Virtualization is the act of taking a physical IT component, like a server or a desktop, and storing it in a virtual environment for access through an online interface. This is the interface through which users access applications or data storage clients. When you access information through the cloud, you?re basically accessing the virtual server where your data is stored through a software like Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive. Therefore, you can think of the cloud as a computer that?s hosted off-site and (hopefully) maintained by trained IT professionals. The main benefit of using cloud-based storage, especially that which is stored off-site, is that your business isn?t responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the hardware used to store your data. Of course, if you have an internal IT department, the option for a self-hosted cloud is available, but if you want to get the best return on investment for your cloud, you?re better off letting a managed service provider host and maintain your cloud solution. Here?s where most business owners get held up on cloud adoption; they don?t know what their business needs, and get hung up on the details of implementing a cloud. The issue at hand here is that the cloud has so many variants that businesses don?t really know what they want or need from the cloud. While it?s recommended that you communicate with an IT professional to figure out your cloud strategy, you can make the decision easier by asking yourself a few key questions. To make things simple, ask yourself how much control you want over your data, and whether you want to take care of your own technology solutions. If you want to maximize control over your data, a private cloud is the right choice for your business. If you?d rather get started quickly without focusing too much on customization and IT maintenance, the public cloud is a better option. What type of cloud solution you?ll implement is, more or less, largely dependant on these two factors. A hybrid cloud solution is good middle ground for a small business that wants to maximize control while maintaining a hands-off approach to management. Either way, the cloud you?ll implement will undoubtedly need to reflect your business?s specific needs. Worse yet, talking about the ?cloud? inevitably leads people to discuss cloud computing, rather than the actual act of virtualization. The fact remains that cloud computing is only a small part of virtualization. Instead of limiting your business?s scope to just cloud computing, you should consider the other savings that can come from virtualizing your networks, servers, and desktops. Doing so allows you to simplify your IT infrastructure and remove unnecessary costs. Since your technology will be handled by trained IT professionals, you can remain confident that it?s being maintained properly. For all of your business?s cloud computing and virtualization needs, you only need to make one phone call. To learn more about how the cloud and virtualization can improve your business model, contact White Mountain IT Services at (603) 889-0800.

Employees will often neglect security measures because they find them to be inconvenient or time-consuming. This happens every day with solutions that are designed to help keep data secure. For example, a Bring Your Own Device policy is designed to help your business keep secure information from hackers, but if your employees don?t want to go through the process of implementing BYOD on their devices, they could unnecessarily be putting your data at risk. In the end, it comes down to freedom vs security. Employees want to use their mobile devices and have a sense of freedom for how they work, but you can?t allow this to happen without some sort of security oversight. Otherwise, you could be putting your entire business infrastructure at risk of infiltration from outside entities. Ensuring that your business follows proper security best practices is crucial to the continued functionality of your organization. This is especially true in light of employees who don?t follow security best practices. As is the case with many online threats, employees will continue to be the weakest link in your business?s defenses if you don?t take action to remedy this. You can make patching up this vulnerability easier by reinforcing security best practices, including: Regularly changing passwords: While changing your passwords is important, it can be difficult to remember passwords for all of your different accounts. This is why many organizations implement enterprise-level password managers that can securely store your passwords and call them when they?re needed. Passwords should always be complex strings of lower and upper-case letters, numbers, and symbols. Spotting phishing scams: Employees should be trained on how to identify phishing scams. This includes educating them on how hackers will use phishing scams to coerce information out of them. White Mountain IT Services can help your employees understand how best to avoid, and detect, phishing scams. Using two-factor authentication: Any accounts that have access to critical information should be equipped with secondary security features, like two-factor authentication. This makes it more difficult for hackers to access accounts remotely. Two-factor authentication often means that hackers will need physical access to your device, which makes it extraordinarily difficult to hack into an account. If you?re concerned that your team needs additional security measures put into place to enforce best practices, you can implement what?s called a Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution. A UTM consists of firewall, antivirus, spam blocking, and content filtering solutions, which are all designed to limit your business?s exposure to threats. For more information about cyber security and other data security best practices, give White Mountain IT Services a call at (603) 889-0800.

In particular, colocation services are valuable assets that can be leveraged by your business to maintain top performance. When we talk about colocation, we?re generally referring to the ability of a business to host one or more of their solutions in an off-site data center. It?s essentially a private cloud hosted off-site. Normally, businesses that take advantage of colocation are responsible for maintaining their own infrastructures, but a managed service provider can easily fill this role, allowing organizations to reap all of the benefits without any of the downsides. Rowland Kinch of Custodian Data Centres writes to Data Center Knowledge explaining the great convenience that your business can reap from colocation services: For financial directors and IT directors, colocation provides the perfect win-win scenario, providing cost savings and delivering state-of-the-art infrastructure. When comparing the capabilities of a standard server room to a colocation solution, an assessment of the power alone demonstrates the gap between in-house solutions and utilizing the expertise of a specialist. Some of the major benefits that colocation offers small and medium-sized businesses include: Consolidation of solutions and space: If your business is running its infrastructure out of a colocation data center, you won?t need to worry about hosting your data internally in a server room. This means that you can use the space for other initiatives or storage opportunities. Decreased operation costs: If your solutions are hosted in an off-site data center that?s managed by a third party, you?ll naturally experience a decrease in operational costs. Considering the fact that you won?t have to pay for the air conditioning and electricity costs of running so many pieces of hardware, you can potentially save a significant portion of revenue that can be better used in other parts of your business model. Management and maintenance from professional technicians: Technology isn?t easy to manage, and if you?ve been trying to do so for your organization, you know that the best way to do it is by having a team of technicians dedicated to the sole responsibility of maintaining your technology infrastructure. The colocation data center that hosts your technology can be maintained by trusted tech professionals who make it their sole responsibility to handle your systems. If your organization is ready to take the future of its technology maintenance seriously, colocation is a great way to optimize your infrastructure and prepare it for growing trends, like cloud computing. White Mountain IT Services can assist your business with the transition into a colocation-based technology management system. To learn more, give us a call at (603) 889-0800.

Before you do anything else, it?s important to remain calm and not to make any rash decisions concerning your systems, like going public with your hack immediately following the breach. Before informing those who were affected, you need to know who actually was affected. This includes determining how deep the breach has gone, how much data was stolen or destroyed, and whether or not there are still underlying issues within your IT infrastructure, waiting to resurface. Understand the Full Scope of the AttackBefore jumping to conclusions, begin by assessing what exactly happened to your IT systems. Was it a data breach, and if so, how did the intruders get in? Did they infiltrate through a spam email, or did they brute force their way into your network? Was it the cause of user error, or the result of a neglected vulnerability in your software solutions? These are all important questions that need to be asked, and you need to know the full impact of the hacking attack before anything can be done about it. Check Which Data, If Any, Was StolenThe next part of handling a data breach is checking what data was affected by it. Did the hacker make off with any valuable information, like Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, account usernames, passwords, or other credentials? If you know which files have been accessed, you?ll have a good grasp on the extent of the damage. However, if health records have been compromised, you might be more trouble than you?d care to admit. Give Your IT Department Room to Clean Up the MessYour business needs to conduct a full investigation into the hacking attack, and take preventative measures to ensure that the system has been completely purged of the threat. This includes having an environment available for work while your IT is busy containing the problem and resolving it as quickly as possible. This also includes having the resources available to do so; your budget should be ready to deal with hacks whenever possible. Find the Real IssueSometimes smaller hacking attacks are used as distractions to the real problem. For example, a virus that infects a PC could simply be a distraction to hide a trojan, which may allow the hacker to later access your network. If this happens, any attempts to clean up your systems might be rendered useless, especially if you haven?t found the trojan. You could just be inviting another hacking attack, which is counterproductive and costly. Keep in mind, sometimes your business might not be the target, but instead just unfortunate enough to be a victim. Phishing attacks, malware, and other threats travel virally, spreading between contacts and getting picked up on unsafe websites by users. Know Your Compliance LiabilityDepending on the types of files that have been exposed to hackers, you might have a full-fledged violation of compliance laws on your hands. This can lead to expensive fines that can break your budget. Knowing where you stand on compliance, as well as what?s involved for reporting it, is a crucial step in handling a data breach. White Mountain IT Services can help your business handle any potential data breach, and our trusted IT professionals can assist with implementing new solutions to prevent future breaches. To learn more, give us a call at (603) 889-0800.

Wall Street, BC (Before Computers)Even before the advent of the computer, Wall Street was well known for utilizing technology. The ticker tape is a shining example; a fascinating device which gave a real-time and continuous printout on the performance of the market. When combined with a nearby telephone, these two technologies gave the average Joe the ability to buy and sell securities on a whim. This helped pave the way for near-instantaneous trading, which was largely responsible for the dynamic growth experienced by the stock market during the twentieth century. Make Way for the ComputersLater, the quotation board was adopted, retiring the iconic ticker tape machines. In the 1980s, modern computing tactics took front and center, thanks to the introduction of the Quotron. With this technology, brokerage houses gained the power to instantaneously manage large hedge funds by quickly reacting to market fluctuations. The Internet Changes EverythingWhen the Internet revolution hit, using computers connected over a network wasn?t something new to Wall Street. In fact, as early as the 1970s brokerages had been using Electronic Communications Networks (ECNs) to make their own computer systems more efficient. However, before computer networking could significantly change the operations of a behemoth institution like Wall Street, significant capital first needed to be invested in order to build the infrastructure–a longtime task that was actually funded by significant technology investments being poured into the stock market. With the rise of the Internet came online brokerages such as ETrade and Ameritrade. However, the major influence of such online tools which gave individual players unparalleled control over their investments is only part of the story. In 1994, two economists, William Christie and Paul Schultz, published a paper titled, ?Why do NASDAQ Market Makers Avoid Odd-Eighth Quotes?? where they outlined a deliberate anomaly where market makers were manipulating the spread (the difference between the buy and sell prices of NASDAQ securities) to secure these individuals a higher profit margin. You may recall this event leading to a full-scale investigation and subsequent rule changes by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) to protect the smaller investors that made use of these online trading services. Eventually, even the traditional brokerages such as Charles Schwab and TD Waterhouse offered online trading that could be accessed by anyone. Like with every good bubble, the crazy market growth fueled by Internet technologies (with frenzied spending seen particularly in 1999 and 2000) eventually popped. It took a few long years for the EU and US markets to rebound from the pop of the dot com bubble, but confidence in the markets was eventually restored, thanks to a realization that the Internet was much more than a fad and could be effectively utilized by companies to boost their sales base. Online Trading at High SpeedNo longer faced with the limitations of dial-up modems, today?s Internet speeds make it possible for investors to execute trades in incredibly short intervals–millions of times faster than what can be made by human decision making. This has led to the phenomena of quantitative trading, which uses complex algorithms to do trades so fast that a half a cent here and a half a cent there can lead to millions of dollars changing hands over millions of trades. However, this technological development helped contribute to another major dip in the market, […]