In the past few years, data breaches into small businesses by malicious hackers have climbed to an all-time high. According to data compiled by the Identity Theft Resource Center, at least 1,093 data breaches occurred in 2016, 40% more than the previous year. And this trend shows no sign of slowing down. In response to rampant cyber-attacks across the country, many small businesses have turned to data breach insurance, designed to financially protect and support victims of malicious hacking. If your system becomes infected by ransomware, the insurance can cover the cost and guide you through the process so you can mitigate damage and stress.

If your business creates and stores vast quantities of sensitive data — especially if that data is a vital asset to the company — you should at least consider protecting yourself with data breach insurance. When all else fails, it can mean the difference between shutting down for good and staying afloat in the midst of crisis.

SmallBizTrends.com 9/5/2017

 

On Sunday night following the Steeler’s loss in Denver CBS’ 60 Minutes had an insightful feature about Chinese cyber-espionage. Every American businessperson needs to watch this 13 minute video.

Lotus personnel are beginning to get a lot of questions about the end of life for Windows Server 2003. It just seems like we were getting questions about the end of life of Windows XP. We have assembled a list of frequently asked questions and answers regarding end of life slated for July 14, 2015.

For a limited time Lotus Management Services is offering a free, no-obligation Windows Server 2003 assessment. We will outline the potential risk to your business and give you options and budgetary information.

We have been hearing of the promise of the Internet of Things (IoT) for a couple of years. We are talking about Internet connected refrigerators and other appliances. Nest is beginning to deliver on that promise with the connected, smart climate control system for your home. The Consumer Electronics Show less about Internet of Things and more about connecting yourself to your devices through tech that is worn on your person.

Belty – The French company Emiota has developed a smart belt. It will adjust as you eat. It also adjusts when you move from standing to sitting. Of course everything has to have a health benefit. The Belty will alert you by vibrating if you have been sitting too long. In case you don’t know – sitting is the new smoking. It also will be vibrate if you have eaten too much. Of course you will likely be sitting while you it so I just chalk it up to the fact that I have been sitting too long – I won’t assume it is vibrating due to my food consumption.

Rollkers – Another French company wants to improve our basic transportation. These high tech roller skates will propel you up to speeds of 7 MPH. Of course they connect with your mobile device via a wireless connection. They feature an intelligent controller for stabilization & assistance.

If you want to read more about the rebirth of the Sony Walkman for $1100 and more check out Tech Radar.

Siri, the intelligent personal assistant found on all Apple iOS devices now has a new activation method. You can currently long press the home button to enable Siri by default. The new setting allows you to access Siri by just saying “Hey Siri”. Of course there are some caveats. You will need to enable the feature and your iOS device has to be connected to power. Once you have enabled the feature you can say an entire request as one sentence such as “Hey Siri, what is the weather forecast for today”. Siri will respond with your requested information.

To enable the feature go to Settings then General then Siri.

LotusShare is our build-for-business secure file sharing application. We have been working very hard and releasing some very exciting upgrades to LotusShare in the past few months. Here are some highlights…

• Great news for users that do not have a full Windows server. You can now enable the ability to access your network shares and low-cost network access storage devices via LotusShare.
• Team shares can now be renamed.
• We have added the ability to lock files while you are making changes so other users cannot make changes at the same time and cause file collisions.

Our support team is preparing a webinar to cover these changes during the next month. We will send an email with more information.

For more information about LotusShare visit lotusshare.com

In the past we were quite satisfied with just backing up data and recovering files as needed. Computer outages were expected and not treated with a large amount of concern. It is amazing how quickly times have changed. As business automation has been enabled for more and more tasks our businesses have become more dependent upon our IT systems. A new process and phraseology has replaced backup/recovery – Business Continuity.

Business continuity deals with more than recovering data but how would your business continue to operate normally or as near normally as possible in the face of a crisis. When it comes to your business IT systems disasters can come in many forms. We think of hurricanes in Florida or tornadoes in the Midwest, or disabling ice storms in the Northeast. Business system interruptions can come in the form of system failures, employee espionage or mistakes, and hacker activity.

To make matters worse these scenarios change all of the time. Six months ago I would have ranked our most common issues that have stopped business as employee mistakes followed by hacker activity then weather events. Reviewing our trouble tickets the past six months hacker activity would now be at the top of that list. Malware such as CryptoWall 2.0 have been devastating to some of your business neighbors. When we perform a root cause analysis of an interruption we typically find a small mistake or error somewhere that grew into a large problem.

To get back to backup/recovery systems. There are still a lot of technologies in place that copy files to tape or external hard drives. The backup might backup system files to ostensibly recover operating system files. Some have taken this technology to the cloud to hedge bets against loss of or access to a facility.

Let’s consider a common failure such as hard drive failure on a database server that is backed up to the cloud. The average cloud backup of a server takes 14 days. This means that if you need to recover your files from the cloud it will likely take 14 days to recover your files from the cloud. Now most services will overnight you a hard drive that contains your data. It typically takes two days to receive the drive once your cloud provider processes the data drive and ships it to you. Mean time an IT person will need to provision a new server. Without getting into too many details you will likely face in excess of 70 hours of downtime.

Business continuity is a much different picture. Let’s imagine that same failure database server failure. Your business continuity provider is alerted of a potential outage of your server. They remote into your business continuity appliance and begin building a virtual replica of your server. They are confident that your backup data is consistent and current because they constantly monitor the appliance. The replica server is up and running and serving data in just 15 minutes. Your employees take a quick coffee break and are back to work in minutes.

A business continuity appliance is not a silver bullet. Your business needs policies and procedures to deal with the unexpected. Not every eventuality can be averted, but the impact can be lessened through experience and diligence.

This quarter as part of our Lotus Learning Series we will deeply examine the options, costs, and advantages of a sound business continuity plan in a one-hour webinar. If you would like to be added to the invitation list please send me an email at curtispartridge@lotusmserv.com.

This is one of those ideas that seems so simple you wonder why you hadn’t thought of it. Apple has recently filed a patent for technology that will allow you to see where you are going while you are texting. No more stepping into holes or walking into light poles while you walk and text. In the texting app on an iPhone you would be able to activate the rear camera. The text bubbles would then float over a live video feed of the area in front of you.

Of course we would not have any new viral videos of people running into things while texting, but progress has a price.

Every day we see headlines about data breaches from Sony, Home Depot, or Target. The Sony crisis could very well change the way movies are produced. Businesses must take a stand to protect themselves. This webinar will be non-technical education on how to protect yourself and your business.

We will answer the following questions…
• How to prevent your business from being the next victim?
• Why do hackers attack businesses?
• Are hackers only targeting large businesses? (hint, no. hackers are attacking small businesses everyday)
• Is it possible to hacker-proof your computer network?
• What is one biggest thing you can do today for free to protect your business?

Sign up today. Space is limited.