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First of All, What Does Cyber Insurance Cover? Depending on your provider, there are different levels of coverage that your business has to consider. First-Party Coverage Helps Cover Your Direct Losses Suffering a data breach is an expensive circumstance. In addition to the costs required to recover any data still available, you also need to consider the cost associated with your business? downtime and the fees incurred by any investigative services you enlist. Third-Party Coverage Takes Care of Your Clients and Business Partners Chances are that a data breach won?t just impact data that pertains to your business, potentially also harming the vendors you work with and the businesses you serve. You will be responsible for trying to make it right, which will be a costly endeavor. It is also important to mention that cyber insurance covers more than just cyberattacks. While you should check any policy you plan to sign, it isn?t uncommon for a cyber insurance policy to cover damages from any form of business interruption?and to also cover hard copies of your data. Don?t be afraid to confirm what your policy covers before committing to an extended agreement. What You Need to Determine as You Seek Out Cyber Insurance During your search for a cyber insurance policy, it will be massively helpful to have a few facts and figures ready. This includes things like: What is it your business will likely need? As we said before, there are various costs that different insurable events will incur. Let?s say that your business accepts card payments, and therefore needs to abide by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard?except somewhere along the way, someone fumbled the ball and left your business noncompliant and subject to fines. Cyber insurance may help cover these costs, and that?s just one example. It will be important for you to identify all potential needs like this and go about your search with them in mind. How much can you invest into your cyber insurance? This is the big question when it comes to any budgetary determination, of course, but it?s particularly important to consider when the potential costs are so high. Will you be able to maintain the premium costs so that you are protected from the cost of a disaster? What level of deductible is acceptable for your needs? Does the provider actually cover all situations you risk facing? Cybersecurity costs span a wide, wide range. Let?s say you were to suffer a breach?not only will you need to pay to have the root cause sniffed out and eliminated, but there are also the legal fees that will likely be involved, the costs associated with the notifications you legally need to make to your contacts, the PR expenses needed to preserve some aspect of your reputation, and the credit monitoring services for those affected that are all included under the umbrella of cybersecurity costs. In order to cover your bases, you need insurance that can be used to offset all of these costs. We can help you determine what level of cyber insurance is appropriate for your business, helping you find a provider that helps you cover these needs. Find out more by calling (603) 889-0800.
Let?s say you were working with the following data, outlining the departments each of your employees are a part of, along with when they were first hired and their current pay rate. As you scroll down this list, you might find it useful to have a reminder of what each column is describing?and this only becomes more the case as your spreadsheets grow larger and more complicated. Luckily for us, Excel makes it easy to have certain data remain on screen. How to Freeze Panes in Excel Freezing a pane simply means that you?re telling Excel to keep that data visible as you scroll, and again, it?s laughably easy to do. First, select the row immediately below or the column immediately to the right of the data you want frozen. In our example, since we want to keep Row 1 in sight, we?d select Row 2. With the appropriate row or column (in this example, row) selected, you?ll next access the View tab in the ribbon and select Freeze Panes. You?ll then be presented with three options: Freeze Panes, Freeze Top Row, or Freeze First Column. For our purposes, we?ll be selecting Freeze Panes (although Freeze Top Row would also work in this context). Once you?ve done so, you can then scroll freely, with your top row remaining in sight. And just like that, you have continued access to critical context for your data! What else would you like to know how to do with your essential business software? Reach out to us at (603) 889-0800 and let us know, or to learn more about how we can generally make your IT maintenance a non-issue for your business.
The Minutiae ?Business operations? is generally used as an umbrella term, not necessarily in relation to a particular task or what makes up that task. Some of these tasks can be repetitive, and while they are important and must be fulfilled, they can often make even the best employee feel like their time is underutilized. Thankfully, there is an alternative solution that might be able to address this challenge. Automation Can Be The Remedy You Need Some studies have indicated that automation of rote tasks can save as much as two hours of work every day? per employee. Imagine how much more you can get done as an organization if you save that much time. You could focus on revenue-generating tasks or other intensive work tasks, and employees would be less likely to disengage from their work. More time could be spent focusing on what matters and innovating for a brighter future. Most business automation occurs through software solutions. Manufacturers can also incorporate robots to handle many of their automated tasks. Small businesses, on the other hand, will use automation to support their Standard Operating Procedures, using technology to build repeatable and trackable processes that provide them with much-needed consistency. How You Can Build Better Automation Processes Some businesses will find automation integration to be easier than others. Certain tasks will be easier to automate, while others will actually come at the detriment of your organization. Let?s examine the best ways automation can provide a return on investment for your business. Lead Generation Managing your lead lists can be time-consuming, but it is essential to optimizing your profits and revenue generation. If you automate these tasks, you are making it easier for your sales team to pursue meaningful connections with potential clients, improving your business? profitability as a whole. You can automate the process of inputting leads into your customer relationship management software or even assign them a score based on how likely they are to yield a return. You can then use these scores to make the most educated decisions possible for pursuing new prospects. Notifications Internal communications can be challenging to manage, too, but the fact remains that if they are managed effectively, they can improve your business? performance across the board. Automated notifications can improve the speed and efficiency at which your business communicates, and you can set them up to work with your pre-existing tools like instant messaging, phone systems, email, and so on. These notifications can help you better manage inventory, provide better support, update users on tasks, and so much more. Customer Support Small businesses have been innovating to provide better customer support and service through the use of automation. Technologies like AI-powered chatbots can provide excellent front-end customer support to handle simple, common issues, leaving your production staff more time to handle other tasks. Chatbots are just a good supplement to your current support team, providing yet another option for customers to receive support the way they want to. Automation can make your business much more profitable and productive. To learn more about how you can take advantage of it, be sure to contact us at (603) 889-0800.
In a nutshell, when accessed on a desktop, Google now operates in the same continuous scroll format that was implemented in October 2021 on mobile devices. How Will Continuous Scroll Work on Google? Similarly to how many social media platforms work, Google will now present the equivalent of six pages of results before giving users a ?See more? button that loads additional results. The idea is that this will make searching quicker and easier for users?and, if only slightly, reduce how critical it is to be one page one (although the fact remains that the higher a result is in the search results, the better it is for that webpage). What do you think of this change? Let us know, and don?t hesitate to share any updated jokes that better fit the new approach Google Search is taking.
What is a Business Continuity Plan? Essentially the business continuity plan is exactly that: it is a strategy put in place that will allow a business to get back up and operational quickly after an event happens that causes interruption. Only part of a continuity plan has to do with your business? technology, but since most businesses have built a major reliance on their technology to operate, understanding how it fits into their continuity strategy is essential to mitigate major problems if they do arise. This isn?t always easy. In fact, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) found that about a quarter of companies aren?t able to reopen if they are hit with a natural disaster that takes out their ability to operate. That percentage grows pretty rapidly the smaller your business is. Of course, having a plan in place to mitigate the effects of flood, fire, and other major disasters is pretty commonplace, but a lot of times there are just so many situations that arise during an interruption event that keeps a business from being able to completely recover. Business Continuity Plans Need to be Flexible Let?s disregard catastrophic weather events and look at a threat that has been causing massive amounts of downtime to even more businesses?ransomware. In 2021, a whopping 37 percent of all businesses in the United States were impacted by ransomware of some kind. It?s worth pointing out that ransomware is constantly being improved (so it?s becoming more and more dangerous) and thus the amount of downtime and risk has only increased over time. When a ransomware attack strikes, it often disrupts business for several days. Depending on the severity of the attack, it could even steal your data, whether you are able to recover it or not. This type of situation requires a massive amount of work to identify what was stolen, communicate to partners, staff, and customers, and remediate the situation. This is only scratching the surface of how to respond to a data breach, but the point is, it?s a lot of work and a lot of disruption before business can go back to normal. A business continuity plan needs to have the pieces and processes to take this on. Fortunately, for this type of disaster, the most fundamental IT piece of a business continuity plan is a pretty good first step in combating a ransomware attack. Restoring the impacted servers from a previous backup should eliminate the ransomware. This means your staff can get to work sooner, although the threat isn?t over yet. You?ll need to work with cybersecurity experts (like White Mountain IT Services) to root out the source of the attack and determine the possibility of a breach, establish chains of communication, perform preventative actions to harden the network, etc. On the other hand, let?s say a key individual in your organization suffers from a sudden health issue and is out of the box for 6 weeks. Your business continuity plan needs to account for the shift in command, the delegation of responsibility, and again, the communication involved to keep everything running smoothly. Every Business Continuity Plan Needs an Iron-Clad Backup Strategy Remember, you can?t benefit from the backup you don?t have. If your business isn?t backing up its data, you are simply asking for risk. Fortunately, we offer the world?s […]
