They Create Password Diversity

Maintaining perfect password security would require complex and unique passwords that are only kept in memory. It sounds like a great idea, but it’s near impossible to put into practice. Most people tend to either use the same handful of passwords spread across multiple accounts, or they stick with popular defaults. According to password management company Keeper Security, the most popular password in 2016 was “123456,” and followed up by “123456789.” That’s where a password manager steps in.

Password managers make life easier. When you find one you like, you’ll be asked to create a master password that will be used to access the service. You’ll want to make this as secure as possible. Once that’s set up, your password manager will generate strong, unique passwords for all of your accounts

They Make Things Convenient

Only having to remember your master password means you don’t have to put in any more effort than you already were. If you have a fingerprint scanner, and the password manager supports it, you can also configure the service to let you use your fingerprint in lieu of your master password. Good password managers will also audit passwords and notify you about when they need to be changed.

They’re More Secure

The most common argument against password managers involves the age-old idiom, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” The truth is, that’s already happening. If someone gets a hold of your email address password, the amount of havoc they can wreck is untold. 

Password managers use complex cryptography systems to make sure your data is secure, but it’s the combination of their services that provides the ultimate security. Using unique passwords for every account you have combined with two-step authentication factors and fingerprint scanners creates a line of defense that is almost impervious. And if you’re still on the fence, you can opt for your passwords to be stored on a specific device rather than synced up with a service’s cloud.

Password managers are an easy, convenient, and secure way to safeguard all of your private information.

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Networked Profiles Are A Must

This is actually an old technique, but it often goes unused in spite of being helpful. User profiles are what you actually see when you log into a computer, although different operating systems such as Windows or Mac may call the profiles something different.

By default, the information saved on your computer is stored to that computer’s hard drive. For example, saving a file on your desktop goes to your C hard drive under c:\Users\Public\Desktop. Saving it to your documents folder goes to c:\Users\Public\Documents. The information there can’t be accessed on other computers unless you specifically share that information to other computers.

Instead, you can start the networking from the beginning. Networked profiles are created on network storage, so when your employee logs onto any computer as part of the network setup, they will log into their network profile. No more dealing with employees who absolutely have to work on a specific desktop.

Help Desk Can Be A Remote Task

Not all computer problems require a person to physically touch a computer. Many tasks–such as guiding users to a feature they don’t understand, installing or modifying software, or removing viruses–can be done remotely.

Remote access is the act of logging into a computer across the internet for repair. This may seem similar to network profiles, but it’s another way of accessing the system in a one-way fashion that won’t infect the computer performing the repairs.

A help desk professional at a remote company receives a sort of interactive video of your computer, allowing the professional to use their mouse and keyboard as if they were at the computer. There is little difference between what they do and how you use the computer; you use the computer by typing on a keyboard and moving a mouse to send electronic signals to the computer, not by touching the actual computer itself. Remote technology just adds another leg to the journey with a network connection.

Contact a computer systems integration professional, such as SB Technologies LLC, for help with designing your office or entire business computer structure from the ground up using networking and remote access principles. 

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Know What You Have

You won’t be able to get your disaster recovery plans off the ground if you don’t know what hardware and software your organization has. An ideal disaster recovery plan should include a thorough inventory of all hardware and software, including cloud-based applications. This inventory should be listed in order of importance to critical operations. This way, you’ll be able to get your organization back up and running in the shortest amount of time possible.

Know How Much Downtime and Data Loss You Can Tolerate

Every organization has a threshold for pain tolerance. Your organization’s level of tolerance will define the type of disaster recovery solution it needs for continued survival. Whereas an auto mechanic may be able to cope with downtimes lasting minutes or even hours, an e-commerce website may only have seconds before downtime results in severe financial losses.  

Know Who is Responsible

Any disaster recovery plan worth its weight should clearly identify the key players in managing the DR process. These key players should also have their roles and responsibilities clearly defined, so all parties involved can have a critical understanding of what needs to be done and by whom. These details should be encapsulated in a list featuring specific personnel, their positions and responsibilities and pertinent emergency contact information.

Knowing exactly who is responsible for what role during the disaster can help promote a smoother and more effective recovery, especially when dealing with third-party providers and vendors throughout the disaster.

Make Good Communication a Priority

Good communication is essential for keeping both employees and clients informed and up-to-date in case disaster strikes. A good communication plan will keep your employees in the loop from start to finish, with ongoing updates to keep them informed of any changes that occur during the disaster. Make provisions for alternative methods of reaching employees, since your main methods of communication may be down during the event.

Have a Plan for Handling Sensitive Information

Even if your organization doesn’t regularly deal with sensitive and confidential information, it should still have operational and technical procedures in place to ensure it remains protected throughout the disaster recovery process. For instance, there should be detailed procedures on how to access and maintain sensitive information upon activation of the DR plan.

Practice Triage for Your Applications

In an ideal disaster recovery plan, applications should be divided into the following categories:

• Mission-critical applications that are impossible to do business without
• Essential applications that can be restored within a 24-hour timeframe without serious damage
• Non-essential applications that can be restored within several days without serious damage

Triaging applications according to their level of importance can help reduce downtime and streamline the disaster recovery process.

Mind Your SLA

Reading the fine print is essential for nearly every contract you deal with, but it’s an absolute must when it comes to service-level agreements with your third-party providers or vendors. This is especially important if you’ve outsourced your storage to a colocation facility or have certain functions outsourced to an outside IT firm.

The terms and conditions outlined in your SLA should also contain a binding agreement that clearly defines the level of expected service if a disaster occurs. A well-written SLA may contain agreed-upon initial response times at the onset of the disaster and timeframes for restoring systems during the event. SLAs ensure that your third-party partner has an obligation to meet your explicit performance standards.

Conduct Regular Tests

Anything can happen during a disaster. To eliminate unpleasant surprises, it’s essential to subject your disaster recovery process to extensive testing on a regular basis. Otherwise, you won’t have a clear understanding of how your DR plan will hold up until an actual emergency occurs.

Testing can reveal deficiencies in a DR plan that would otherwise go unnoticed until it was too late. Backup failures, obsolete contact data, slow Internet connections and deficiencies within the supply chain are just a few of the fatal flaws that should be rooted out during the testing phase.

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Flexibility In Authentication Is Important

When it comes to server authentication, one of the most important things you can do is to require unique or customized authentication. For example, two-factor authentication requires multiple levels of authentication for each user. This helps to reduce the risk of having any of your user credentials compromised, because any potential breach would require both authentication levels for a single user in order to gain access.

This is of particular importance if you have outside contractors, clients or others accessing portals on your server. Since you have only limited levels of control over how well these people protect usernames and passwords, it’s in your best interest to make things more complex. Installing multiple authentication levels will help you do just that.

File-Level Permissions Tighten Controls

Establish an authorization system that allows you to set file-level permissions on your servers. This makes it easier for you to restrict access to sensitive documents, because you won’t have to grant permissions in sweeping levels or allow users access to an entire directory if they only need to be able to access and modify a single file. Don’t risk breaches due to loose permissions when you can install system management controls that let you assign user-level permissions by file.

Strong Password Requirements Reduce Vulnerability

Weak user passwords are a significant vulnerability for any company network. With so many brute-force password crackers, hackers can get around a weak password in seconds in some cases. If you want to reduce the risk of having any potential breach due to easily cracked passwords, ensure that your network system has strong password security requirements. For example, mandate that all passwords be at least eight to ten characters long and include several different types of characters in the password.

Detailed Access Logs Improve Visibility

Your network security should include tracking that records every single user login as well as all of the user activity during each of those login periods. This helps you to spot potential misuse of company resources as well as the signs of data breaches or unusual account activity. Logging the data is the key first step, but you’ll also have to be sure that you have someone on staff to analyze it on a regular basis.

Threat Detection Is A Strong Defense

Even with all of these security measures in place, that doesn’t prevent people from trying to breach the system anyway. The best offense against this type of threat is a solid and strong defensive system. Work with a threat detection specialist to set up safeguards in your system that alert you to any potentially suspicious activities. Threat detection software monitors everything that happens on your network, looking for instances of firewall breaches or attacks as well as threats like malware and other unauthorized access. Unlike personnel monitoring activity who can look away, take a break or otherwise miss something, threat detection software is automated and real-time. This means that there’s always protection in place to alert you to questionable activities when they happen. This reduces the risk of a breach happening without notice. For information on threat detection software, check out websites like https://www.stealthbits.com/.

Work with a network security and threat detection specialist to protect your company’s network. With these tips and professional support, you can be confident that your data is secure.

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Remote Computer Repair

While a computer is broken, your customer service representative can’t do their job, which means that they’re on the clock without providing any services in return. So it is in your company’s best interest to get that computer working again as soon as possible. An effective way to ensure that the computers on your customer service floor are always in tip top shape is to invest in a remote computer repair service from a company like iTOK. 

This type of service will allow your employee to work in real-time with a virtual repair technician who can gain access to the working of the computer system and fix things like adware takeovers, slow start ups, and unwanted website redirections. Remote technicians should also be able to install software updates, activate or repair identification protection settings, and troubleshoot windows operating errors.

A Company Intranet System

Maintaining a company intranet system is a great way to make sure that your customer service representatives are always on the same page and have updated access to things like training tools, company announcements, schedule changes, and product introductions. The intranet can be accessed by employees right from their desk so they can stay connected to the latest information and updates while they work.

A company intranet system offers a variety of benefits for your employees to take advantage of, such as access to team building and sales training blogs and the ability to communicate with managers and trainers in real-time. You only need to purchase and configure a web server to host your intranet, making it a cost effective tool that is sure to pay for itself in the long run.

Internet Access Limitations

Having unlimited access to the Internet can become a problem among customer service representatives because social media, personal blogs, and shopping sites can quickly distract employees and reduce the rate at which they answer calls or complete other tasks. To maintain high performance levels, it’s a good idea to limit access to Internet options on employee computers.

By limiting Internet access, you’ll limit employee distractions and protect their computers from malware, spyware, and hacking. To make things easy, you can simply limit access on employee computers to the internal intranet, customer accounts, and websites that relate directly to your business. You can also provide additional access to employees based on their work responsibilities – for example, your call center managers may need some access to the Internet for research tasks.

Morning Team Meetings

An effective way to motivate your customer service team is to incorporate morning meetings into their daily schedules. Managers can host the meetings and take the opportunity to provide important updates, recognize exceptional work habits, and provide service or sales training as ongoing education. These meetings also provide your managers with an opportunity to act as cheerleaders by getting representatives in a good mood and pumping them up for a good day on the phones.

These tools and services are easy to implement and won’t cost you a fortune to put into place. You’ll find that most employees will respond to their new tool offerings positively because they don’t require much effort to manage on their part.

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