablet, or hardware device that’s been authorized by the system.
3. Inherence factor – This group indicates something that you are, often a retinal scan, voice ID, or fingerprint.

How Does MFA Help Businesses Stay Safe?

MFA helps businesses stay safe by blunting the impact of the most common forms of cyberattack, including two of the most prevalent cyber threats, phishing and ransomware.

Phishing Attacks
Half of all cybersecurity leaders feel that phishing is a serious threat, with network credentials being the goal of most such attacks. In the simplest form, phishing tricks employees into clicking on a link that gives hackers access to their computer, which they can then use to infiltrate connected systems.

MFA helps prevent phishing by forcing hackers who have stolen a password (or purchased one on the dark web) to jump through yet another security door. In fact, according to Microsoft, MFA could prevent over 999% of account-based cyberattacks.

Ransomware Attacks
MFA cannot stop ransomware entirely, but it’s a powerful tool that can make a critical difference in many scenarios. Besides the direct benefit of scaring hackers from your network with MFA, alerts from an MFA authentication app can also give a hacked end user critical warning they’ve been compromised, allowing your cybersecurity team (or partner) to take mitigating steps before things spin out of control.

Small Businesses Remains Wary of MFA Adoption
According to one recent study, over two-thirds of smaller organizations have not implemented MFA yet. Why are businesses, who are relatively undefended, so resistant to a simple, cost-effective security approach that’s so effective?

We’ve found that resistance to MFA breaks down into a few different camps.

• Fears of Company Data
  Once personal devices are being used for multi-factor authentication, does that mean that employees have free reign to put company data onto those devices as well? Businesses that worry about MFA blurring the lines between corporate and privately owned assets can make MFA part of a larger mobile device management solution, clarifying that distinction.
• Cost of Mobile Devices
  Business leaders may worry that once employees are using personal devices for work, they’ll expect compensation for those devices. There’s no hard and fast answer here. The vast majority of companies do reimburse employees who use their own devices for work-related tasks, but simply using a device for MFA verification doesn’t have to meet that standard. Just communicate your decision clearly to your staff and be open to engaging in dialog around MFA configuration.

MFA Isn’t a Cybersecurity Silver Bullet

Unfortunately, MFA alone isn’t enough to guarantee strong network security. Hackers are highly adaptable and have found ways to bypass some of the protections that MFA provides, though the methods for doing so require a lot more skill and insight than it takes to launch a standard phishing attack.

For example, “Man in the Middle” attacks work by temporarily assigning the cell phone number of an employee to another cell phone. This is called “spoofing.” Spoofing allows hackers to intercept the SMS messages that verify a user, disrupting the second MFA factor and gaining access to your systems.

Another thing to watch out for is simple “MFA fatigue” or “MFA spamming.” By overloading a user with MFA prompts and notifications, hackers hope that they will eventually, out of frustration, force the user to accept the login attempt to stop the notifications from coming.

That’s exactly what happened at a recent hack at Cisco. If a major technology company is vulnerable to such an attack, it makes sense that small-and midsized businesses in Tampa should be vigilant as well.

Here’s what you can do to ensure your MFA provides a consistent, strong defense.

Focus on Your Overall Cybersecurity Posture
Perhaps the most critical thing you can do to ensure your MFA deployment is a success is to ensure that you’re applying cybersecurity best practices to the other aspects of your network. If there are other weak spots in your defenses, such as poor password management or data hygiene, then hacking MFA becomes much easier.

The Rise of Phishing Resistant MFA

There’s a new generation of “phishing resistant MFA” that goes beyond the SMS message, other one-time passwords (OTP), and app-based push notifications. Based on new authentication technologies, like FIDO or the Federal Government’s Personal Identity Verification (PIV), this type of MFA uses strong cryptography, device registration, and advanced biometric to eliminate the eliminate the weak links in standard MFA process.

Phishing-resistant MFA is a newer technology that large tech companies like Google and Microsoft have adopted, but you can be sure that as it matures, it’ll find its way into small business networks.

Tampa’s Trusted Cybersecurity Team

For over two decades, the LNS Solutions team has helped companies in the Tampa area stabilize their networks and protect their sensitive data and assets. If you have cybersecurity questions, we encourage you to reach out to our team any time at (813) 393-1626 or info@lnssolutions.com.

 

How to Identify and Manage Your Cybersecurity Risks

It’s not news that cybersecurity is the leading source of risk for small and midsized businesses in the Tampa area.

According to a 2022 report, nearly 4 in 5 small and midsized businesses say that the number of cyberattacks targeting their organization grew over the last year. At the same time, limited resources, a lack of internal security expertise, and an urgent time constraint make finding security confidence difficult.

There is a way to navigate the complexity of security without guesswork or wasting budget.

By using a resource like the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework, small businesses can adopt what’s known as a “risk-based” approach to cybersecurity, which focuses their efforts on areas of greatest concern while saving huge amounts of effort and money.

What is a Cybersecurity Framework?

Cybersecurity frameworks are essentially a set of guidelines, standards, and best practices that help you secure your business technology systems. They are based on techniques and leading practices that have been proven to work for multiple industries and organizations.

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) is one of the most popular cybersecurity frameworks in use across both public and private sector organizations today. It was originally created to secure Federal Infrastructure to help organizations effectively secure their systems against cyber risks.

One of the main reasons behind its popularity is its flexibility. NIST can be used at SMBs and large enterprises alike—no matter what industries they operate in. It contains instructions for conducting regular risk assessments and guidance across five key action areas.

1.      Identify

The first step is to identify actions that will help you understand your sources of risk. Some of the key recommendations include:

• Locate the hardware and software that you’ll need to protect
• Analyze the vulnerabilities and threats to the your those resources
• Having a user account per employee, and outlining cybersecurity policies in a handbook.

The identify phase is characterized by what’s known as a cybersecurity risk assessment, a deep analysis of your network through the lens of the NIST CSF. These assessments aren’t one-off events; you should run one whenever there’s a major change in your network.

2.      Protect

This category contains recommendations to safeguard your systems and limit the impact of cyberattacks. It entails giving employees access only to what they need, regularly patching your operating system and applications, installing firewalls, encrypting sensitive data, and implementing network security tools.

3.      Detect

If a cyberattack does occur, it’s critical that your organization detect it as quickly as possible. To help organizations achieve this, the framework suggests the installation and updating of antivirus and anti-malware, and monitoring and logging digital activity. These can help you investigate and identify sources of compromise quickly.

4.      Respond

What do you do when intrusion or compromise is detected? You must take appropriate activities to contain and analyze the event to realize its impact. This portion of CSF helps you define roles and responsibilities, manage communications with internal stakeholders, external stakeholders, and law enforcement, and ensure that mitigation activities are performed according to plan.

5.      Recover

The goal of any cybersecurity program is for you to return to business-as-usual as soon as possible after an attack takes place. The last part of the NIST framework helps you restore timely operations to reduce the impact of cybersecurity incidents big or small.

• How to coordinate internal and external communications
• Internalize lessons learned after an attack
• Adjust your cybersecurity strategy based on your team’s experiences

While the NIST framework recommends actions across these five categories, you don’t need to implement all 900 security controls in NIST, only the ones that apply to your business.

Why Risk-based Cybersecurity is Important for Small Businesses

In the past, businesses acquired their cybersecurity skills in an incremental way. This approach—known as the maturity model—has businesses slowly build out their roadmap for developing security practices, guidelines, and controls as their business grows.

Risk-based cybersecurity turns the focus to risk reduction. It means identifying the sources of risk, and prioritizing the risks that are most important from a business continuity perspective. There are many benefits of this model for small and midsized businesses.

Proactive Cybersecurity
Risk-based cybersecurity optimizes your cybersecurity capabilities based on what they protect. The more critical an asset, the higher its priority; therefore, your defenses and efforts are focused on protecting what matters the most for your business.

Instead of aiming at 100% security, it focuses on a meaningful risk reduction. This strategy is more proactive in that it aims to reduce risk exposure and prevent cyberattacks instead of building capabilities to fend them off.

Lower Security Costs
Risk-based strategies are significantly more cost-effective than the traditional maturity model. According to a McKinsey study, an organization improved risk reduction by 7.5x with a risk-based approach at no additional cost. For SMBs, risk-based approaches can significantly reduce their cybersecurity spending or help them achieve a much higher level of security at their existing budgets.

Respond to New Threats Faster
A risk-based approach does not treat cyber risk as a static factor. It takes the evolution of the business and threat landscape over time into account and advocates a dynamic approach to security, meaning you’ll be able to easily adjust your protections as new threats emerge.

The NIST CSF is important because it helps all businesses, including SMBs, adopt a risk-based cybersecurity model. So, how can SMBs adopt NIST? See below.

How to Implement the NIST Cybersecurity Framework

As we mentioned above, the first and most important step to implementing the NIST framework is to gain a deep understanding of your “big picture,” meaning which systems are well-protected already, and which need stronger support.

This starts with a cybersecurity risk assessment.

With the intelligence you’ve gathered, you can then start to prioritize the most important risks that you want to mitigate. Supplementary resources, such as the Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR), can help you quantify your cyber risk and determine which controls to prioritize.

It’s important that your effort has the full support of leaders as you work through the NIST controls. Risk-based approaches are not just about implementing technical protections, it also means managing the human aspects of cyber risk, which requires buy-in from across your organization.

You may also want to consider enlisting the help of an IT security partner who can help you manage the many complexities of streamlining your security efforts with NIST.

LNS Solutions: 20 Years of Cybersecurity Expertise

Implementing NIST or other popular security frameworks like ISO 2700 requires expertise in risk assessment, building risk models, and identifying a roadmap to secure a network. If you find any of those things challenging, then call the LNS Solutions team for help.

Out team of friendly team of cybersecurity experts is available any time at (813) 393-1626 or info@lnssolutions.com. We’re here to help!

 

Is My Data Safe in the Cloud?

Companies are turning to cloud computing as a cost-effective, secure, and scalable way to store their data, streamline collaboration, and access new capabilities without the enormous capital expenditures that normally come with a new technology purchase.

As the trend toward “digital transformation” advances, more organizations are moving their core business operations to cloud platforms. However, with this shift, the question of data security often arises.

After all, storing sensitive information on remote servers can seem risky, but is it really? The answer is complex. We wrote this article to help you better understand the topic and keep your data safe in the new cloud era.

The Good News: Cloud Data Is Reasonably Secure

Cloud data is quite secure by nature, and big cloud providers like Microsoft, Google, and others employ skilled cybersecurity technicians to ensure that customer data is well protected. Here are some of the ways that cloud data are generally safer than onside data.

Rigorously Updated Network Infrastructure

Cloud providers take the necessary steps to update their network infrastructure, and they do so by applying patches and updates to the hardware and software that power their data centers.

Patch management is an important step toward optimizing and securing an IT system. Applying updates to fix vulnerabilities and maintain proper security practices reduces the "attack surface" of your network and keeps hackers from exploiting the most well-known vulnerabilities.

·        24/7 Security Monitoring

Another important aspect of cloud security is 24/7 security monitoring. Cloud providers have well-staffed teams of security experts who monitor their systems around the clock. They watch for unusual network activity that could indicate a security breach, a layer of security that no small-or medium-sized business could match when they store their data in internal systems.

·        Redundancy

Cloud providers also have backup systems in place to ensure data availability in case of a disaster. All cloud data are backed up to other services, so even if one server fails, there is another that can take its place. This helps prevent data loss and ensures that businesses can access their information, even during an outage.

·        Third-Party Audits

Big cloud providers also hire third-party firms to perform audits of their services. These audits help identify any security vulnerabilities that need to be addressed. By doing this, cloud providers are demonstrating their commitment to security and helping build trust with their customers.

·        Security Monitoring Tools

Finally, cloud providers have a range of security monitoring tools that they use to detect and respond to security threats. These tools help prevent attacks, monitor traffic, and protect against data breaches.

A Ponemon Institute report showed that 60% of security breach victims were compromised due to exploiting known, unpatched vulnerabilities.

The Bad News: You Still Need to Be Proactive About Cloud Data.

Although cloud storage providers take numerous steps to ensure the safety of their data, there is no guarantee of complete security.

• The Thales Cloud Security Report for 2022 shows that the number of businesses affected by cloud-based data breaches or failed audits has risen by 5% in the past year, with 45% of companies reporting such incidents.
• According to IBM’s recent data breach report, nearly 45% of breaches occurred in the cloud.
• According to Flexera’s 2022 State of the Cloud Report, IT decision-makers list security as their top cloud challenge.

So, what gives? The major issue is that the nature of cloud data security is different from on-premises security, a reality which many small and midsized businesses haven’t fully adapted to yet.

Businesses that have committed to the cloud will need to take time to ensure that their systems are configured for maximum security. Here are a few first steps all businesses should take to secure their cloud applications:

·        Deploy End-to-End Encryption

Most cloud services provide encryption for your data once it reaches their service, but to protect data at every stage of the business, businesses should employ what’s known as “end-to-end encryption”.

End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a secure communication method where the data is encrypted on the sender's device, transmitted in encrypted form, and decrypted only on the recipient’s device, which in this case is the cloud service. E2EE provides a layer of protection against these security threats, ensuring that the data remain confidential and secure.

In the absence of E2EE, cloud data is vulnerable to interception by hackers or other malicious actors who may gain access to it by exploiting vulnerabilities in the cloud provider’s security infrastructure. There are several ways to achieve this.

·        Enforce a Strict Password Policy

The average medium-sized organization employs 3.4 public clouds and 3.9 private clouds, according to the above-mentioned Flexera 2022 State of the Cloud Report, as well as around 110 SaaS services. Each service is a potential attack vector.

Strong password management is critical to preventing unauthorized access to your cloud data.

This starts when you develop a comprehensive password policy. Many employees reuse passwords for work and personal accounts to make them more memorable. Doing so is a huge security red flag. Frequently used passwords are the first targets of hackers attempting a “brute force” attack, where they use a leaked password database to try to force their way into a network.

A strong password should be complex, incorporating a blend of long sequences of letters, numbers, and special characters. In the past, having a password with over eight characters was enough to discourage most cybercriminals, but this was no longer the case. In 2022, 93% of brute force password attacks involved passwords with over 8 characters, and 41% had over 12 characters.

·         Provide Consistent Cybersecurity Training

It is crucial to educate your personnel on recognizing how to handle data in the cloud. Intrusion attempts can take many different shapes in 2023, such as phishing emails, malware, and spoofed website pages.

Giving your employees regular training sessions helps them stay aware of the latest attacks and teaches them how to handle data to maximize the impact of your cyber protections. They should also be trained to report any suspicious activity to the IT department.

·        Backup Files in a Third-Party Location

Major cloud providers have a very high degree of network uptime, but they’re not 100% reliable. Weather events, internet connectivity issues, and other factors can all disrupt access to cloud data. That makes it important that you have a redundant copy of critical data stored in a third-party location, so your team isn’t fully dependent on the cloud.

·        Strengthen Vendor Management

Not all cloud services provide the same level of security, and it’s important to vet your cloud vendors to ensure they meet your security needs, especially if your business handles personally identifiable information (PII) or has compliance requirements, such as HIPAA, PCI-DSS, or FINRA/SEC.

·        Beware of Internal Threats

Not all data loss occurs because of external threats like hackers or natural disasters. Internal threats, such as disgruntled staff, employees leaving the company, and unauthorized company device usage, can compromise your cloud data. Deploying internal security controls and regularly monitoring your cloud environment is important to preventing internal data breaches.

Tampa Businesses Migrate to the Cloud with LNS Solutions

The security measures that we’ve written about here are just the tip of the iceberg, of course. Businesses in Tampa that want to truly maximize their security protections will want to enlist a seasoned security partner like LNS Solutions.

Feel free to contact us anytime!

 

Do Businesses Still Need IT Services in the Cloud?

Cloud computing has transformed the way that businesses purchase and maintain their technology. The transformative power of the cloud can help you reduce costs and streamline efficiency, but it can also create confusion.

In particular, businesses in Florida often misunderstand the type and level of IT support they’ll need once they’re “in the cloud.” If your cloud infrastructure is managed by the experts at Microsoft, Google, or other providers, why would your company need an IT service firm at all anymore?

The reality is that the need for IT services is still strong in the cloud era, but the type of support your business needs will continue to shift as it moves along its cloud journey. To help business leaders understand this new landscape better, let’s drill down into two key points:

• The kind of support cloud computing services require
• What businesses should expect from an IT team with cloud specialization

Maintaining Business Efficiency and Stability in the Cloud

Cloud services have eliminated some of the trickier tasks associated with IT management, but there’s still ample work to be done to make sure that cloud infrastructure delivers on all its promises. Here are a few key areas where you’ll need your IT partner to focus.

Ensure the Resilience of Your Infrastructure

While it’s true that cloud moves those costs from your balance sheet to the cloud service provider’s, what’s less discussed is that moving important data and services to the cloud puts extra stress on your telecom devices and infrastructure.

Your routers, network switches, firewalls, and virtual private networks are important to establishing connectivity between your staff and your cloud services. The failure of any of those devices will cause serious disruptions to your workday that rival the failure of on-premise systems.

To avoid these problems, you’ll need an IT team to design and manage an infrastructure that’s powerful enough to support your day-to-day work, flexible enough to accommodate company growth, and resilient enough to withstand cyberattack.

Other important tasks that fall under this umbrella include:

• Monitor cloud server performance
• Manage redundant communications
• Track resource usage and utilization
• Reduce latency and keep ensure tight integration of critical systems

Whether internal or outsourced, your IT department will play a key role in the success of each of these areas, helping you achieve all the efficiency gains and cost savings you hoped to achieve.

Worldwide spending on public cloud services grew by 20.4% in 2022, for a total $494.7 billion, according to Gartner.

Ensure Strong Cloud Cybersecurity
Data flowing freely between on-premise systems and your users and cloud services unlocks massive potential. It enables your staff to collaborate on new projects, respond to customer requests faster, and generally be more creative and productive than they’d otherwise be.

What’s talked about a bit less in the marketing literature is the complex security and compliance ramifications of having data move so fluidly.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, security was a top-of-mind concern for companies in regulated industries like healthcare or finance. Since the pandemic, the environment has only become more challenging, with work from home arrangements becoming the new standard and the raw number of cyberattacks hitting small and midsized businesses reaching historic highs.

• Hardened Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)
  VPN connections are critical to protecting data that’s in transit to and from cloud services. They create a shielded, secure tunnel for data to pass through, so your staff can connect to cloud platforms and other network resources with confidence that your data is safe from cyber criminals.Many companies already have a VPN solution in place, but not all of them have updated them for the era of company-wide cloud productivity. To ensure your VPN keeps data secure, your IT team will need to regularly test VPN performance, review your VPN logfiles for unusual behavior, and monitor bandwidth usage.
• Improved Password Management
  The average employee at an American company is now accessing between 8 and 25 unique cloud applications as part of their daily work. Each of those services should have a unique password, so that an intruder who compromises one system doesn’t have easy access to all the user’s other accounts.To effectively manage all those passwords at scale means businesses must start to take password management seriously.First, ensure that two-facto authentication has been properly deployed on each of your systems and that any mobile device used as a second factor is secure. Additionally, businesses may also choose to deploy a password management solution like LastPass or Dashlane to incentivize employees to avoid duplicate passwords and enforce company password policies.
• Greater Focus on Data Governance
  Having a plan for managing the data on cloud applications helps ensure the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of your data. While the term “data governance” may sound intimidating for most small or midsized business, at the simplest level it simply means clarifying data ownership and security measures for data handling.

Did you know that 90% of passwords can be cracked in less than 6 hours, or that passwords using 8 characters or less can be cracked in just 1 hour?

 

How to Choose an IT Services Team with Cloud Computing Expertise

What does all this mean for businesses who are looking for a new IT services provider? It means finding an IT services provider who has cloud-specific skills. In addition to expertise in the areas listed above, you should see if they have competence in the following areas as well.

Cloud Planning and Migration
Not all cloud computing programs achieve the return on investment that they set out to achieve. One of the leading reasons for this is because business lack a clear sense of what they’re trying to achieve with their cloud initiative.

Cloud planning means having specific, measurable, achievable goals for your cloud deployment that will help you solve a well-defined business problem. Even if your business has migrated some of its network infrastructure to the cloud, you’ll want an IT service provider who can help you with any cloud strategy question you have in the future

Cloud Budgeting
Achieving cost efficiency in the cloud is not always a given. According to Gartner, 60% of infrastructure and operations leaders at midsized businesses will encounter cost overruns associated with public clouds. Can your new IT service provider help you navigate the cost complexity in cloud computing and help

Tampa’s Trusted Cloud Computing Services Provider

Deploying and managing cloud applications and services can be a challenge. For over two decades, the LNS Solutions team has been helping small and midsized companies in Tampa find technology confidence, which includes ensuring cloud stability, security, and compliance.

If you have questions for our cloud computing team, feel free to contact us any time. We look forward to speaking with you.

 

 

Do I Need to Hire Onsite IT Support Staff?

Small businesses and midsized businesses are now leveraging a wide array of technology to cut costs, boost productivity, and bring more value to the marketplace. As businesses grow more dependent on technology, the demand for reliable IT support grows along with it.

But the work required to ensure your infrastructure stays running 24-hours a day, 365-days a year involves a substantial investment of time and effort. Hiring and retaining qualified IT support personnel to manage these complex systems is a tremendous challenge, with hidden costs and obstacles at every stage of the process.

Let’s take look at the burdens of hiring and managing onsite IT support, then explore how the Managed IT Service Model can helps alleviate these obstacles with via remote network management and IT help desk support.

Reasons Why Onsite IT Support Isn’t Always the Best Approach

There’s an assumption that having your IT team right down the hall is always best. While there are benefits to being able to interface quickly with a technology team, onsite support isn’t always the ideal choice. Here are a few of the key reasons why onsite support can leave you unprepared.

Qualified IT Talent is Too Hard to Find

The skills gap in IT is expanding making it difficult for organizations to find and hire proficient tech workers. While demand continues to grow exponentially, the pool of suitable candidates does not. As the gap widens, more companies will struggle to keep up with the latest technologies, trends, and threats.

Good Technicians are Costly

The cost of staffing an in-house IT support crew is skyrocketing. According to Glassdoor, the average salary for a tech professional working in the Tampa area is almost $80,000 in 2022.

In addition to paying high salaries and providing traditional benefits like paid time off (PTO) and health insurance, tech staff may also expect businesses to provide perks like childcare assistance, health club memberships, paid family leave, fertility assistance, bereavement leave, and tuition reimbursement, professional training, and more.

Those costs are a significant burden for a growing business, especially as you scale your IT team to cover the many skillsets you’ll need to support and secure a modern network.

IT Talent is Difficult to Retain

The shortage of qualified IT workers (and the high paychecks they command) makes it difficult to retain said talent. And as you’d expect, small and midsized businesses are the hardest hit.

If an important member of your small IT team says your competitor has offered a significant salary increase along with better opportunities for career advancement, does your business have the necessary funds to give them a competitive raise? What if you need access to a new program like cloud computing, cybersecurity, how will you build that into your existing budget?

When an IT staff person does leave—because eventually they will—they will take with them all the knowledge about your network and business they’ve gained over the years, forcing you to start from scratch and retrain your new employee.

How The Managed IT Services Model Solves These Problems

Thankfully, there’s an alternative to hiring in-house. The flat-rate support of an MSP gives you many of the benefits of hiring IT support technicians with none of the downsides associated with an in-house hire.

Proactive vs. Reactive IT Support

Our experience has taught us that onsite IT teams tend to become siloed and develop a short-sighted view of the infrastructure they maintain. Without the agency or resources they need to thrive, an onsite support teams often ends up in a reactive mode rather than proactively managing your network.

Reactive IT support forces your organization to play a never-ending game of cat-and-mouse. Being behind the curve and playing catch-up leads to a patchwork of “quick-fix” solutions that are not integrated or coordinated, which introduces new vulnerabilities.

This service model puts businesses at a significant disadvantage against their competition and against cybercriminals.

Proactive IT support, on the other hand, helps companies avoid these problems by fixing small issues before they materialize as big issues. In partnering with a reputable Managed IT service provider to provide proactive IT help desk support and network management, you’ll have instant access to a cadre of tech experts with vast experience monitoring and repairing issues remotely.

Businesses that manage their IT with a proactive approach increase uptime, improve inefficient workflows, and offer a better experience to their clients.

More Consistent Technology Support

Every employee on your IT staff possesses an intangible understanding and know-how regarding your organization's tech infrastructure. This expertise, often referred to as institutional knowledge, evaporates when there’s employee turnover, extended vacation or leave.

When your business a key IT staff person—even temporarily—it will inevitably lead to lackluster network support, reduced workforce productivity, and lapses in communication. Ask yourself:

What happens if my business becomes the victim to a sophisticated cyberattack while a key member of my IT staff is unavailable to respond? Do I have someone the redundant systems in place to manage that disaster and someone to help me manage that transition?

Working with an MSP to ensure that your network is constantly watched around the clock can help to fortify your defenses.

A good provider will help your organization implement security measures to reduce your risk of being targeted by cybercriminals while also keeping an eye on your network day and night, sniffing out threats and responding quickly no matter the time of day.

Remote IT is Less Obtrusive

Another advantage of remote IT help desk support and network management is that it's invisible to your staff.

Onsite IT support can be obtrusive and too frequently interrupt other departments trying to do their job. Since remote IT support is done over the internet, it's out of your way, affording a level of convenience and flexibility that’s hard for wholly onsite teams to match.

With a remote IT team, your workforce won’t even know there’s an MSP at the other end who keeps the infrastructure running smoothly. As more businesses discover that they can get the same or better quality of IT support without hiring onsite staff, this support model is growing in popularity.

But there is no one-size-fits-all approach in IT, and for certain kinds of organizations, the need for onsite tech specialists is paramount hence CoManaged IT support partnerships are also trending upward.

Want the Best of Both Worlds? Explore Co-managed IT Services

A co-managed IT support arrangement means the organization works with a managed service provider to supplement its in-house IT team.

This can be a great solution for businesses who don’t have the internal resources to support a fully staffed IT department, or for businesses that want to offload some of the day-to-day management of their IT infrastructure to a trusted partner.

If you’re considering co-managed IT support for your business, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• It’s important to find a partner that you can trust. Look for a provider with experience in your industry and with a track record of co-managed success.
• You’ll need to make sure your onsite team is properly trained to work with the external support team to ensure seamless collaboration.
• You should consider your long-term needs and goals when choosing a co-managed IT support partner, as not all providers offer the same services or levels of support.

Remote Technology Support and IT Help Desk in Tampa
As the demand for qualified IT professionals continues to increase, many businesses will find it difficult to keep pace. While some will see this as an insurmountable challenge, others are taking advantage of savvy IT partnership solutions to create new opportunities for themselves.

If your business is looking to maximize the uptime and availability of its technology, the LNS Solutions team is here to help. For 20 years, we’ve been a trusted IT support partner to business in Tampa. Contact our friendly, responsive team any time at (813) 393-1626 or info@lnssolutions.com.

We look forward to speaking with you!

Why Businesses in Tampa Outsource Their IT Help Desk

The support of a well-managed IT help desk plays an integral role to the day-to-day productivity of your business. Their help not only ensures that you resolve the technology obstacles that slow down your team’s work, but it also helps your team feel valued and supported, boosts morale, and allows them to better focus on valuable work.

But running an IT help desk internally takes a considerable commitment of resources that far exceeds the ability and budget of small and midsized businesses in Tampa.

For this reason, most companies will need to outsource that duty to a managed IT service provider like LNS Solutions. But with so many competing companies making similar claims, how do you know which provider is the right choice?

In this blog we’ll explore why businesses outsource their IT help desk and what they can do to ensure that they’ve picked the right provider.

The Benefits of an Outsourced IT Help Desk

Handing over the responsibility for your IT help desk duties helps businesses solves some of the most challenging pain points associated with IT support and management. There are four major benefits to working with an outsourced help desk provider.

Guaranteed Responsiveness and Stability

Managing IT staff is a unique challenge that most businesses aren’t prepared for, even if when they think they’ve got it under control. Businesses that have a small internal IT team struggle to fully understand their work or give them the direction they need to ensure make sure that they’re doing everything they can to protect your network.

Reputable MSPs back their IT help desk service with a detailed service-level agreement (SLA). This contract outlines in clear terms exactly how quickly their technicians will respond to your IT support requests, what steps they’ll take to address your issue, and how important issues are escalated to senior network engineers.

The result is a network with a guaranteed level of availability, usually above 99.99%. That level of service is difficult to achieve with just in-house resources.

Eliminate IT Staffing Stress

IT staffing is a nightmare, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced companies in all industries struggling to find new staff. According to recent research from Gartner, 64% of business leaders say that a talent shortage is the biggest obstacle to adopting new technologies.

Finding qualified help desk technicians, reviewing their resumes and credentials, administering skill tests to check their real-world abilities, and then dealing with a high rates of turnover can drain your energy and cause significant stress.

Working with a reputable MSP eliminates those IT staffing woes. Veteran MSPs have a mature process for vetting and hiring help desk technicians, reducing your HR overhead and reliving a serious source of stress.

Refined Help Desk Technology and Processes

Running an IT help desk isn’t just about good technicians, it’s also about good technology. Modern help desk teams rely on specialized software that allows them to remotely monitor the status of your network, analyze new issues, then make required repairs, without having to disrupt your productivity.

Those software suites are expensive to purchase and difficult to learn, which makes them inaccessible to most businesses. A reputable outsourced IT help desk will have all these systems in place, along with years of experience configuring and using them. That expertise means they can hit the ground running and spare you those high capital expenses.

Streamline Your IT Budget

When you start to build an IT team, the significant costs start to add up fast.

First, there are the direct costs of your technical hires and the software you need to support them. Beyond that, there are many costs that businesses fail to budget for, like new hardware, employee training and certification costs, and dedicated office space to house your IT help desk team.

Working with an MSP consolidates all those costs into a single, flat monthly bill that includes remote IT support like the IT help desk, along with unlimited onsite support from their team of network engineers.

In some scenarios, outsourcing leads to a cost savings over running these programs in-house.

But in every case, it provides your business leaders with budgeting confidence. An IT help desk service from a reputable MSP means a predictable IT support budget that never fluctuates, no matter how much support your team needs or what type of cybersecurity incident your organizations faces.

How to Choose the Right IT Help Desk?

I’ve used the term “reputable” MSP several times in this article so far, so much that it begs the question, “What is a reputable MSP”?

That’s one of the central issues that’ll have to answer when you’re evaluating potential IT services partners. Unfortunately, the MSP market has a low barrier to entry, so established providers can have a hard time standing out for the plethora of low-cost providers who making identical marketing claims.

Check Their Help Desk Metrics

Start with a customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey and see if they’re tracking how many of their IT tickets end with a happy end-user. If they’re not tracking CSAT, that may be a red flag that they’re not taking their service quality seriously enough.

Digging deeper there are huge variety of help desk metrics that you can inquire about. These will provide a clear picture of how effectively the MSP’s help desk is serving their clients.

• Mean Time to Response
  How quickly, on average, will the help desk take to respond to each individual IT support ticket. This metric is important because not only does the help desk need to solve your problems, they also need to make your team must feel listened to and valued.
• Mean Time Resolution
  How quickly does you the average IT support ticket take to resolve? This demonstrates how effectively the MSP has integrated their IT help desk with their engineering teams. The effective coordination of resources could be critical if you ever find yourself in serious IT trouble.

For a deeper look into important IT help desk statistics, check out this great post from help desk software provider, Kaseya.

Long-Term Partnership

Switching MSPs is a serious business. Over months and years, the MSP will build a strong relationship with your business and team. This means not just supporting your immediate IT support needs but providing strategic guidance to your leadership as your business and technology evolve.

To ensure that an MSP is capable being a dependable long-term partner, you should make sure they have a track-record of working with clients for several years. To start, check to make sure that their reputation in your community is solid. During the MSP interview process, make a point of asking about the average length of their client engagements and dig deep into their referrals too.

The Tampa Business Community’s Trusted Managed IT Service Provider

The LNS Solutions team has been serving the Tampa area for decades, helping our business community streamline and upgrade their day-to-day operations with cutting-edge, reliable technology. If your company would like to outsource regular IT support to a trusted provider, we’d love to speak with you any time at (813) 393-1626.