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By the DynaSis Team

For the final article of 2014, we thought it would be interesting to share some thoughts on leadership. A few decades ago, a major component of being a great leader was leading in your physical space―being in touch not only with your employees but also their work environments and activities. IBM CEO John Akers was praised for the way he left the executive office and walked around his company’s facility, connecting with workers in their own spaces.

With the advent of the digital era, leaders must deal with a new dimension in “connection”―the digital one. Many business experts conjecture that great leaders now must also be champions of the digital world, and some of the most respected, beloved CEOs are doing just that.

Following are a few ideas to help business owners expand their reputation for leadership and engender loyalty, respect and admiration among their employees, peers and customers.

Be Social

No one expects or wants a company owner or president to post on Facebook all day long, but having a social media strategy is an important part of leadership. Despite this fact, CEO.com reported in 2013 that 68% of Fortune 500 Company CEOs have no social media presence.

On the flip side, Virgin CEO Sir Richard Branson, who has been named Britain’s most admired business leader of the past 50 years, has 4.5 million Twitter followers. The brand value of his social media following is incalculable, and the “cool” factor he has garnered from his efforts isn’t hurting, either.

In January 2013, an Economist article asked the question, “How can you be a leader if you don’t have followers?” Branson’s success certainly offers solid support for this argument.

Treat Digital Communication as a Gift that Comes with Strings

Digital communications such as email, the Internet and social media have empowered businesses and connected them with their customers in ways never before possible. Great leaders in the digital era recognize this fact and direct their outcomes in an honest but thoughtful manner.

The digital world makes it easy for CEOs and other business owners/leaders to connect with their employees, vendors and customers, sharing professional insights, thanking them for their support and more. The double-edged sword of this reach is that an ill-timed or inappropriate comment, even in a “private” forum such as a closed Facebook group, can leak out to the world.

The potential to cause damage or spark controversy is likely what keeps CEOs and other leaders off social media. That’s unfortunate, because the good that can be done though digital communication is undeniable. Genuine, well-considered, respectful communications won’t offend anyone. Try a few, and see.

Speak in Your Own Voice

For leaders to garner respect and love from their customers and employees, their blogs must be authentic expressions from their own perspective. This doesn’t mean they have to write them with no help. Some leaders simply are not good writers.

However, blogs, social media posts and other communications shouldn’t be left solely to a communications team, either. The business owner/CEO should at the minimum approve topics as well as the “tone” that any series of communications will reflect.

The reality is that digital communication is unavoidable, and leaders can show their fearlessness by conquering this space with composure and poise. Ownership of the digital world will become more important with every passing year, as the upcoming Millennial generation enters its prime work years. Millennials are intimately connected and in tune with all things digital―and they want their leaders to be, as well.

DynaSis recently authored a white paper about the challenges of attracting the new generation of workers, which involves not only having leadership that appreciates digital communications, but also taking a proactive approach to technology, mobile device usage and management, and other imperatives for this group. The white paper is complimentary; to request the download please give us a call.

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By the DynaSis Team

For more than a decade, virtualization has been a well-promoted solution for achieving flexibility and security with on-premise (in-office) servers. With virtualization, a company and/or its IT vendor “carves” a server or dedicated storage device into multiple virtual servers/drives (these deployments are called virtual machines, e.g. VMs). One of the ways that DynaSis helps its customers maximize IT ROI (and security) is by designing and installing a virtual server layout from a single physical one.

Multiple VMs can reside on a single physical server, yet each will be totally segregated from the others and can have a discrete purpose, separate authentication and security protocols, availability rules and other characteristics of a physical server. Another advantage of virtual servers is that storage allocation for each VM can be altered quickly―and often, dynamically based on load.

For all these reasons, many cloud servers are virtual, with data centers dividing their large servers and storage arrays into numerous VMs for their clients. With virtualization having become an indelible fixture of data center operation, and the technology also being so beneficial for on-premise server installations, we scanned the Internet for expert advice on what we and our customers can expect from virtualization in 2015. Two items, in particular, sparked our interest.

Virtualization Security: With so many security breaches in 2014, it is inevitable that vendors will be placing a renewed focus on security. One of the hot new approaches at the data center level is “micro-segmentation,” where every discrete virtual machine becomes its own impregnable fortress with dedicated security.

Data-center-level solutions are generally too expensive for SMBs to implement for their on-premise implementations of virtualization, but that doesn’t mean companies that implement virtualization are at risk. Companies that work with a vendor that provides robust, end-to-end security and proactive problem resolution, including patch application, have the confidence that their virtual machines can be fully protected, as well. At DynaSis, we have always considered security paramount, and we recently introduced another layer of security for our Managed IT customers.

Converged Infrastructure: This term may sound a bit arcane to those outside the IT world, but it’s really a fancy way of saying bundling. Experts expect acceleration of this trend―where a company works with a vendor that provides a complete solution comprised of multiple infrastructure (hardware) components packaged to work well together.

Packaging interoperable infrastructure­ for maximum security and connectivity is always a good idea, but it requires preplanning, so it is easy to overlook. It’s the approach we take with our Ascend offering, where we build out a firm’s infrastructure and they lease it from us for a low monthly fee, including management and security. We definitely hope this trend will gather momentum in 2015, as it can be very beneficial.

In addition to these two trends, we saw mention of a number of protocols, solutions and platforms, all of which are too complicated to discuss in this short article. However, be assured that the DynaSis technicians are staying abreast of these developments to give you the most secure, productive virtualization experience possible. To learn more about the substantial benefits of virtualization, or to meet with a DynaSis Virtual CIO to explore the possibilities for your firm, please give us a call.

DynaSis, Atlanta’s premier provider of IT services and support for small and medium businesses (SMBs), today announced it has inked a strategic partnership with OpenDNS, a company whose namesake service provides network security that includes built-in phishing and optional content filtering for users while browsing the web. In keeping with its commitment to provide the most robust security possible for its customers, DynaSis has integrated OpenDNS into its platform and will extend its Managed IT Service offering to include this protection at no additional charge.

“Many SMBs give their users far too much latitude in making changes to desktop applications and operating systems, including bypassing browser-level helpers that scan websites for malware infection,” said DynaSis President Dave Moorman. “With OpenDNS, this protection happens in the background, stopping cyber criminals from executing drive-by malware downloads, whether initiated by a phishing email or by a direct visit to a site.”

The attack vectors to which Moorman refers are the most common mechanisms for infection by SMBs. In a phishing email, users are duped into clicking on a link to a malicious site, which can then download malware to an inadequately protected system―a process called a drive-by download. OpenDNS prevents this from happening by securing the Internet at a fundamental level―the DNS, or domain naming system―upon which web servers rely to transport users and their data to a site.

DNS is the equivalent of an Internet phone book. With every request for web service, whether it is browsing or delivering/retrieving email―some site must resolve the request and, using DNS, pair it with the matching website. Historically, this matching activity has been the task of Internet and email providers, most of whom handled only basic matching. With OpenDNS, however, users are protected by a purpose-built, targeted security platform that doesn’t simply match names to addresses; it actually scans an extraordinarily comprehensive database of “safe” and “dangerous” addresses before it responds to the request.

OpenDNS also gives users the tools to decide what to let in and what to block. It not only protects users from visiting sites infected with malware; it also stops any background requests that blocked site malware might launch to retrieve instructions on how to steal data or execute other malicious actions against the web visitor.

“Given SMBs accounted for 61% of cyberattacks in 2013, per security firm Symantec, business owners no longer can ignore cyber security,” said Moorman. “Our partnership with OpenDNS gives us the opportunity, not only to incorporate their service into our Managed Services offering, but also to stay deeply attuned to the evolving threat landscape so we can give our customers the information they need to make productive, safe decisions.”

About DynaSis
DynaSis is a managed IT service provider for small and medium-sized businesses in Atlanta, Georgia. DynaSis specializes in offering on-premise and on-demand managed IT service plans, managed hosting and professional equipment installation. For more information about DynaSis’ services visit www.dynasis.com.

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By the DynaSis Team

Despite decades of advocacy by IT and disaster recovery experts regarding the importance of off-site backups, crisis communication plans and other elements of business survival, many companies still don't have a functional plan for business continuity in the wake of a disaster or major disruption.

In fact, the majority of firms don't even have an adequate program for ongoing IT continuity to reduce business interruption. Per the 2013 Ponemon Institute, 86% of firms experience one or more measurable instances of system downtime in each year, with 60% of those instances being attributed to user error.

On the resiliency side, a Sungard Availability Services survey found that 75% of continuity plans are not used in their existing state during either testing or a disaster. Inadequacy of communication protocols is equally disconcerting, with 85% of companies believing their crisis communication plans aren't very effective. At the same time, severe weather events, cyberattacks and power grid overloads are causing an increasing number of business disruptions.

Cumulatively, this state of affairs makes a pretty strong case for well-planned, functional business continuity and resiliency plans, but they don't tell business owners how to go about accomplishing that task. For resource-strapped small and medium-sized business (SMB) owners, the challenge can be overwhelming.

We don't have room in this blog to provide you with sufficient practical advice, but we can offer a few pointers.

There are many other aspects of disaster and disruption planning that go hand in hand with these suggestions. On the IT side, they include best practices for backup hardware, network management to reduce short-term outages and more. To explore the options and begin taking proactive steps to bolster your business continuity mechanisms (both short-term and long-term) we invite you to download our white paper on disaster recovery planning and give us a call.

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By the DynaSis Team

In Greek mythology, Pandora was a woman who accidentally unleashed all the ills of the world because she couldn’t resist opening the box that was holding them captive. For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), administrative access at the user level―letting untrained employees have full access to their desktop and potentially the company’s IT systems at the administrative level―is the Pandora’s Box of technology. Making matters worse, many employees don’t even know they have access to the box, so they open it unwittingly.

Here’s how this happens. Windows automatically configures the default user account as an Administrator. A Windows Administrator account is an unrestricted account that can make system-wide changes to the computer with no additional authorization or privileges.

SMBs that install new PCs for their personnel, or allow them to work from any PC or mobile device outside their scope of control, may unknowingly empower these individuals with Administrator access. Administrative accounts provide a direct pathway to root (hidden, low-level operating) settings and other built-in mechanisms for making any system change―not just beneficial ones.

If cyberattackers get access to a PC with an Administrator account, perhaps through a phishing email, infected site or other mechanism, they can then execute scripts, launch exploit kits (malicious toolkits that exploit security holes) and perform other actions at the root level. Many, if not most, actions running at this level will not alert the user, so destructive activities can continue, unchecked, potentially for the life of the PC.

If a device with Administrator privileges is authenticated to connect to the company network, the cyberattackers can easily penetrate the network, as well, potentially taking over the entire network for use as a bot (a form of automated attendant) to spread more phishing messages, stealing data, and infecting other connected devices automatically and decisively.

For every PC on the network, unless a user or an IT pro intentionally sets up a user account without administrative privileges, this can occur. This is a crucial, but often overlooked, step in securing any corporate defenses. Making matters worse, many “IT-aware” (but not IT-trained) business owners and employees have heard that the hidden Administrator account built into the Windows OS is disabled by default due to security concerns. This measure, in place since Windows Vista, was an important, needed change but it does not provide any protection for the default Administrator account at the user level.

Administrator-level users (called superusers in the IT world) are a primary mechanism for infection among SMBs. Given that the rate of targeted attacks against SMBs has more than doubled since 2011, and the ratio of data breaches to company size is 15 times higher for SMBs than for larger firms, the default Administrator account is something every SMB should address as soon as possible. To learn more about cyber security or discuss scheduling a security assessment to determine your level of risk, please give us a call.

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By the DynaSis Team

With the end of 2014 quickly approaching, many small and medium-sized business owners (SMBs) maybe already looking ahead to 2015 projects. However, in early December there is still time to take advantage of SMB incentive programs that confer significant tax advantages.

One of these is the Section 179 deduction. Although it is a mere shadow of its former self (at the present), it is still valid, with a 2014 deduction limit of $25,000 and a purchase limit of $200,000. That amount might not cover the cost of a new warehouse or other large capital facility or equipment purchase, but in the IT world it will stretch a long way.

Basically, all businesses that purchase, finance and/or lease less than $200,000 of new or used business equipment in 2014 should qualify for the Section 179 deduction. Furthermore, most tangible goods, including “off-the-shelf” software, qualify for the deduction, as does the labor to install and configure any purchases.

For example, let’s assume a business with 50 employees has to date purchased $100,000 worth of miscellaneous, covered equipment. Its IT systems are outdated―especially its desktops, which are too old to run current generation software.

The firm could lease 50 $1,500 desktops at a value of $75,000, and then spend another $25,000, outright, on software plus labor for installation and configuration of everything. The entire $25,000 the company expended in cash would be deductible. Or, a firm could lease all the IT improvements, with the cost of software purchases, installation and configuration included in the lease amount, and still deduct $25,000.

There is also a possibility that Congress may still reinstate during 2014 the $500,000 limit for Section 179 deduction purchases that ended in 2013. If this happens, companies should have a plan for purchasing additional equipment and other qualified items they can put into service before year-end.

DynaSis’ virtual CIOs (VCIOs) are IT analysis and planning experts with a wealth of experience helping SMBs plan capital IT expenses that align with and support their short- and long-term business goals. Additionally, our Ascend platform lets a company lease its entire IT infrastructure for a low monthly fee, including full support (proactive monitoring and management and Help Desk) and IT upgrades as needed. To learn more or discuss having an IT assessment to create a baseline for selecting the most cost-effective, productivity-boosting improvements, please give us a call.

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By the DynaSis Team

Another interesting survey came across our desk recently - this one about the use of social and mobile technologies. According to research from UK-based Advanced Business Solutions (ABS), companies* are using social and mobile outlets to increase their customer engagement, but they’re not putting them to full use to power greater business productivity.

According to the research, 85 percent of surveyed organizations use social and mobile technologies for external (customer/client marketing). Additionally, 69 percent use social technologies as response mechanisms for customer and prospect queries, comments, complaints and other communications.

However, only 17 percent of respondent companies are using these technologies to help workers share information and collaborate with one another. We found this interesting, given that approximately two-thirds of respondents stated that social and mobile technologies are valuable for employee collaboration. Nearly the same percentage thought that using them more effectively could improve efficiency.

A 2014 Constant Contact survey of U.S. small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) appears to correlate these findings, at least regarding mobile technologies. According to the survey, 92% of SMBs either have a mobile-optimized website or are planning to create one in the next six months, and 23% are interested in using mobile advertising. In both cases, the focus is on using mobile technology for external, not internal communications.

It’s important to note that neither survey addresses other forms of productivity for which we view mobile, at least, to be pivotal. Among these is remote working―what we call “mobile officing.” Having access to properly managed mobile devices can give employees the ability to work as safely and productively as if they were at their workplace.  (The ABS survey did recognize the definition of mobile technologies as “creating an always-on work force that can connect and access information at any time and from any place.” That’s essentially how we view it.)

These surveys made us wonder how our customers and other readers are using mobile and social technologies. Are you using either or both to enhance internal collaboration? Are you focusing on externally facing messages and collaboration only? Do you feel you are achieving greater internal or overall workforce productivity with social and mobile technologies?

We’d love to hear your feedback―and talk to you about how you can achieve all these goals easily and affordably. To learn more, please give us a call.

By the DynaSis Team

In early September, we wrote about cyber-attacks and the role that human gullibility plays in them. (If you didn’t read that blog, the answer is “a very, very big one.”) We also offered some suggestions to help business owners protect themselves against vulnerability.

Now, we’ve come across some additional information you might find useful. In this article, we’ll offer not only startling statistics but also some of the keywords that signal danger. First, let’s discuss the statistics.

Over the past decade, the number of spear-phishing attacks (phony emails designed to trick recipients into exposing confidential information) has grown to an alarming number. According to security software developer Symantec, spear phishing campaigns in 2013 rose by 91% over 2012. As of 2013, one in every 392 emails was sent for the purpose of spear phishing.  That may sound like a small number (approximately .025 percent), but consider how many email messages your company sends per day or per year. (The average employee sends or receives approximately 115 emails per day.)

Enterprise employees aren’t the only gullible ones, either. The U.S. Department of Defense has been compromised by unwitting employees responding to spear phishing emails. The massive 2012 Department of Revenue data breach in South Carolina that compromised the private data of 3.8 million taxpayers, 1.9 million dependents, 699,900 businesses and 3.3 million banks started with a spear-phishing email.

Furthermore, the risk of data breaches is exploding. In 2013, the number of identities that were exposed (by all types of attacks) rose 700% over 2012. And, with the courts now holding companies financially and legally accountable for not protecting their data from breaches, the stakes are higher than ever.

Now, for some good news. Hackers know that spear-phishing attacks are more likely to be successful if they use certain words, with Order and Payment being the top two. Other commonly used words include documents, declassified, accounting and important. Companies with robust email security solutions can screen out spear phishing emails―and even ensure emails containing commonly used words receive extra scrutiny.

If you haven’t shared these dangerous keywords with your personnel, we encourage you to do so. It’s also helpful to run training exercises where you test your employees with fake emails to see who falls prey to them. You may be surprised with who takes the bait.

To learn more about spear phishing, cyber threats or digital security, please give us a call.

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By the DynaSis Team

Have you thought about the cloud lately? Are you thinking of moving your corporate assets to the cloud, or have you already done so? If not, get ready for a wake-up call. The cloud is expanding across everyone and into everything, whether we like it or not.

Virtually all technology solutions and devices, from backup appliances to software as a service (SaaS) offerings (where software is hosted in the cloud and accessed remotely), are consuming more cloud storage and Internet traffic every year. Because of this, Cisco recently announced that within the next four years, 76 percent of the Internet traffic through the world’s data centers will be cloud-based. That is a 40% increase over 2013, when the cloud accounted for 54 percent of total data center traffic.

Already, cloud data centers are responsible a total of 2,277 exabytes of the total 3,829 exabytes of traffic being generated. By 2018, this proportion will be 6,496 exabytes of a total of 8,574 exabytes. (An exabyte is one quintillion bytes or one billion gigabytes.)

Cisco also predicts a substantial shift to public cloud services as companies become more comfortable with them. By 2018, Cisco predicts, 31 percent of cloud workloads will be in public cloud data centers, up from 22 percent in 2013.  Interestingly, the devices that compose the Internet of Things (discussed here last week) are also going to contribute a significant amount of data to the cloud. Cisco predicts that data created by IoT devices will be 47 times greater than total data center traffic by 2018.

If all this growth sounds overwhelming, it is. After all, it’s hard to envision one billion gigabytes, or to conceive how the IoT actually functions. Nevertheless, major enterprises are embracing the cloud along with cloud solutions such as SaaS.

Big corporations know, for example that a cloud-hosted Microsoft Exchange server is far more reliable and less vulnerable than one deployed at a physical office location.  Most major enterprises realize that corporate networks are more vulnerable than data centers (which is where “the cloud” largely exists). More importantly, cybercriminals know this, as well. That’s why cyber-attacks on companies are more prevalent than attacks on data centers―and the majority of all successful data breaches occur through hacking of corporate servers.

Small and mid-sized businesses that want to be as productive and competitive as possible should create a plan for cloud adoption, now. It doesn’t have to involve a leap. It can be a step, possibly beginning with hosted Exchange as we mentioned above.

Here at DynaSis, we have developed hyper-secure cloud solutions, including private, corporate clouds where the firm retains control of its data and hosts it for remote workers. If you would like to learn more, please give us a call.

DynaSis, Atlanta’s premier provider of IT services and support for small and medium businesses (SMBs), today announced the launch of its new Unified Email Management (UEM) solution. With UEM, organizations will be protected with enterprise-grade email encryption, archival and continuity, paired with an always-on, cloud-based email security platform that delivers 100% anti-virus and 99% anti-spam blocking, with 0.0001% spam false positives.

“With email being one of the leading access points for successful cyberattacks, most organizations recognize they need better email security and management, but they do not know where to start,” said DynaSis President Dave Moorman. “With our UEM service, they won’t have to worry about evaluating and deploying one or more solutions. We’ll handle everything.”

With DynaSis UEM, a secure email gateway examines every email to thwart both known and emerging email-borne threats before they reach the corporate network. The solution also includes end-to-end, automated email encryption―seamless to both sender and recipient―to prevent sensitive corporate information being compromised, should emails be intercepted in transit. As a final security feature, UEM includes organization-wide security policy management, with the ability for changes to be applied as soon as a threat or problem is detected.

UEM also addresses another common corporate vulnerability where email is concerned―email archival and continuity. For UEM customers, DynaSis will perform forensic-grade, tamper-proof archival and retrieval of email (with seven-year retention) for regulatory compliance, eDiscovery requests, audits and other requirements. Furthermore, all email messages, calendars, contacts and tasks are synced and backed up between the organization’s Exchange Server and a secure, cloud-based archive that management and staff can access from anywhere in the event their corporate location is unavailable or their servers go down.

“Email is becoming an increasingly pervasive attack vector, with cybercriminals now able to launch spam and phishing attacks from Internet-connected appliances like printers,” Moorman noted. “For this reason, it is absolutely vital that companies protect their email―and their company―from attack. With DynaSis UEM, they gain that protection, and much more.”

About DynaSis
DynaSis is a managed IT service provider for small and medium-sized businesses in Atlanta, Georgia. DynaSis specializes in offering on-premise and on-demand managed IT service plans, managed hosting and professional equipment installation. For more information about DynaSis’ services visit https://dynasis.com.

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