IT systems play a critical role in every aspect of business operations, from internal communications and finance to marketing and customer service. So when a company has IT issues, it can cause significant disruption and frustration. Businesses want their IT systems to be accessible and running smoothly at all times.

All organizations experience change. Employees are onboarded and offboarded, technologies evolve, and external partnerships come and go. These changes affect an organization’s day-to-day activities and have repercussions on its IT system.

For instance, if your Washington-based business is expanding, you can expect not only an influx of new hires but also employees getting internal promotions.

According to the Password Manager Annual Report 2022, digital passwords remain both a primary tool for security and a target for malicious online hackers. While password managers help further secure login credentials, users still have a way to go in maximizing these apps for greater protection.

Every day, cybercriminals target businesses of all sizes via phishing attacks — varying from mass-mailed scams to sophisticated targeted spear phishing schemes — and the consequences can be disastrous. In fact, IBM’s 2022 Cost of a Data Breach Report revealed that phishing is the costliest initial attack vector, at $4.91 million average cost of breach.

Did you know that the average employee has around 200 passwords? That's a lot of passwords to remember! It's no surprise, then, that many people simply use easy-to-memorize but also easy-to-crack passwords and reuse these across multiple accounts. Some people also write down their passwords on sticky notes on their computers.

Many businesses use network cables to connect and quickly transfer data between their computers and other devices. This means that network cabling (i.e., the infrastructure of network cables) is crucial to ensuring that employees can easily access the IT resources they need to perform their tasks.

Catastrophes may strike at any time without warning, and any firm that's caught unprepared may struggle to get back on its feet. To protect your firm from complete collapse, you need a business continuity plan (BCP).

What is a business continuity plan (BCP)?
A BCP details how a company can stay operational during an unplanned interruption caused by either a natural calamity (e.g., flash flood) or human-made disaster (e.g., ransomcloud attack). Stakeholders and key personnel create this plan in anticipation of such adverse events so that staff members, company data and systems, and physical assets are all protected.

The New Year is the perfect time for business owners and managers to make resolutions that can steer the company in the right direction. Given the importance of cybersecurity in today’s business environment, they need to make the following seven resolutions to bolster password security:

1. Use long passwords
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) no longer recommends combining upper- and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters to create a password.

The new year is a great time to start fresh and implement new strategies for your business. If you haven’t already, we highly suggest adding managed detection and response (MDR) to your cybersecurity strategy.

What is managed detection and response?
MDR is an outsourced service for hunting down and responding to cyberthreats.

Some businesses delay or forego IT purchases, thinking that these are unnecessary expenses. What they fail to realize is that buying the right technologies can actually be a wise investment.

In this blog post, we'll discuss 10 ways investing in business IT can help your company save money and become more profitable.