Chris Crellin

As most MSPs can attest to, building and maintaining a successful business means establishing your expertise and authority as a business partner. Doing that involves constantly showing the customer the value of the services you provide, communicating with them on a regular basis about the health of their IT assets, and not being afraid to have difficult conversations when they are warranted.

Cybercriminals are everywhere, and they target everyone — from SMBs to large enterprises, government agencies, nation states, and even political organizations including the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which announced in June its networks had been breached. Hackers are working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year to find and exploit vulnerabilities that allow them to steal confidential and sensitive data and sell it to the highest bidder. Are some more at risk than others? You bet.

Moving at the speed of business today means providing immediate access to critical business data and applications, regardless of whether workers are on-site or working remotely. It also means enabling workers to respond quickly to customer and partner requests via e-mail and instant messaging, and leveraging cloud computing to support instant collaboration between workers, customers, and partners in different geographic locations.

Since 2004, Ready.gov, a national public service campaign by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has recognized September as National Preparedness Month. As the month comes to a close, we remind you to stress with your clients that businesses should be prepared year-round for disaster. This is an opportunity for IT solution providers and SMBs alike to re-focus their efforts on ensuring that their data and critical business infrastructure are protected, should catastrophe strike.

It seems as if a week doesn’t go by without a data breach making headlines. From recent news of backup tapes gone missing from a Massachusetts-based hospital to a phishing attack at an Indiana-based healthcare system to a malware incident involving payment cards at several upscale hotels in California, the reasons for these data breaches vary widely. While each of these incidents offers a cautionary tale for businesses of all sizes, they don’t fully illustrate what’s needed to successfully fill the security gaps that exist today.

IT security is a concern for every business, but what many are missing is that the solution isn’t just about the products in play. It’s about the policies too.