Approximately 20% of IT security leaders report that their organizations face six or more cyberattacks annually, and 80% say they’ve experienced at least one severe cybersecurity incident in the past year. 

In this treacherous environment, encryption becomes a crucial defense mechanism, providing strong security against unauthorized access and preserving the integrity of financial organizations and their customers.  

Let’s explore the indispensable role encryption plays in strengthening digital defenses for financial institutions. 

What is Encryption?

Encryption helps ensure the confidentiality and protection of sensitive data from unauthorized access. It employs algorithms to convert readable data into code. Only individuals possessing the appropriate encryption key can access or decrypt this coded data.

There are various types of data encryption, including symmetric encryption, in which the same key encrypts and decrypts the data, and asymmetric encryption, which employs a public key for encryption and a private key for decryption.

Encryption technology isn’t just for safeguarding confidential business or government information; it can also shield data on personal devices like smartphones. Encrypting phone data offers significant benefits by ensuring the security of personal information, particularly in cases of loss or theft. 

The Benefits

Encryption has many benefits for financial firms:

Preserving Data Confidentiality

Encryption serves as a barricade against prying eyes, rendering data indecipherable to unauthorized parties. By encrypting sensitive information such as customer credentials, financial transactions, and proprietary data, financial firms can thwart unauthorized access attempts and mitigate the risk of data breaches. Encryption transforms data into an unreadable format, ensuring that even if intercepted, the information remains inaccessible without the encryption key.

Ensuring Regulatory Compliance

Regulatory bodies impose rigid mandates governing data security and privacy standards for financial institutions. Encryption not only helps organizations meet regulatory requirements; it also instills trust among clients by demonstrating a commitment to shielding customers’ confidential information. 

Financial firms that implement robust encryption protocols can confidently navigate regulatory frameworks while promoting a culture of trust and transparency with the people they serve.

Mitigating Cyber Threats

In an era plagued by ransomware attacks, phishing scams, and other digital threats, encryption is a powerful deterrent, thwarting malicious actors’ attempts to intercept and exploit sensitive data. By employing robust encryption protocols, financial firms can fortify their defenses against evolving cyber threats and minimize the likelihood of costly security breaches. 

Encryption adds layers of security to financial systems, making it significantly more challenging for cyber criminals to penetrate and compromise sensitive data.

Facilitating Secure Communication

Effective communication lies at the heart of financial transactions, necessitating secure channels to transmit sensitive information between parties. Encryption technologies encrypt data in transit, ensuring that confidential information remains shielded from interception or tampering during transmission. 

Whether it’s facilitating online banking transactions, processing credit card payments, or exchanging sensitive documents, encryption ensures that communication channels remain secure and protected from unauthorized access.

Building a Reputation on Integrity

A single data breach can irreparably harm a financial firm’s reputation, damaging client trust and confidence in its ability to safeguard their financial interests. By integrating encryption into their security posture, financial firms can bolster the integrity of their reputation, cultivating a sense of assurance among clients and stakeholders about the confidentiality of their data. 

Encryption demonstrates a commitment to security and privacy, reassuring clients that their sensitive information is safe and protected from unauthorized access or misuse.

Encryption also plays a vital role in guarding the financial fortunes of institutions and their clients in an increasingly digital world. By preserving data confidentiality, ensuring regulatory compliance, mitigating cyber threats, facilitating secure communication, and safeguarding reputation integrity, encryption emerges as an indispensable tool for financial firms seeking to fortify their defenses against cyber threats and maintain the trust and confidence of their clients.

It’s Time to Enhance Your Security with Encryption

Encryption is a robust defense that bolsters data security, protecting both personal and professional data from cyber threats. Studies indicate that by implementing strong encryption and cybersecurity measures, businesses can save an average of $1.4 million per cyberattack.

If you’re seeking to boost your business’s cybersecurity and considering how encryption can integrate into your overarching strategy, we’re here to help. Reach out to us for expert advice and tailored solutions aimed at reinforcing your security through encryption.

The post Safeguarding Financial Fortunes: The Vital Role of Encryption For Financial Firms appeared first on IT Support That Transforms Your Business | Complete Network.

However, those savings come with inherent privacy, security, regulatory, and data protection risks. These vulnerabilities can’t be ignored, but they can be mitigated. Let’s explore the pros and cons of BYOD.

Understanding BYOD Policies

BYOD policies empower employees to use their personal devices—such as smartphones, laptops, and tablets—for work activities, rather than relying solely on company-provided devices. This approach has gained popularity in financial firms due to its potential to enhance productivity, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. Employees often prefer using familiar devices, leading to increased job satisfaction and efficiency.

Identifying Security Threats

While BYOD policies offer numerous benefits, they also introduce significant security threats. Data breaches, malware attacks, and unauthorized access are primary concerns for financial firms embracing BYOD. Real-world examples underscore the severity of these threats, with several instances of security breaches resulting from inadequate BYOD policies and enforcement.

Regulatory Compliance

The regulatory landscape governing BYOD in the financial sector is complex and stringent. Compliance with regulations such as HIPAA, FINRA, and PCI-DSS is essential to avoid penalties and damage to reputation. Financial firms must implement robust security measures and adhere to regulatory requirements to safeguard sensitive data and maintain trust with clients.

Data Protection Measures

Effective data protection measures are critical for mitigating the risks associated with BYOD policies. Encryption, multifactor authentication, and mobile device management solutions are essential components of a comprehensive security strategy. 

Additionally, employee training plays a crucial role in promoting data security awareness and ensuring compliance with company policies.

Balancing Security and Convenience

Finding a balance between security requirements and employee convenience is a key challenge for financial firms implementing BYOD policies. Secure containerization and clear policies and guidelines can help strike this balance, allowing employees to use personal devices while maintaining data security and compliance.

Employee Privacy Concerns

Employee privacy concerns, such as access to personal data and monitoring, must be addressed transparently and effectively. Clear policies on data usage and privacy, along with open communication channels, can alleviate these concerns and foster trust among employees.

BYOD Policy Best Practices

Developing and implementing robust BYOD policies requires adherence to best practices. Regular risk assessments, updates to security protocols, and ongoing employee education are essential components of an effective BYOD strategy. Furthermore, regular policy reviews and adjustments are necessary to adapt to evolving security threats and regulatory requirements.

68% of organizations see a jump in productivity after enabling BYOD. As firms pursue that kind of productivity more safely, by implementing robust security measures and following best practices that safeguard sensitive data and maintain regulatory compliance. 

Our IT Services for Financial Firms

Complete Network offers comprehensive financial IT services designed to translate your data into actionable insights, keeping your firm ahead of the competition. Our range of managed IT services for finance firms includes IT support, helpdesk assistance, IT consulting, cybersecurity solutions, network support, and IT outsourcing. 

Stay informed and secure with Complete Network’s state-of-the-art IT solutions. Learn how our expertise can help you develop and implement effective BYOD policies tailored to your financial firm’s needs. We make sure to protect your data and ensure compliance with industry regulations along the way. 

Contact Complete Network today to get started. 

The post Identifying and Mitigating The Real Risks of BYOD Policies For Financial Firms appeared first on IT Support That Transforms Your Business | Complete Network.

Let’s explore the key cybersecurity strategies that professional service firms must implement to protect sensitive client data, maintain trust, and sustain credibility in their industry.

Understanding the Cybersecurity Landscape

Professional service firms face a myriad of cybersecurity threats, ranging from phishing attacks to ransomware incidents and insider threats. According to recent statistics, cyberattacks targeting professional service providers have been on the rise, highlighting the urgent need for robust cybersecurity measures.

Cybersecurity Best Practices

To fortify their defenses, professional service firms must adopt industry best practices, including the following.

• Strong Authentication: Implementing robust authentication methods such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data.
• Data Encryption: Utilizing end-to-end encryption to protect client information both at rest and in transit, ensuring confidentiality and integrity.
• Access Controls: Implementing strict access controls and adhering to the principle of least privilege to minimize the risk of unauthorized data access.

Risk Management Strategies

In addition to preventive measures, professional service firms should also focus on proactive risk management strategies, including the following.

• Regular Risk Assessments: Conducting periodic cybersecurity risk assessments to identify vulnerabilities and prioritize remediation efforts.
• Incident Response Planning: Developing comprehensive incident response plans to effectively mitigate security breaches and minimize potential damage.
• Cyber Insurance: Considering cyber insurance as a financial safety net to mitigate the financial impact of data breaches and cyber incidents.

Securing Client Data

Protecting sensitive client data is paramount for professional service providers. Key strategies include the following.

• Data Management Policies: Establishing clear data management policies to govern how client data is collected, stored, transmitted, and disposed.
• Secure Client Communications: Implementing secure communication platforms and encryption protocols to safeguard sensitive information exchanged with clients.
• Client Education: Educating clients on security best practices and encouraging their active participation in safeguarding their own data.

The Role of Regular IT Audits

Regular IT audits play a crucial role in maintaining cybersecurity resilience. Benefits include the following.

• Identifying Security Weaknesses: IT audits help identify security vulnerabilities and compliance gaps, allowing firms to address them proactively.
• Compliance with Standards: Ensuring compliance with industry regulations and standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, or SOC 2 through regular audits.

Leveraging New Technologies

Finally, professional service firms can leverage emerging technologies to enhance cybersecurity, including the following.

• Artificial Intelligence: Harnessing AI-powered solutions for threat detection, anomaly detection, and incident response.
• Cloud Security: Implementing robust security measures for cloud environments, ensuring the protection of data stored and processed in the cloud.

Get Help From the Experts

Protecting sensitive client data requires a multi-faceted approach encompassing preventive measures, proactive risk management, and the adoption of emerging technologies. 

At Complete Network, we specialize in providing tailored cybersecurity solutions for professional service providers. Contact us today to learn how we can help fortify your cybersecurity defenses and protect your sensitive client data. 

Schedule a meeting with our experts to discuss your cybersecurity needs and ensure your peace of mind.

The post Cybersecurity Strategies For Professional Service Providers to Protect Sensitive Client Data appeared first on IT Support That Transforms Your Business | Complete Network.

What Is the Cloud?

First and foremost, let’s discuss what the cloud is and how organizations worldwide use it. The cloud refers to a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet, designed to store, manage, and process data rather than rely on local servers or personal computers. 

For both nonprofit and for-profit organizations, the cloud offers a transformative approach to IT infrastructure, enabling them to access computing resources, software, and data storage over the internet on a pay-as-you-go basis. This flexibility allows organizations to scale their IT resources up or down based on demand, promoting efficiency and cost-effectiveness. 

Organizations use the cloud for a variety of purposes, including: 

• Data backup 
• Data recovery
• Email and office applications
• Virtual desktops
• Software development 
• Software testing
• Customer-facing web applications

Implementing a Cloud Strategy

Embarking on a cloud journey involves assessing your organization’s specific needs and crafting a strategy that aligns with your mission. This strategy encompasses migrating data and applications to the cloud, ensuring your team is trained and comfortable with new technologies, and implementing security measures to protect sensitive information. 

A successful cloud strategy enhances operational efficiency, facilitating seamless collaboration and data access, irrespective of geographical constraints.

Benefits of a Cloud-Based Approach

The scalability of cloud services means that resources can be adjusted based on your organization’s needs, ensuring you only pay for what you use. This flexibility is truly invaluable for nonprofits, which often experience fluctuating demands. Moreover, cloud computing democratizes access to advanced technologies, enabling smaller nonprofits to leverage tools and applications that were previously out of reach due to high costs.

Cloud solutions also significantly reduce the need for physical IT infrastructure, lowering maintenance costs and freeing up valuable resources that can be redirected toward helping the community. Additionally, cloud services enhance collaboration among team members, streamline operations, and improve data management and security.

Challenges of Cloud Adoption

While the benefits are substantial, transitioning to the cloud can present challenges. Concerns about data security, compliance with regulatory standards, and the need for staff training are common. Additionally, selecting the right cloud services and managing the migration process requires expertise that may not be readily available in-house for many nonprofit organizations.

How Complete Network Simplifies Cloud Implementation

At Complete Network, we understand these challenges and have developed solutions to make cloud adoption straightforward and cost-effective for nonprofits. With deep expertise in the sector, we have a proven track record of assisting a wide range of nonprofit organizations in enhancing their technological capabilities and streamlining their operations.

Our approach begins with a comprehensive assessment of your organization’s needs, followed by a tailored cloud strategy that includes migration, training, and ongoing support. We offer 24/7 monitoring and support to ensure uninterrupted operations, which is crucial for nonprofits and the populations they serve. Our proactive monitoring helps identify potential IT issues before they become major problems, ensuring your organization’s activities are not disrupted.

We also provide compliance assistance to ensure that your IT infrastructure meets all necessary standards, an essential service for 501(c)(3) nonprofits. Our managed IT services are designed to be highly cost-effective, enabling your organization to allocate more resources toward its core initiatives rather than handling the day-to-day operations of maintaining a fully compliant cloud infrastructure. 

Explore Our Range of Managed IT Services

Our services optimized for nonprofit organizations include managed IT, IT support, IT helpdesk, IT consulting, cybersecurity, IT outsourcing, and network support. By partnering with Complete Network, you leverage cutting-edge technology to transform your nonprofit’s efficiency and security.

Our deep sector expertise, round-the-clock support, and commitment to cost-effective solutions empower your organization to focus on what matters most: furthering your mission and making a greater impact.

Book a Meeting With Us 

Ready to get started? Book a demo with our team to learn more about how we can help. Our team of IT experts is here to help your nonprofit grow and better serve your community. 

The post The Cloud Advantage: Scalable IT Solutions For Growing Nonprofits appeared first on IT Support That Transforms Your Business | Complete Network.

This is where Complete Network shines, offering managed IT solutions crafted with 501(c)(3) nonprofits in mind. 

Why Complete Network? 

Understanding the budgetary constraints typical of nonprofits, we’ve tailored our managed IT services to be as cost-effective as possible without compromising quality. Outsourcing your IT needs to Complete Network means reallocating precious resources towards your core initiatives, thereby maximizing your positive impact on the community.

At Complete Network, our experience with a diverse range of nonprofit entities underscores our capacity to deliver impactful results. Our success stories include enabling organizations of various sizes to enhance their technological infrastructure, streamline their operations, and, most importantly, advance their missions. Our deep understanding of the specific challenges nonprofits face allows us to offer bespoke solutions that truly make a difference without breaking the bank. 

Here’s How We Can Help 

Our services span managed IT, helpdesk, consulting, cybersecurity, network support, and more. Each service is designed with the requirements of 501(c)(3) nonprofits in mind, ensuring you have the technological backing to pursue your mission effectively.

Customized Comprehensive IT

We have a thorough understanding of the specific needs within the nonprofit sector, from infrastructure complexity to stringent compliance requirements. Our comprehensive solutions cover everything your organization might need — whether it’s robust network infrastructure, impenetrable data security, seamless software integration, reliable IT support, efficient disaster recovery, or regulatory compliance assistance. 

By partnering with us, you place your trust in a team committed to optimizing your technology systems, safeguarding your data, and upholding the highest standards of confidentiality and compliance. Let us handle the technicalities, so you can focus on making a greater impact with your mission.

24/7 Monitoring and Support

We recognize that uninterrupted operations are the backbone of any nonprofit striving to make a positive impact. Our dedicated team ensures around-the-clock monitoring and support, swiftly addressing IT issues as they arise. Through proactive monitoring, we preemptively identify potential setbacks, ensuring that your daily operations remain unimpacted and your focus can stay on your mission.

Compliance Assistance

Adhering to compliance standards is a critical, yet challenging aspect for 501(c)(3) nonprofits. Complete Network remains at the forefront of regulatory requirements, offering essential assistance to ensure your IT infrastructure complies with all necessary standards. Our expertise provides peace of mind, allowing you to focus on your core objectives without the added stress of compliance issues.

Robust Cybersecurity

Protecting sensitive data is paramount. Our cybersecurity measures are designed to shield your systems from cyber threats and unauthorized access. Regular vulnerability assessments, multi-layered defenses, and compliance with industry regulations ensure your data’s security, letting you focus on your mission without the worry of data breaches.

Complete Network in Action

Complete Network has been at the forefront of empowering the Arc of Rensselaer County, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit devoted to enriching the lives of individuals with developmental disabilities. CEO Don Mullin has relied on our comprehensive IT support for over a decade to navigate various challenges and enhance their crucial services. Recognizing the importance of resilient IT infrastructure to support a wide array of programs, from residential to community activities, Complete Network stepped in as a strategic partner to ensure the Arc’s technological needs were met efficiently and cost-effectively.

Since 2012, our collaboration has led to securing grants and negotiating special licensing deals through TechSoup, demonstrating our commitment to leveraging resources for the betterment of the Arc’s mission. We’ve undertaken significant projects to optimize the Arc’s IT strategy and operational efficiency. A few notable completions include: 

• A network remediation project in 2016 to strengthen their infrastructure
• The integration of VMWare hosts in 2019 to boost virtualization capabilities
• The deployment of new servers to improve data management
• The smooth transition to Microsoft 365 in 2019 that enhanced the organization’s collaborative workflow
• The implementation of the Splashtop solution to ensure that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Arc’s employees could work securely from remote locations

Our ongoing efforts, such as firewall replacements and cost-saving transitions in Microsoft licensing, underscore our ongoing commitment to fortifying the Arc’s technological backbone, thereby enabling them to focus more on their worthy mission of service and less on IT complexities.

Learn More

With a 90-day early termination option for IT contracts, over 16 years as an industry-leading IT company, and a customer satisfaction rating of 97.2%, Complete Network stands as your ideal partner in enhancing your nonprofit’s impact through technology. Embrace the power of tailored, cost-effective IT solutions with Complete Network and transform how you serve your community.

Book a meeting today to learn more about how we can help you and your organization accomplish more.

The post Maximizing Impact With Limited Resources: Tech Solutions Designed For 501(c)(3) Nonprofits appeared first on IT Support That Transforms Your Business | Complete Network.

The Chief Information Officer Puts You on Proactive Footing

Most small and midsized businesses are in a bind when it comes to technology strategy. They don’t need or can’t afford a full-time chief information officer (CIO). At the same time, they know that without a high-level expert to take proactive control of their IT initiatives, they’re exposing themselves to delays, cost overruns, and technical problems.

There are several areas where proactive vCIO makes a huge positive impact.

vCIO Service Benefits: Technology Strategy and IT Roadmap Support

When posed the question, many business leaders can talk candidly about their business strategy for the next 12 months or longer. A much smaller cohort will be able to speak in detail about how their technology will evolve to support those objectives.

Technology strategy takes a full appraisal of a business. This includes how the team functions, its existing network technology, a deep analysis of its goals, and deep know-how into how their industry is trending.

A vCIO team has a few essential tools to proactively guide your IT strategy to success.

Stakeholder Meetings
The most important aspect of a vCIO service is open and frequent communication. Regular meetings with your decision makers help the vCIO team take the pulse of your business and understand their top priorities, so they can design a strategy that aligns with your business goals.

Network Assessments
In addition to speaking with your decision makers, the vCIO team should also perform regular network audits. Audits help the MSP plan strategic upgrades, migrations, and other projects to keep your technology effective.

Once a vCIO team has developed a clear path forward, they’ll distill their strategy into an IT roadmap.

The roadmap provides a centralized strategy that all your stakeholders can reference and work on collaboratively. This centralization enhances consistency, ensures proper budgeting, and lays the foundation for progressive improvements to the IT strategy.

Cybersecurity Consulting and Planning

Another one of the many vCIO service benefits is proactivity. Proactivity is the heart of effective cybersecurity. Cyber threats now evolve and spread too quickly for businesses to simply install anti-virus software and hope that hackers stay away.

For example, the outbreak of Follina, a threat that exploits a Microsoft Support tool to execute malicious PowerShell code, bypassing Windows Defender and other popular anti-virus protections.

As small and midsized organizations have become the primary focus of criminal threats, they need a team of cybersecurity experts who can help them navigate those risks, determine which are worthy of attention and which are not, and configure their defenses accordingly.

The vCIO fills that role, providing high-level cybersecurity expertise to businesses that couldn’t otherwise retain top cybersecurity talent.

Cybersecurity Vendor Management
There are thousands of cybersecurity tools on the market, helping companies with everything from perimeter defense, threat analysis, and much more. If you neglect those tools’ unique system requirements and integration needs, you could inadvertently create workflow inefficiencies or new cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

Working with a vCIO team enables your team to rest assured that those tools are constantly communicating efficiently. It also ensures that patches and updates are all applied, minimizing the risk of intrusion into your system.

Cybersecurity Network Monitoring

All managed IT service providers monitor their clients’ network to stop minor issues from becoming severe disruptions. Working with a trusted vCIO adds another layer of proactive monitoring that’s designed to protect your firm from sophisticated cybersecurity threats that software won’t.

This includes implementing documented processes for detecting, analyzing, and prioritizing risks, then ensuring that qualified analysts evaluate and contain those threats. The vCIO team will often work with a dedicated security operation center (SOC) to provide this high level of service.

Cybersecurity Awareness Training
Technical cyber controls are an important part of any cybersecurity defense program, but a vCIO team should also design your firm a cybersecurity awareness training solution to mitigate the most significant source of cyber risk: human error.

Regulatory Compliance

As federal and state regulators expand and modernize compliance requirements – and levy greater penalties for non-compliance — businesses in all industries are facing an urgent need to improve their compliance processes to be more responsive and consistent.

That means having a thorough plan and the workforce to maintain their technical, administrative, and physical safeguards.

Businesses big and small turn to outside consultants to improve their compliance processes and ensure they’re being applied uniformly across their entire IT estate. The vCIO team at an established MSP can offer a valuable third-party opinion on your organization’s compliance efforts and targeted expertise to help seal compliance gaps.

Automate Regulatory Compliance Activities
A vCIO team can help your team centralize and standardize compliance-related data such as examination reports and requests for information. This provides a foundation for gaining valuable analytics insight and helps you confidently respond to regulators.

Enhance Case and Incident Management
Properly managing a compliance incident involves recording the event, triaging it to the right personnel, then investigating and tracking it until it’s resolved. The vCIO team will audit all your business processes around compliance, business continuity, and cyber security incident management to proactively reduce regulatory risk.

Stay Ahead of Regulatory Changes
After a lull in compliance regulations due to COVID-19 in 2022 and beyond, we expect a raft of new compliance regulations to affect banking, healthcare, and other regulated industries. By helping you determine how these changes will impact your compliance program, a vCIO service helps your team stay focused on other priorities.

A vCIO Team Defined by Decades of Client Success and Satisfaction

Complete Network’s vCIO team has provided businesses in Albany, Charlotte, Bluffton, and Savannah with trustworthy insight and expertise for 20 years. If your organization wants to work with a high-value, high-touch IT partner with a long track record of client success, reach out any time at 877 877 1840 or sales@complete.network. Take advantage of the many vCIO service benefits today!

The post How Proactive vCIO Service Benefits IT, Your Staff, and Organization appeared first on IT Support That Transforms Your Business | Complete Network.

A vCIO Keeps You Ahead of the Latest Cyber Threats

Cybersecurity attacks now affect 42% of small businesses, with most businesses reporting that they feel unprepared to deal with the dramatic uptick in cyberattacks that have occurred since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Having a vCIO team in your corner helps you address all the most common cybersecurity risks:

Bridge Cybersecurity Skill Gaps

“Cybersecurity” isn’t a single skill set. There are perimeter defense and threat detection specialists, digital forensics, penetration testing, zero trust cybersecurity, and other areas. Hiring for each of those roles is a long and expensive process that’s out of reach for most small or midsized businesses.

Without that expertise, your business will create cybersecurity blind spots and exacerbate the risk of infiltration.

The help of a seasoned vCIO team helps you achieve a comprehensive network security posture. This means going beyond just the latest best practices to keep your firewalls tuned, running regular risk assessments to uncover new security gaps, testing and improving your staff’s cybersecurity readiness, and ensuring that systems are updated and configured to meet the latest threats.

Better Respond to the Threat Landscape
The cybersecurity threats your organization needs to defend itself from change daily. For example, zero-day threats such as the recent PwnedPiper reached a peak last year, and sneaked under the cyber defenses of even established companies in the past, doing huge amounts of damage.

Aside from skills, the vCIO team provides the intelligence your organization needs to secure itself. The vCIO team at Complete Network is an active member of the cybersecurity community that gathers new information from leading sources every day. That intelligence is critical to protecting businesses from the latest threats.

For organizations in regulated industries — like financial services — a vCIO team can help your team stay aware of when and how your organization is being talked about on the dark web so that you can proactively build the right defenses.

Identify and Integrate New Tools

The most successful and secure businesses employ next-generation anti-virus and cybersecurity tools. By incorporating machine learning and advanced analytics, the latest endpoint protection software can dramatically reduce the number of so-called “false positives” that come into your network.

The right cybersecurity tools reduce engineering hours and costs by focusing your internal team (or external cybersecurity partner) on the most dangerous threats. They also minimize the risk of severe infiltration and provide better digital forensics to streamline your next audit arrives.

Any reputable vCIO team will help you navigate cybersecurity vendors’ conflicting marketing claims, identify the right tools for your business, and integrate them into your defensive systems. This saves time and money while ensuring you have the defenses you need to minimize risk.

vCIO for Security and Compliance Consulting

Regulatory compliance requirements compound cybersecurity fears by adding the specter of enormous financial damages when sensitive data is compromised. Firms in the healthcare and financial services fields also risk catastrophic reputational damage when a compliance breach becomes public knowledge.

Most organizations struggle with achieving and maintaining compliance. That’s why many seek the help of an outside consultant, like a seasoned vCIO team.

Keep Your Business Focused on Long-term Compliance

Regulatory compliance, like cybersecurity, is not something you can achieve once and then forget about; it’s a daily process of ensuring that you’re maintaining the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of personally protected information (PII).

Even the most well-intentioned organizations will struggle to maintain that high level of intensity and dedication over the long term without some outside assistance. You can rely on a trust vCIO team to provide a backstop for your internal compliance program, ensuring your organization always has the resources, expertise, and accountability it needs to achieve long-term compliance.

Compliance Audit Expertise
Regular compliance audits are critical to the success of your compliance program. HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and FINRA/SEC, each outline strict requirements for regular audits that must be reported to run the risk of falling out of compliance.

Running compliance audits is also time-consuming, diverting valuable. IT work hours away from important network management tasks. Many businesses just neglect their audits entirely, which is a significant reason why non-compliance penalties in the financial industry and healthcare continue to hit historic highs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Utilizing the most appropriate framework for your goals, such as NIST or SOC-2, the vCIO team at Complete Network can deepen your data security controls and governance policies to uncover areas of non-compliance, then help guide your organization back into alignment.

Regulatory Compliance Change Management

Anticipating, capturing, and implementing regulatory changes is critical to compliance. Improvements in existing processes, employee turnover, regulatory upgrades, or system upgrades can all have significant implications for your compliance status.

A trustworthy vCIO team will help you track manual tasks related to tracking changes and provide the proper oversight of your regulatory compliance effort.

This includes communicating with your senior management about the importance of upcoming compliance-related projects, developing a formal action plan for keeping you in lockstep with requirements, then working with your team on change implementation and reporting. All of reasons point to a need for a vCIO for security and compliance management.

We’ve Built a vCIO Team to Solve Your Greatest IT Challenge

The Complete Network virtual chief information officer (vCIO) team has been helping organizations in Albany, New York, Charlotte, North Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and Bluffton, South Carolina gain decisive control over their cybersecurity and compliance requirements for over two decades.

Businesses in healthcare, financial services, and other regulated industries that are struggling should feel free to reach out to us any time at 877 877 1840 and sales@complete.network.

The post Leverage Your vCIO for Strategic Security and Compliance appeared first on IT Support That Transforms Your Business | Complete Network.

In this article, we’re going to dispel some common misconceptions about business continuity planning, explore its practical benefits, and demonstrate why it’s crucial to helping established businesses achieve long-term health and stability.

Business Continuity Protects Core Business Operations

The first and primary reason to be vigilant about business continuity planning is to ensure that your organization weathers any catastrophe.

Today′s challenging business environment is more complex than it’s been in years. With domestic businesses being saddled with compliance, security, and other risks, it has become increasingly important that every organization has an approach to operational resilience that covers all the possible risk vectors.

Business insurance doesn’t cover the loss of clients during an extended period of downtime, nor will it compensate for any work delays or canceled project work. Data backups, another common surrogate for continuity planning, could quickly become inaccessible during certain disasters. Even cloud computing won’t necessarily save you from disaster, despite what some cloud vendors may say.

A comprehensive, risk-based continuity strategy is the only method for truly protecting your business’s operations.

Business Continuity Provides Competitive Advantage

There is a chronic misperception of business continuity as a cost on your balance sheet when in fact, the opposite is true. A comprehensive continuity plan provides long-term value for organizations that helps them beat the competition.

One way to highlight that value to decision-makers is to weave those continuity tactics deep into your business strategy so that they provide day-to-day value.

For example, by moving a portion of your staff to a secondary facility or alternative hot work site before catastrophe strikes, you can shorten commuting times for staff working in another location while also providing a backup place to work if something happens to your primary office.

32% of supply chain professionals worry about supply chain issues after the COVID-19 pandemic. This makes it an excellent time to take proactive steps to mitigate the risks that could damage your business now so that when the next disaster strikes, you’ll be in a position to capture market share from less prepared competitors.

Safeguard Your Business’s Reputation from Disaster

Reputation is critical to success in today’s competitive business landscape. The importance of reputation has been documented extensively. Here’s what we mean.

• The Ponemon Institute found that 31% of respondents say they’d cut ties with an entity that had experienced a catastrophic data breach.
• Research from the Reputation Institute found that business reputation is 2 to 3 times more important now than it was just a few decades ago.
• Companies with bad reputations spend on average of 10% more per new employee hire
• 58% of Fortune 500 executives believe reputation management should be a core part of every organization’s branding strategy.

Nothing is more damaging to your business than an extended period of downtime. When staff is unreachable, project deadlines get pushed, your team can’t respond to new business opportunities, and your business loses the reputation that it’s developed over years or decades.

A business continuity plan allows you to seamlessly serve customers under even the most challenging circumstances. This safeguards your brand reputation and will put your company on a shortlist of the dependable firms in your industry when a disaster strikes.

Integrate Regulatory Compliance Requirements

Business continuity planning is inescapable — though often overlooked — part of a comprehensive compliance effort.

FINRA/SEC, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and other common compliance standards have clear provisions about what business continuity steps a business must take to be compliant. While the details of each standard unique emphasis vary, they mostly revolve around ensuring data availability, reporting standards,

Fundamentally, this means having backups for paper and digital information, regularly running financial and operational risk assessments, and alternate physical environments for staff to fall back to in the case of a disaster.

There are several areas where business continuity and regulatory compliance overlap that businesses tend to overlook.

• Clear Lines of Communication
  Your firm must have clear lines of both internal and external communication when disaster strikes. This includes communicating the impact and length of the disruption, the state of their private data, and which steps are being taken to remediate the issue. It also means knowing how your organization will function if the standard lines of communication fail.
• Documented Strategy
  In the case of some regulations, like SOX, your business simply will not get approved by an external auditor without a documented strategy. To meet that requirement, you’ll need to do the following: define the plan’s scope; identify critical functions that require redundancy; determine acceptable downtime for each of those functions, then outline how to operate the failover systems for each of those business functions.
• Test and Maintain Your Strategy
  Your regulators don’t want to see you develop a plan and then let it grow dusty on the shelf. For that strategy to remain effective and to prove you’re taking business continuity seriously, you need to run quarterly tests to ensure your document reflects the state of your organization as it evolves.

Compliance can’t be tacked on to an existing continuity plan. It should be a foundational element on which your plan is built. To do that, integrate compliance requirements into your risk assessment and business impact analysis (BIA) and make sure that every step supports your compliance goals.

If you’re curious about this topic, we have another article that goes into deeper detail on the subject of business continuity planning for regulated industry. 

Develop Business Continuity Plan with Complete Network’s Help

For decades our virtual chief information officer (vCIO) team has been helping businesses in the financial services, insurance, banking, healthcare, and other highly regulated industries make informed decisions that mitigate risk and increase operational resiliency.

If your business in Albany, New York, Charlotte, North Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and Bluffton, South Carolina has a question about business continuity planning, our team would be happy to help. Reach out to us any time at 877 877 1840 and sales@complete.network.

The post Business Continuity or Disaster Recovery? appeared first on IT Support That Transforms Your Business | Complete Network.

But business continuity planning is difficult under the best of circumstances, requiring sustained, organization-wide communication and coordination. Regulatory compliance standards such as FINRA/SEC, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS add layers of complexity and uncertainty to the planning process that many in-house teams are unprepared to manage.

• HIPAA states that healthcare providers “must maintain a quickly actionable contingency plan for establishing and operating an emergency base of operations during a crisis,” with the possibility of non-compliance fines in egregious cases of downtime.
• Similarly, FINRA rule 4370 outlines very clear requirements for businesses to “create and maintain a written business continuity plan identifying procedures relating to an emergency or significant business disruption.”

In this blog, we’ll go over some of the common pain points and explain what businesses can do to build business continuity plans that satisfy their compliance requirements.

Integrate Compliance into Business Impact Analyses and Risk Assessments

The first step in the business continuity planning phase is to conduct a risk assessment and business impact analysis.

These two distinct steps help you identify the most important risk to your business and understand what fines and damages your business would incur if one of those catastrophes were to compromise your systems. Understanding these two things helps your team allocate budget and build a business continuity plan that is built to support your compliance goals.

There are many great resources on running a business impact assessment elsewhere online, including this resource from the Federal Government. But to ensure you integrate your compliance requirements into this phase, address the following points.

• Identify gaps in compliance agreements.
  Analyze compliance requirements, then document how those compliance technical controls will affect your compliance processes. Often businesses without in-house technical expertise will find that security controls such as firewall configuration, access management, or hardware configurations are not aligned with their compliance objectives.
• Focus on technical interdependencies
  Compliance can expose your organization to a wide range of complex issues around interdependency. Take, for example, healthcare organizations contending with HIPAA and HITECH compliance. Could extended downtime at a business associate force your business into non-compliance? What happens to personal mobile phones and their data if a centralized management service is compromised? Carefully analyze each system and its downstream and upstream processes to locate compliance risk areas.
• Track the flow of protected data
  Modern businesses create and store vast amounts of information every day. In many regulated businesses, a significant portion of that data is subject to regulatory compliance requirements. Without full transparency into how data flows through your organization, a business continuity plan will fail to protect that sensitive information, which means that any risk assessment must follow sensitive data to wherever it travels in your network.

Regulatory compliance concerns are a serious liability and should be accounted for in your business continuity planning. To achieve total confidence, the Complete Network team recommends having documented business continuity plans to address all your most urgent threats, including ransomware attacks, hardware failure, or loss of a primary data center.

Define Roles and Responsibilities

In the best of circumstances, knowing who will be responsible for what systems after catastrophe strikes can be difficult. Those difficulties increase exponentially after you factor personally identifiable information (PII) and other protected data into the equation. Here are some common scenarios.

Are front-line staff at a secondary office location authorized to handle the data on the network systems that they have been assigned? Some businesses may feel they have done an effective job keeping digital data away from unauthorized staff, then soon realize that paper records like bills and invoices have unique compliance requirements.

What are the lines of escalation for issues related to PII when primary communication channels are impaired? To answer this question, you will want to ensure that encryption, multi-factor authentication, and other security controls are sufficient at each of your sites and that all personnel has been assigned the correct permissions to perform their work tasks if they’re forced to work from the backup location.

Ensure Strong Data Governance Across Primary and Secondary Sites

PII and its healthcare counterpoint electronically protected health information (ePHI) now move through computer networks faster and more fluidly than ever before. That data must be properly managed and tracked as it moves through a system, or you risk exposing yourself to compliance risks when triggering a business continuity plan.

Let’s take cloud platforms as an example. Many backup and disaster recovery solutions will feature functionality for keeping data secure at rest. At the same time, in their systems, but that doesn’t mean that the data in transit between your on-premise systems and cloud systems, or primary office locations and secondary hot sites, is always secure.

To keep in-transit data safe, you must deploy the appropriate tools, such as secure VPN tunnels, properly-configured firewalls, and the appropriate multi-factor authentication systems.

Beyond just the confidentiality and accessibility, you will also want to make sure that the integrity of the data is maintained throughout the business continuity process. This includes ensuring that proper audit trails and change controls are applied to data so that you can understand if data has been altered while working from backup systems.

Manage Compliance and Business Continuity with a Trusted Partner

Despite the central importance of business continuity, too many organizations fail to do the required due diligence to align those programs. Many fail due to a lack of business continuity expertise.

The good news is that you don’t have to approach continuity planning or regulatory compliance alone.

The Complete Network virtual chief information officer (vCIO) brings decades of compliance experience to regulated organizations of all sizes. We can help you assess your risk, implement the right administrative and technical controls, then maintain your continuity plan as your business and goals evolve.

Contact our friendly Complete Network team any time at 877 877 1840 or sales@complete.network. We look forward to chatting with you!

The post Does Your Business Continuity Plan Meet Your Compliance Goals? appeared first on IT Support That Transforms Your Business | Complete Network.

In addition to staffing shortages, new forms of technology and expanded reliance on existing systems will have direct implications for healthcare organizations. Teams already struggling to maintain strong HIPAA compliance at the outset of the pandemic now find themselves trying to keep pace with the shifting compliance and technology landscape.

The best way to stay ahead of your HIPAA challenges is to partner with an experienced managed IT service provider. By providing an in-depth understanding of HIPAA and the latest healthcare technologies, the right IT service partner can simplify your efforts, reduce the burden on your staff, and reduce the chance of non-compliance fines.

Below are just a few important ways working with an external IT partner can help you achieve and maintain HIPAA compliance.

Embrace Telehealth as a Permanent Solution

Telehealth, which uses information and communication technology to allow patients to access health care services remotely, experienced an enormous boom during the pandemic. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, telehealth experienced a dramatic 63-fold increase in telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This, of course, means a dramatic increase in the amount of sensitive healthcare data being transmitted. As COVID-19 continues to fade in intensity, many of those arrangements will become permanent, which presents many technical complications for providers, which includes:

• Securing video channels so that conversations between patients and clinicians stay confidential
• Creating systems for the encrypted transfer of files such as images sent by patients
• Establishing strict standards for encryption of in-transit and at-rest data being stored in your systems
• Ensuring that video data is securely archived
• Securely transferring data to and from the cloud and on-premise systems

Healthcare providers without fully-staff IT teams could struggle with any of those items, exposing them to serious HIPAA violation penalties. A veteran IT service provider can eliminate that uncertainty, deploying and managing telemedicine systems that reduce operational overhead and ensure your patients have a safe, satisfying experience.

Better Support HIPAA-Compliant Remote Workers

To accommodate new work arrangements and promote as much productivity out of limited staff as they can, many healthcare organizations are now starting to accommodate work from home and remote working arrangements, just as other industries did during COVID-19.

In fact, healthcare is one of the industries with the most enthusiasm about the prospect of long-term work from home. The list of requirements to effectively keep employees compliant with HIPAA while working remotely is long and complex. Here are just a few of the tools that providers and organizations will need to plan for:

• Wireless routers at home that support WPA2-AES encryption
• A virtual private network (VPN) for all remote network access
• HIPAA-compliant software for voice and video communication
• Two-factor authentication systems on all systems containing ePHI
• Device and update management policy for all relevant computers

In addition to infrastructure, you’ll need to enforce a long list of administrative controls to keep remote workers compliant. Just a few of the key items include:

• Strictly limit devices access to family and friends
• Bring your own device (BYOD) usage agreement for all personal phones and computers
• Media sanitization policy for disposal of all digital and paper PHI
• Logging of all remote access activity on the organization’s network

The complexity of managing remote work technology is often simply too much for most providers, another area where the help of an external team of IT engineers and specialists with experience in the healthcare industry can help.

Stay Head of the Latest HIPAA Compliance Updates

In 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a list of proposed modifications to both HIPAA and HITECH. These updates are, among other things, designed to promote sharing PHI as a necessary step to encourage care coordination, another likely result of the recent pandemic.

Many of these proposed revisions have technical dimensions, which an MSP can help you proactively manage. These include:

Patient Access to ePHI

Providing patients with convenient access to their health information is an important part of HIPAA compliance. But, based on the changes proposed by HHS, the amount of time that providers have to hand that information over to patients will fall from 30 days to 15 days.

At the same time, other changes, such as the need to accommodate ePHI transfers to personal health applications and the freedom for patients to photograph their PHI, will further complicate the technology management workload for providers.

Employee Training

Updating the privacy rule and other parts of HIPAA compliance will require a new training regimen for your staff. Even before the pandemic, many healthcare organizations were either not using HIPAA-certified training materials and coaches, or not training as frequently as they should have been.

As the need for greater care coordination grows, so will the amount of data flowing between your systems and staff. This necessitates that providers have a clear plan for regular HIPAA training that keeps staff on digital hygiene and the proper handling of ePHI.

Thinking your organization can fly beneath the radar because of its small size and obscurity? Think again. HHS has stepped up enforcement penalties on small healthcare providers, in particular, meaning providers of all sizes will need to have their documented security policies, recent risk assessments, and data breach mitigation processes in place.

Partner with a Seasoned Healthcare IT Expert

Complete Network has been a partner to healthcare organizations throughout Albany, New York, Charlotte, North Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and Bluffton, South Carolina for decades. During that time, we’ve helped healthcare providers, large and small, gain confident control over HIPAA, HITECH, and their other compliance requirements.

Have a question for the experts? Reach us at 877.877.1840 or sales@complete.network.

The post How Managed IT Services Helps Assure HIPAA Compliance appeared first on IT Support That Transforms Your Business | Complete Network.