The term “shadow IT’ sounds pretty nefarious, and the activities around it certainly can be. But oftentimes it’s a result of company employees just trying to do their jobs more efficiently. Shadow IT involves the use and management of external technology solutions, such as hardware, software, or cloud applications, without the knowledge of or explicit permission from a company’s IT department. It’s an issue that’s grown rapidly as cloud computing has become more widely adopted, and it’s increased in prevalence with more and more workers going remote. It could be going on at your business without you even realizing it. What does shadow IT look like? Usually, it looks like employees using their personal devices, such as smartphones and [...]

Are your networks healthy? How would you know if they were, or if their health were to become compromised? Or do you just assume everything is humming along, performing optimally — until something breaks? Like everything else with technology, networks aren’t “set it and forget it.” And if you do approach things that way, you could be asking for trouble. Here’s why 24x7 network monitoring matters so much to your business. What is network monitoring? Networks are complex, but you don’t have to understand all the nitty gritty details to grasp the basics. Think of your network as the connective tissue of your entire IT infrastructure. It ties together all of your hardware devices, software, servers, firewalls, other equipment, [...]

In a previous post, we talked about the importance of network monitoring around the clock, with an emphasis on monitoring all the various pieces and parts of your infrastructure to ensure everything is performing as it should, and nothing is hampering network performance. So where does security come into the picture? Security is inevitably and necessarily woven into the overarching monitoring solution, and there are a number of tools out there that overlap, but it’s not quite the same thing. Here we take a look at the differences between the two, and seek to understand more about the role of monitoring from a network security perspective. What is Network Monitoring? First, let’s look specifically at what network monitoring aims [...]

We know how it goes: You must be fully focused on running your business, not the technology that your business runs on. If this sounds like you, find out how you might benefit from outsourced IT services.  If you own or run a business, you’ve probably learned a few things about technology: 1) It’s expensive, and the costs are seemingly endless; 2) It’s time-consuming, and the to-dos required to stay on top of things are also seemingly endless; and 3) It’s constantly changing: the technology you implement today will need upgrading or complete replacement a short time from now.  Enter: an information technology services company.  In short, these businesses exist to bring you the necessary technology solutions (including hardware [...]