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Risk Management And BYOD

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Insights From ORAM Corporate Advisors

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Risk Management And BYOD

One of the biggest risk management issues in business today is BYOD. Short for bring your own device, it’s the practice of allowing your employees to use their own computers, smartphones and other electronic devices for work. Many small businesses like BYOD because it saves them money. Large companies often allow it for a variety of reasons beyond cost savings, such as when an employee prefers to use their own equipment.

But allowing employees to tap company systems and databases from their own devices creates a whole new level of risk and liability for a company. Electronic devices can be lost or stolen. Customer information can be more easily compromised and your business could face a legal claim in the event of a security breach. Malware may be much more easily introduced onto an employee’s device and transferred into your company’s system. And what happens if an employee’s laptop is stolen while they’re on a business trip? Who pays for a new one?

A good security expert can be a valuable member of the cyber risk management team, help you protect your technology and create IT security policies. A well-crafted BYOD policy also is a must. But one of the most important parts of BYOD risk management is making sure you’re properly insured. Standard business liability coverage doesn’t always provide protection for digital disasters.

We can help you make sure any electronic devices used for business are protected. Beyond that, we also can discuss your options for protecting your business from a host of other digital disasters.

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    Protect Your Office From Malware And Other Online Threats

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    Protect Your Office From Malware And Other Online Threats

    The recent Heartbleed attack, which affected some of the largest websites in the world, including Google and Facebook, has businesses of all sizes worried about viruses, malware and other online threats. Here are some tips from the National Cyber Security Alliance designed to help your small business avoid a costly security breach:

    15043169_SKeep security software current. Make sure your office has the latest in security software to protect against viruses, malware and other online threats. Not sure if you’re doing enough? Consider investing in professional help.

    Don’t neglect software updates. Many software programs will automatically connect and update to defend against known risks. Turn on automatic updates and make sure everyone in your office is allowing your computers to update.

    Protect all devices connected to the Internet. Don’t forget laptops, smart phones and other web-enabled devices also need protection from online threats. Exercise caution when using USBs and other external devices. They, too, can be infected by viruses and malware.

    Want more information? The National Cyber Security Alliance has a great online resource that can help businesses assess potential threats, take steps to protect themselves and protect their customers.

    Even better, you can get in touch with us at ORAM Corporate Advisors. We provide outsourced IT support services for businesses. We want to help you avoid spending time and money to deal with online threats – so you can get back to the work of running your business.

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      The ‘Need For Speed’: How Proper Email Management Streamlines Your Internet Connection

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      The ‘Need For Speed’: How Proper Email Management Streamlines Your Internet Connection

      What’s one of the most common things we hear in IT? For so many of us, the reliability of our Internet connection and network is a top priority. If you’re interested in having a faster connection to maximize productivity in the office, we have a simple solution that might surprise you: There are email management best practices that will automatically increase your speeds. First, here’s a brief overview about how the system generally works. To put it simply, data is transmitted in packets over the Internet. Text files, images and other media aren’t transmitted whole in a single message. Instead, the data is sent in pieces and bounced between routers and servers before it arrives at the gateway of your internal network. That’s why large amounts of data in the system, or just larger files in general, will automatically slow your system as the process works. If the system is handling a high volume of data, you need to streamline the process to speed up upload and download times. For that reason, proper email management is critical to reduce the drag on your bandwidth. You can do this with the following three best practices for your email system: 1) Use a hosted email filtering service. That way, the email management service will take the brunt of the initial messages, and then filter out any spam or junk mail that doesn’t need to take up the bandwidth in your office. If you have an in-house email server, it will also save on data resources for storage. 2) Have a email management system in place to aggressively filter out and scan for malware. Unfortunately, many computer viruses and malware attacks come through email and attachments. Filtering your email is an incredibly effective tool to reduce your risk. A clean system will automatically increase your bandwidth speeds, as uninfected computers and other devices just work better. 3) Put in place an email management system that filters outgoing files sent by employees. We’ve gone over the benefits of filtering inbound data, but managing your outbound traffic will also protect you from liability, protect your proprietary data, and just make your organization seem more professional over all. You can set a company policy and have your email managed for compliance. Easy! If you’d like to learn more about email management, how the process works, and the benefits for your business, please get in touch with us at Oram Corporate Advisors. We can help you set in place the framework to better manage your IT infrastructure and set effective policies. We look forward to hearing from you!

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        Did I stutter? Straight talk about bandwidth and latency

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        Bandwidth is important in real time, both while working and using your home Internet connection. But latency – the time it takes to transfer a message or download your content – can also make all the difference in whether your connection crawls or flies.

        Slow connection as a snail

        Remember the old delays in telephone calls when they were transmitted by satellite? Maybe you don’t. But there are some ways latency issues resemble that old school problem, so it’s a useful illustration. Basically, when Internet protocols are relaying data and acknowledging the reception of packets of information, any delay can slow your system and cause a stutter.

        An article recently published in Ars Technica explains the problem this way: “Just as we acknowledge what someone is telling us in conversation (with the occasional nod of the head, “uh huh,” “go on,” and similar utterances), most Internet protocols have a similar system of acknowledgement. They don’t send a continuous never-ending stream of bytes. Instead, they send a series of discrete packets. When you download a big file from a Web server, for example, the server doesn’t simply barrage you with an unending stream of bytes as fast as it can. Instead, it sends a packet of perhaps a few thousand bytes at a time, then waits to hear back that they were received correctly. It doesn’t send the next packet until it has received this acknowledgement.”

        The result is almost unworkable attempts at voice and video chats and conversations held on Skype. Or, as Gizmodo reports, a “second extra to load a web page sucks; a second stutter on YouTube is wildly annoying, but a second of latency with Skype make the whole thing practically useless. And that’s nothing to do with bandwidth, whatsoever.”

        So what can you do about it? The good people at Ars Technica suggest methods to reconfigure your protocols at the application layer that can help. Pipelining, in which your Web browser can multitask while requesting files from the server, can also be adopted.

        For more information on latency and a more detailed explanation of how to work around data delays, read the Ars Technica article here.

        But you also can get help to improve your system. Use of traffic shaping algorithms can help you better manage your bandwidth by prioritizing uses. You can also call in the experts to manage your IT system. That’s where we can help.

        With scheduled onsite hours or on-call support as needed, ORAM can build, monitor, and manage your entire IT infrastructure, helping you to grow a smarter, faster business. If you’d rather let someone else handle your IT network so that you can stay focused on the business of managing your organization, get in touch with us. Don’t wait another minute!