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Monthly Archives: October 2020

Make Your Own Continuity Plan
Posted on Author Roxanne Demakis Categories Tech – Business

Make Your Own Continuity Plan

Save Your Business From Any Future Pandemics or Disasters

Business continuity is the advanced planning and preparation done to make sure a business is not severely affected by any incident or disaster. A Business continuity plan or BCP is the process for creating such advanced recovery plans for a business to continue following any disaster or pandemic. An organized structure for management/maintenance of a BCP is called Business Continuity Management or BCM. 

 

The primary goal of business continuity planning

 The primary goal of BCM is to make arrangements and plan for operating a business during or after a disaster or pandemic. 

Importance of business continuity

 – A Business Continuity Plan allows you to be aware of all your assets and resources 

– It also helps you analyze all the potential threats to your business. 

– It helps you be prepared for the worst. 

 

COVID 19 business continuity plan:

 Since the beginning of the pandemic, COVID-19 has done serious damage to businesses around the world. As shown in studies, only 12% of the world’s businesses was prepared for a situation like this. 

 

So, what should be the business continuity plan for the pandemic?

Companies and organizations must react fast to the situation to start rebuilding their businesses.  Here are 3 actions to take: 

  •  Prevent:  Your company must ensure the virus doesn’t spread to its employees and further put your business at risk. Therefore, your business must follow proper safety protocols. 
  • Prepare: Know what the priorities are and start acting on them. For example, employee payments, insurance, banking, etc. 
  • Predict: Start acting on building services and know what you have to do in the long run. 
  •  

What is missing while planning BCP?

Most companies, when asked what they review in their BCP’s have the same answer. They miss some key items while creating their plans.  Some of those are: 

  •  Insurance coverage policies 
  • Strategic plan alignment 
  • Process changes 
  • Verification and proof of RTO/RPO strategies 
  • New delivery channels 

Include cybersecurity in your Business Continuity Plans:

It is critical to add a cybersecurity plan to your BCM as the amount of cybercrimes has risen substantially. 

A few ways to include cybersecurity in your BCM are: 

  • Involve the cybersecurity team in your business 
  • Implement basic controls such as VPN 
  • Manage emergency access 
  • Look out for phishing 
  • Test your cybersecurity plan for any weaknesses 

It is also very crucial to have a cybersecurity contingency plan. The plan is a written risk management document that provides instructions on what to do and how to recover digital data should there be a security breach or disaster. This is also known as business continuity paper backup strategy. 

Business continuity testing scenarios:

It is advisable to test your BCP before actually implementing it, to check if it’s efficient or not. 

The different testing scenarios may be: 

  • Data loss/recovery 
  • Power outage 
  • Network outage 
  • Physical disruption 
  • Emergency communication 

Disaster recovery phase: 

In case of a disaster, the disaster recovery phase solely focuses on the recovery of whichever data was lost. 

Some critical elements of the disaster recovery phase are: 

  1. Analysis of possible threats 
  2. A communication plan 
  3. An evacuation strategy in case of emergency 
  4. A recovery team
  5. Reciprocal agreement of disaster recovery 

A reciprocal agreement is a document signed by two or more companies that agree to share each other’s resources following a disaster event. 

If you’d like to learn more about Business Continuity, reach out to us here at Demakis Technologies. 

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How To Protect Yourself From Various Types Of Phishing Attacks
Posted on Author Roxanne Demakis Categories Cyber Security, Security

How To Protect Yourself From Various Types of Phishing Attacks

Your Go-To Guide To Avoid Phishing

What is Phishing?

Phishing is a type of social engineering attack in which a fraudster masquerades as an organization in an attempt to gather sensitive information such as login info or credit card credentials. Phishing attacks are hence used for stealing credentials. It is one of the most common types of email attacks. 

The sender usually tricks the recipient by sending a legitimate-looking email. The users think they are typing the information on the official website while actually, they are typing it on the attacker’s phishing site. 

Everything the user types is then received by the attacker. This is how Phishing works. 

When a recipient falls for this trick and all his credentials are collected by the attacker, the recipient is said to be phished. 

 

 Types Of Phishing Attacks

There are various types of Phishing attacks where spear–phishing and vishing are the most common. Spear phishing vs vishing is explained below: 

Normally, phishing emails are sent to hundreds of users at once but in spear phishing, an individual target is selected. 

The fraudster will send you an ostensible mail from a known sender to trick you into believing that you know him and hence reveal all the information. 

In Vishing, on the other hand, the fraudster will call you or send you a voice message purporting to be from a reputable company to trick you. 

Whaling phishing is another type of Phishing but it is specific for high-level employees such as CEOs. 

These are the types of Phishing attacks that target particular individuals. 

 

Tailgating

Another type of engineering attack is tailgating. It causes a physical security breach by an unauthorized person. This type of attack is unlike any of the phishing techniques. 

Another phishing technique can be the drive-by phishing technique in which malicious programs are downloaded in your system, without your consent. These are also spread via emails. 

Another type of hacking may be ransomware. 

It is a malware that blocks users from their system and data. Ransomware allows the hacker to collect ransoms in exchange for their system to be unblocked. 

 

Corona Virus Phishing

Amidst the Corona Virus outbreak, hackers are taking advantage of the situation and are sending fraudulent emails and texts to users around the world asking for donations. 

It has also been put into notice by the WHO (World Health Organization) and people are advised to not fall for it. 

 

How To Protect Yourself From Phishing?

How to stop phishing emails

One can very easily stop receiving phishing emails and spam by using a good email gateway. If the email contains anything malicious it will be removed by the gateway. 

Is there a way to identify if an email is spam? 

There are various ways to identify spam emails. Some are : 

  • Antiviruses: they prevent malicious content from entering your system 
  • Not opening emails from unknown addresses 
  • Avoiding unfamiliar or suspicious links 

All these are points of email safety and can help you identify spam emails. 

 

What if you’ve clicked on a phishing link?

If you clicked on a spam link, do the following : 

  • Change your passwords 
  • Disconnect your device from the internet 
  • Backup your files 
  • Scan for viruses and malware 

Though one cannot tell when he/she might fall victim to phishing, it is always advisable to take the necessary precautions to avoid a very unwanted and difficult situation which may include loss of finances and property. 

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What Is Machine Learning
Posted on Author Roxanne Demakis Categories Tech Trends

What Is Machine Learning

Getting Started With Machine Learning

What is Machine Learning? 

Gartner defines it as follows: “Advanced machine learning algorithms are composed of many technologies (such as deep learning, neural networks and natural language processing), used in unsupervised and supervised learning, that operate guided by lessons from existing information.” 

If you haven’t read my last post on artificial intelligence (AI), I recommend you read it here.  It will supplement this piece on machine learning core concepts nicely. 

In simpler terms, it is a method that gives a device or computer the capability to “learn” by mimicking human learning.  It gathers and learns patterns from massive amounts of data and uses it to make suggestions.  It is a subset of AI.   

Examples of ML

It is involved in a lot of the technology we use daily.  Some examples are Hulu, Netflix, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Siri. 

The data it needs to collect so it can learn to make predictions are things like your search history, your watch history, your likes, links you click on, and so on.  It basically “learns you” and over time and consistency, it’s able to suggest things you will like. 

Types of Machine Learning 

There are 3 main types in the process flow and they are supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning.  

  1. Supervised learning provides the machine with a labeled dataset that tells it what patterns to look for.   
  2. Unsupervised learning does not provide any labels.  It allows the machine to run through unlabeled datasets until it finds patterns on its own. 
  3. Reinforcement learning functions by trial and error.  It needs to be guided to help it reach its objective by means of a reward or penalty system.  This approach is used when creating a game.   

Machine Learning for Businesses 

Among the many uses in businesses there are automation, logistics, fraud detection, increased sales, and improved customer experience. 

Automation for digital and financial tasks can be extremely useful for a business in increasing its efficiency, saving time, money, and eliminating human error. 

Find out more about our ML solutions and how they can help your business become more automated by contacting us. 

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Tips To Secure Collaboration In Business Organizations
Posted on Author Roxanne Demakis Categories Tech – Business

Tips To Secure Collaboration In Business Organizations

Why is Collaboration Important for a Business?

Collaboration can be defined as a working practice performed by different individuals or companies together for a common purpose that’ll benefit their business. Collaboration can be done by small entities partnering with bigger entities to boost their popularity and business in the market and the bigger entities get their part of the share. There are many different types of collaborations like small business collaboration, virtual collaboration, etc. and every collaboration that exists has its own risk. So, let’s learn more about different types of collaborations, why collaboration is so important, and how to counter its risks by providing the best organizational security practices.  

Why is Collaboration Important for a business?  

The most frequently asked questions are “Why is collaboration so important?” “Why do we need collaborative working?” “Why do brands collaborate?” Collaboration helps in management and teamwork since everyone becomes more knowledgeable about the companies they’re working for. Most importantly, they work with different companies planning for the same massive goal that they’ll achieve which will boost their popularity in the market and their business to the next level! And one more reason for brand collaboration is that you’ll get more new sets of potential customers from the brand you are collaborating with.  

Opportunities 

Collaboration opportunities are defined as opportunities that if done properly will help you have the maximum impact when it addresses your top business priorities. Here are some collaboration opportunities that’ll help your business grow:  

  1. Expand into markets you have not tried business before 
  2. Enhance Green Interactions 
  3. Meet new people discuss ideas about a good collaboration. What happens in the collaboration? 

Business collaboration is something that is done by a company’s employees and clients together to boost the productivity of a particular company financially, socially, and economically. It also serves to build good relationships with the fellow companies to be there to help each other in times of need just as neighbors and friends. 

Important Items for a Successful Collaboration  

Read It:  

Read collaboration is very necessary for the employees to do before continuing a particular collaboration, as read collaboration means to study, research, and figure out the best possible option that’ll suit both companies equally. 

  
A Solution Worth It:  

A business collaboration solution is software that helps us communicate and collaborate on a very large scale. The business collaboration solution consists of the internet, audio and video conferencing, and project management technology; it also helps us share files and screens. It’s an all–in–one tool.  
 

The Workspace:

Collaboration workspace is a place where the employees and clients of different companies sit together and discuss the common goal. A collaboration workspace should be available for all companies as it makes things easier than running from one’s workplace to others.  
  

Tools: 

Group collaboration tools are software that make collaboration between companies a lot easier. Group collaboration tools take care of the email business, chats, video and voice conferences, etc. Ex: Igloo, Wimi, etc.  
   

Types of Collaborations:  

 In today’s world collaboration in business is the biggest thing that exists to give a boost to a running company. There are different types of collaboration in business that exist today and they all have different kinds of risks they carry with them. So, now we’ll know about two different types of collaborations and briefly discuss them.  
  

Small Business:  

When you have a startup you’re alone but today where the growth of any business is considered a tree then the sunlight is called collaboration that has helped it grow. Small business collaboration can help the company grow by every means; they get to learn many things for example how the market in that particular area works.  
Small business collaboration can help to inspire their people by watching big business companies work.  
  

Through the internet:  

Virtual collaboration is the same as the name suggests; people do the same that would be done for a traditional collaboration except they don’t physically meet; rather they meet virtually .i.e. through the internet. Virtual collaboration may not be as effective as face-to-face interactions as there is the only contextual exchange of information but, technological limits in certain types of information make it as effective as face-to-face interaction.  
 

Marketing and Sharing Ideas:  
 

Collaborative Marketing

Collaborative marketing is a very good marketing strategy that works with similar companies to improve productivity, promote the brand with less cost, and increased sales.  
 

Sharing and Trading  

When a trade ideas sector collaborates, it means they give ideas or advice to company owners while making money.  
  
  

Advantages of Organization Collaboration

There are many advantages of organization collaboration which comes with risks. So, let’s discuss the advantages first:  
  
It boosts the productivity of the companies in every possible manner. It even helps the employees to grow.  
It keeps a peaceful environment with the fellow companies as both or more are benefitted.  
  

Risks  

 There will be always risks in doing something useful and so is the case for collaboration.  
There can be many risks in collaborative partnership and some of them are:  
  
It will include the dilution of the brand.  
It may come with a loss of self-decision making.  
The entities participating in the collaboration share the same risk of loss.  
  
         

Security  

Best organizational security practices include:  
  
Don’t share any content of the meeting until you get permission from the organizer.  

Keep an exit and entry tone to keep a record of everyone who came in and went out.  

No one except for the meeting organizer should start the recording; it should be at default.  

It should also include cybersecurity collaborative charity as it will help for a secure and successful collaboration.  
 

Security concerns around Microsoft teams include:  
 

Empowering collaboration content should be known by owners.  
Ensuring a safe collaboration between entities.  
Making sure no one is breaking data or information policies.  

 Conclusion:  

Collaboration between companies helps each grow in every aspect. It even helps in maintaining a healthy environment by helping each other as neighbors. We discussed different types of collaboration like small business collaboration and virtual collaboration. We also learned why collaboration is so important these days for a business to grow whether small or big, and we also learned about the best organizational security practices to be followed to avoid loss.  
 

If you’re interested to learn more about how Demakis Technologies can help streamline your business’s IT, contact us! 

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How To Ensure Safety While Working Remotely
Posted on Author Roxanne Demakis Categories Security, Tech Trends

How To Ensure Safety While Working Remotely

Tips On Working Remotely From Home

During this time of the pandemic, most people worldwide are working from home to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Employees don’t need to travel to their office premises anymore; instead they work from home. Today we’re going to discuss working from home, remote working tips, and working remotely. 

Remote Working Tips 

As most of us are working from home now, there are few remote working practices that will make your work much more efficient and safe. Here are a few tips on how to work remotely: 

Invest In Reliable Tech 

Apart from having a good internet connection, you should also have good tech in your hands. For example good noise cancellation headphones for a hassle-free work environment or a wireless mouse and keyboard. 

Designate a Workspace 

Set up a specific area in your home for your work. This way allow you to focus better. This could be any part of your home where you will not be disturbed during your work hours. 

Maintain a Consistent Routine 

Set up a work schedule for yourself. Wake up and go to sleep at specific times every day. This will keep your time table organized and will make time management easier. 

Over Communicate 

Since you’re not working from your office anymore, you need to communicate with your co-workers and managers regularly using various tools to get information about work and to know what is expected from you. 

Take Breaks 

In your office, you may have routinely dropped by your co-worker’s desk for a quick chat or a coffee break. While working remotely there’s no reason why you should stop doing the same. Take a break at times to keep your mind refreshed and remain productive. 

Challenges in Maintaining Cybersecurity 

While working from home you need to keep your security on check since you’re no longer connected to a secure network.  Here are a few challenges to tackle to maintain your cybersecurity: 

Unsafe WiFi networks 

Working from home, we use our home wireless network or any other WiFi. These are not secure or well protected. Attackers can easily bypass security and acquire your sensitive information. This is especially a major issue for IT workers’ network security. 

Information technology security 

Some home workers use their personal devices for work. All their work-related and personal information are present in such devices. A hacker can now gain access to both their work-related and personal information. 

Apps used for video conferencing 

The apps we use may not be secure either. Lately, there have been increasing security concerns with the use of “Zoom”, a video conferencing app. 

Control Measures While Working from Home 

A few measures to ensure order among employees during the work–from–home phase and increase productivity are as follows:  

Balance Flexibility And Structure 

Determine when and the number of hours your employees need to work. 

Avoid Micromanaging 

Trust your team and avoid excessive instruction every moment of the day.  Instead, seek to inspire your team and hold meetings at a reasonable frequency when needed.  

Set Clear Expectations 

Provide your employees with adequate instruction and information on the tasks assigned to them and what the final deliverables should be.   

Invest In Up-To-Date Technology 

Use the latest technologies to manage your employees and work. 

Work from Home in Cybersecurity 

There are multiple opportunities to work from home in the cybersecurity field.  A few of those opportunities exist in: 

  1. Demakis Technologies 
  2. Cybersecurity research 
  3. Security consultancy 
  4. Audits 
  5. Penetration testing 
  6. IAM analysis 
  7. Security architecture etc 

As cybercrime is increasing every day, there is also an increase in the demand for professionals who can protect companys’ digital space. There are abundant opportunities for working from home in cybersecurity. 

Conclusion: 

While working from home, it is crucial to keep your security on check to avoid undesirable situations. Follow the above remote working tips, practices, and consider the challenges in cybersecurity to enjoy a secure workspace! 

If you’d like to learn more about securing your home workspace and security, contact us here at Demakis Technologies.

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