IF you Recognize these Signs, THEN it’s Time to Outsource your IT

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It’s Time to Outsource your IT!

Do you Recognize these Signs?

Small business owners have to keep their budgets tight. It’s a fact of life. In today’s competitive world, decisions become difficult when it comes to hiring specialized positions – especially within IT departments.

IT is such an important topic because of the critical need to keeping your organization running efficiently and safely. There are technical challenges to overcome. For example, have you determined what hardware and software best fits your business needs? How will you manage all of this internally? Are you prepared to handle a data security breach?

When it comes IT support, it may seem advantageous to hire an IT Manager or CTO internally to maintain tight control over these functions. However, keeping these functions in-house may not be the best option for your budget.

According to recent research by CompTIA (the IT Industry Association), the most proactive approach is turning to a managed IT service provider. By doing so, your costs can be reduced by nearly 50%. Since managed IT service providers offer certified engineers with a wide range of capabilities, studies show that they will outperform your in-house team at a lower overall cost. Discovering this after an issue arises could put your organization at greater risk.

Take a look at our tips on when it may be time to begin outsourcing your IT:

  1. Staying Focused on Your Priorities. By outsourcing your IT you will be less likely to be sidetracked putting out fires. You can focus on priorities such as supporting your customers without having to deal with interruptions like trouble-shooting software, hardware, network, or user issues. There are major issues that can occur such as a breach to your firewall which threatens data, or your VPN failing, or disruptions in your VoIP phone service. Ask yourself, are you really prepared to handle these issues? And why would you want to? Offloading your IT support and leaving it in the hands of ‘experts’ will save you time, money, and frustration.
  2. Cost Management. Keeping an office running efficiently and safely with just one full-time computer expert on your staff is nearly impossible. The average help desk or systems admin personnel expenses can quickly add up to big dollars especially when you have to keep certifications current and training up-to-date. The main reason to outsource IT is to lower your costs by only paying for what you need, when you need it.
  3. The Need For Reliable IT Experts. The world of technology is always changing. If you don’t currently have the proper IT resources available, the symptoms of an IT problem may be bandaged but never addressed at the root. This leaves your technology in a break-fix cycle that is never ending. Having an outsourced IT provider will give you peace of mind and expert guidance. Your dedicated Managed IT Services Provider will understand your environment, make appropriate recommendations, and manage your infrastructure to avoid frustration, lost time and wasteful spending.
  4. Offloading Security Worries. There are many areas of IT security that challenge business owners. There is spam filtering, virus scanning, firewall management, data backup, and more. These tasks can be overwhelming and deciding what to do first can be confusing. By putting all of this in the hands of a managed IT service provider, they will have the time, talent, and resources to handle it. They will have the familiarity with the best tools available, and the experience to prioritize the tasks for you. Shifting the burden to meet standards and security requirements for your organization will allow you to sleep at night.

Bryley Systems has 30 years of experience taking the worry off of our clients’ shoulders and effectively managing IT environments at a predictable cost. For more information about about Bryley’s full array of Managed IT Services, please contact us at 978.562.6077 or by email at ITExperts@Bryley.com. We’re here for you.

Bryley Basics: Purchase Windows 10 with new PCs and laptops

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We keep having the same conversation with clients over and over again, especially those who are buying new computers: What Windows version should I deploy?

If you are purchasing new computers for your organization, please consider installing Windows 10. We have clients who still want us to install Windows 7, however, that operating system will be end of life January 14th, 2020.  What that means is that Microsoft, after 1/14/2020, will no longer provide security updates for Windows 7, such that your computer will be more susceptible to getting malware and your organization will not be compliant. In less than 3 years, you will have to upgrade the operating system of that computer, which involves additional labor costs, software licensing, and employee downtime.

Note: We didn’t forget about Windows 8.1, but we find that a lot of distributors no longer stock computers that have Windows 8 (8.1) pre-installed. It also seems to be another operating system (remember Vista?) that Microsoft “abandoned” since it was only around for 3 years, making it one of the most short-lived operating systems.

Prior to installing Windows 10 on new computers, we will need to find out if current applications are compatible with the new operating system. With the name of the application and the version, we should be able to verify compatibility by searching the Internet and then verifying with the manufacturer directly.

For more information, please visit Migrating to Windows 10 – Now, later, or never, from the August 2015 issue of BITs (Bryley Information and Tips).

Making this type of transition isn’t always easy, but we are here to help; please reach out to us at 978.562.6077 or email ITExperts@Bryley.com.

 

How Bryley becomes an extension of you…

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Bryley has something pretty special that seems to be missing from many other IT Companies.

It’s not about the number of Microsoft Experts we employ or the multiple Product Certifications they hold across company departments (but if you ask, we have those too). What we have that’s different is hard to measure, even though it can be designated in numbers. 5 years, 10 years, even 20 years! These are numbers that you’ll see from not only our long-term clients, but also our employees!

I have worked at Bryley full time for almost 8 years, much more if you count the years when I worked as an intern throughout High School and College. Many of the clients that I interact with are the same ones whose records I used to file away as an intern more than 10 years ago. We’re not interested in adding clients and employees for a year and then parting ways as friends. We’re looking to build relationships with you, both personally and professionally, so that together we can grow and succeed.

As a result of our long-lasting relationships with our clients, we are better able to address the technical issues they experience. We learn customized details about a company or user and create Client-Specific Documentation that allows a quick resolution for both Bryley and the end user. Sure, we could swoop in, fix something easily and be heralded as a hero for the day. But we prefer to go above and beyond the mere fix.

We enjoy being able to teach our willing clients what we’re doing. This reduces the urgency and the sometimes overwhelming stress that comes with a computer issue or technical request. End users can sometimes resolve issues on their own using the documentation we provide, lessons learned from a remote session, or just by receiving a few screenshots from one of our techs. The satisfaction and often faster resolution the client gets from fixing their own problem, well… that moment goes a little further than a Superman cape for an afternoon.

Our team has grown over the years and in that time the Tech team has learned how to best take care of our clients. The process starts with me: “Hi! Michelle here!” Whether you call in, send an email, or enter a ticket on our Bryley Portal, you will most likely get your first response from me. During this initial intake I obtain as many details about the issue as I can from you – the client. The information I gather includes a detailed problem description, screen shots, symptoms, and passwords. Then, I will have you install Kaseya, our remote access tool. If time permits, I may even remote in right away and see for myself what’s going on. In a perfect world, and if the problem is easy enough, I’ll take care of it right then and there for you. If I can’t, all the details of my call with you will be entered into your service ticket, and I will schedule a tech to remote in or go onsite to resolve the issue. My objective is to make life that much easier for you – and for our Techs, too.

We believe that our company’s long-term success – we’re celebrating 30 years in business – lies in our ability to strengthen and support this network of relationships in a way that advances the best interests of everyone. Bryley specializes in more than just IT support. We provide a broad range of Managed IT Services and Managed Cloud Services. We’re committed to understanding you and your business needs before recommending or implementing a solution. Our ultimate goal is to provide the highest quality technical and strategic computer support after taking your unique business needs into consideration. Our approach is simple. We strive to earn your trust and we value our clients – you.

To see how our tech team can help your organization, call us at 844.449.8770 or email us at ITExperts@Bryley.com.

Making Working Remotely Work

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By Lawrence Strauss, Strauss and Strauss

Working remotely is trending. Yet, according to the American Community Survey, while telecommuting dramatically rose 79 percent between 2005 and 2012, telecommuters made up only 2.6 percent of the American work force; a pretty small percentage, and the true number is difficult to really get a handle on, as organizations have been shown to count answering emails after hours as working remotely.

What is generally understood as working remotely is working at least three days of a work-week from a location other than at an organization’s offices. People invested a lot of the last 130 years building our city-filled offices and suburban office parks, but no one foresaw today’s 94 percent broadband access to the internet; the world is now suddenly different.

“The seat of the pants to the seat of the chair,” was how Sinclair Lewis characterized the art of writing 100 years ago, but it may as well describe how to accomplish much of what we do today, whether it’s writing a manual or code, bookkeeping or administration, designing in Photoshop or AutoCAD. Global Workplace Analytics finds that 50 percent of the work-force holds jobs that are at least in-part compatible with remote work. So who cares the location of the chair?1

Workers care

Working from home eliminates the often tense and costly daily commute of almost an hour a day on average. Working at home means when you have a break, you can do things that would not seem to fit or be possible at the office, like weeding your garden or playing piano. Teleworking with flexible hours may make it easier for workers to balance their work and family responsibilities. Workers appreciate the ability to schedule their lives around their work rather than the other way around. (Studies have shown some place a greater value on flexibility than career advancement.)2 Also working alone helps people avoid office gossip and politics, and enables them to focus on their tasks and be more productive.3 In a 2013 study of a Chinese travel company, Ctrip, employees who were allowed to work remotely were more satisfied with their jobs and less likely to leave.4

On the other hand, “the absent one is always wrong”, goes a French proverb. And there is common sense wisdom to this: out of sight, out of mind. How much takes place in the little interactions between co-workers day-to-day? How does telecommuting affect collaboration? How does a remote worker feel engaged and motivated? Do projects get assigned to people who speak up because they are there? And do doubts nag at the telecommuter that what he’s contributed is being really understood and valued?

Organizations care

In 2007 Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, critiqued telecommuting as diminishing face-time, which he argued made it difficult for managers to see “how calm you stay in a PR crisis, how decent you are to new employees … how much you sweat during a tough deal, and how hard you work on a deadline without bitching and moaning.” In 2013, Yahoo! ended the possibility for employees to work remotely. Best Buy quickly joined the group of companies banning telecommuting.5 And there was a flurry of others, too, including Aetna last year. Unlike GE, though, these moves seemed a desperate reigning in of perks from companies in trouble, making it akin to the business adage, “nobody ever made a profit by cutting costs;” the way an organization treats customers, vendors and employees is revealing of the state of its health.

But in an echo of Jack Welch, when Yahoo! ended its work-at-home perk, then-Google CFO, Patrick Prichette, had this to say about the subject, “how many people telecommute at Google? as few as possible … there is something magical about sharing meals … about spending the time together, about noodling on ideas, about asking … ‘what do you think of this?’ these are [the] magical moments that we think at Google are immensely important in the development of your company, of your own personal development and [of] building much stronger communities.”

Conversely nearly 25 percent of employees work remotely at least part-time at UnitedHealth Group. UnitedHealth internally studies flexible work options to determine ROI. Heather Lemke, Vice President of Talent Acquisition, says their data shows “telecommuters have high quality performance, a low turnover rate and increased employee satisfaction.” As of 2015, 80 percent of companies offer some kind of flexible work options; notable leaders of work-at-home options include IBM, Dell and Deloitte.6

So businesses take different tacks on the telework issue. And maybe like the individual workers themselves – some of whom take to working remotely and others of whom want the routine and environment of the office – organizations are also not all the same, and what works for some, does not work for others.

Best Practices for the Organization

So let’s say you’re a business manager considering offering work-at-home options to your employees, how do you make it work?

Technology makes it seem so possible … what was inconceivable a generation ago, today we take altogether for granted. And we get annoyed if our instant connectivity does not work without a hiccup; and of course it’s all private and secure. And anyway, who would be interested in what I send? This thoughtlessness or naive vulnerability, makes for easy pickings for criminals, like walking a city alley alone at night. So the first thing that needs to be addressed is, how do you make sure working remotely will be secure? An IT professional, such as Bryley Systems, can get you set up fully and correctly; following are some commonly found compromises and defense strategies.

To secure your business and employees, the first protection is education. The vulnerabilities most associated with remote work are malicious Wi-Fi connectivity, malware and lost or stolen devices.

In early 2016, a survey of 882 IT professionals reported that 24 percent of mobile devices used in their organizations had connected to a malicious Wi-Fi hotspot in the past, while 39 percent said those devices downloaded malware.7

Open, unsecured (or shared password) Wi-Fi networks, such as are common at hotels, libraries and coffee shops, can pose threats, especially if the employee passes confidential data like log-in or credit card information over that network. In such cases, the employee is opening himself up to man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks, in which a hacker can place himself between the two connected devices and steal information.

It’s ideal for the employee to avoid such networks and instead use his home Ethernet connection or his own mobile Wi-Fi hotspot for access. But, for open Wi-Fi network circumstances, an organization should have a Virtual Private Network (VPN) in place, to which a mobile device connects directly, and through which the employee connects to the internet or organization’s server.

Cloud services can help an organization keep a high level of security. A Managed Cloud Service Provider (like Bryley Systems) can encrypt the data transmitted from remote locations to the organization’s intranet. Also encrypting company data on the remote device is an encouraged best practice.

Malware (which can steal sensitive data, among wreaking other havoc) is not all that different for remote workers or workers on site. It is mostly delivered via email or web links that look to come from a trusted source, but are anything but harmless. Training is critical to cut down on malware incidences. Best practices also include the separation, by partitioning, of company data from personal data, a feature associated with PCs, but also available now on many phones.

Also mobile devices can get stolen or lost; which means data can easily fall into an outsider’s hands if the devices are not secured properly. Employers must know the technical details about each of their employee’s mobile devices. Organizations need to establish policies about how employees can tell the company or its IT provider if the device is lost or stolen. The organization or its IT partner must know how to disable the device and turn off all applications and/or force password resets – and be able to respond immediately when a breach is detected. The organization must also inquire of the employee about so-called Shadow IT, unauthorized applications that may have seemed helpful, but circumvent the managed network, such as unauthorized Google Drive or Dropbox accounts.8

Relatedly, sensitive data should be wiped from employee devices when the employee leaves the company. Unwiped data can be stolen by unauthorized parties, risking the organization’s and its customers’ data.

The organization must also establish exact protocols for working. How will information be shared between the telecommuter and the organization? Who has authorized access from a remote location? Detail exactly the network protocols to be used. Is the remote worker using a company-supplied device? Or does the company allow/expect the employee to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)? Is he/she using more than one device to access or communicate with the organization? By what means? Emailing? And with attachments? Chat? Through Project Management software? If so, is it intranet- or internet-based? Texting? FTP? All these must be secured.

Best Practices for the Employee

If you’re an employee being given a work-at-home option, how do you make it work?

To combat “out of sight, out of mind”, and the lack of collaboration opportunities, as a remote worker, you have to establish your presence in other ways. Communication becomes especially critical for you: How will you do it (subject to the protocols allowed by your employer)?

First, it may be a requirement of your company that you work set hours, but part of the appeal of working at home is the flexibility to address family needs. If you are granted this flexibility, it is a good idea, so that you feel part of the team, to get in on the real-time conversations, by working some of the same hours as your co-workers.

Project Management Software may be part of your business’ routine communication. If so, you’ll definitely rely heavily on it not only to communicate your progress, but also to stay in the loop about the burdens team members are dealing with, so you can be supportive, and part of the team.

Email is probably the easiest form of communication between co-workers; emails are also easily misunderstood – people do not read emails carefully. And though emails can do it, they are not a great way to disseminate long items (attach longer documents as PDFs so that they can be printed with formatting that’s comfortable for reading).

Try instant messaging or chat for real-time communication and leaving communal messages. Get face-time with team members by video chatting or conferencing.

Because you’re on your own, it’s easy to feel overworked and underappreciated. So take it on yourself to measure your productivity. Set goals, track your hours, and review yourself critically to know how much you are getting done.

Get to know your co-workers. Read their social media pages, ask personal questions. It’s easy to throw people you don’t know under the bus. Be physically involved, too. Attend any non-work events. Visit the office as frequently as you can.9

Work It

Like the seeming knee-jerk reaction of companies in trouble that suddenly withdraw the work-at-home benefit, one of the problems is sometimes businesses offer work-at-home, while fostering a culture that maltreats those who make use of the program. Is telecommuting a new vacation days benefit in a business culture that counts it as a badge of honor the number of your days you leave on the table? Why else did Americans leave an average of 9.2 vacation days unused in 2012?10

But there is frequent evidence that says not many really believe in allowing people to do their work off-site. And with some reason, in the Ctrip study it was found that the longer people were teleworking, the less grateful they were for the privilege. And so, the employees initially worked extra hard out of that gratitude, but that diminished as the out-of-the-office routine became more routine. Some workers have been shown to be cavalier with protocols made to keep an organization secure. Being on your own is a privilege.

So here is an even older principle than the Industrial Revolution model of clocking in at an office: both partners to the remote work arrangement ask themselves continually if they’re acting as they would want to be treated.

1 http://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/telecommuting-statistics

2 researchgate.net/profile/Ravi_Gajendran/publication/262387597_Are_Telecommuters_Remotely_Good_Citizens_Unpacking_Telecommuting%27s_Effects_on_Performance_Via_I-Deals_and_Job_Resources/links/544a82990cf2bcc9b1d2f529.pdf

3 https://hbr.org/2013/07/working-from-home-a-work-in-pr&ab

4 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/your-money/when-working-in-your-pajamas-is-more-productive.html?_r=0

5 http://www.networkworld.com/article/2164133/infrastructure-management/best-buy-cancels-telework-program.html

6 https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/270585

7 http://www.networkworld.com/article/3049185/mobile-wireless/one-fifth-of-it-pros-say-their-companies-had-mobile-data-breach.html

8 www.networkworld.com/article/3085433/mobile-wireless/dude-wheres-my-phone-byod-means-enterprise-security-exposure.html

9 http://www.success.com/article/working-remotely-heres-how-to-do-it-right

10 Harris Interactive, per http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/opinion/sunday/relax-youll-be-more-productive.html

Meet Your “Typical” Hacker – Know Thine Enemy

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Imagine sitting in your chair watching TV after a long day in the office, you look up and there’s a stranger rummaging through your refrigerator… a little disconcerting at best! You would likely stand up and ask: “Who are you and how did you get into my house?” You would likely call the Police. This is very serious. When someone invades your home you are angry, scared, and possibly indignant.

The scenario described above can happen with your computer and network without you even knowing someone is there. Who are these people and what are they doing on your computer and network?

There are different tiers of hackers who might invade your home or business computers and network without your knowledge or consent. Who are they are they? Let’s have a look.

There is not a single “typical” type of hacker, but rather 4 types or variants of hackers who might invade your computer and your network at home or work:

  • Kiddie Hacker
  • Corporate Hacker
  • Military Hacker
  • Criminal Hacker

Their motives and methods vary but often result in similar consequences:

  • Stolen personal or confidential information
  • Disruption of the operation of your computer or network
  • Kidnapping your files and folders for ransom

Kiddie Hackers

The name sounds innocent, but the problems caused by these hackers can be debilitating or at the very least, time consuming and disruptive. This type of hacker can be the kids next door who are bored of playing video games and are just curious as to how far they can go if they attempt to walk into your computing environment. It can be your nosey neighbors who have familiarity with computers to the extent that they look for the easily available tools to penetrate your defenses (if you have them). These hackers look for the local Wireless Networks that neglected to impose security and show up as unprotected. Some go even further in their determination to invade and the results are the same. See Bryley’s IT Security Checklist for more information on how to protect your home and organization.

Corporate Hackers

These hackers are motivated and capable. They want to get information about your company or disrupt your business operations. They are usually professional IT people who have clear motives and directives. These hackers are concerned about being caught and in most cases take extreme measures to hide their activities.

Military Hackers

These are the patriots of their respective nations who are on the job 24×7 targeting other countries to find and potentially expose government intelligence and the vulnerabilities of their targets. Although they target national agencies, they will, in the process, uncover many unsuspecting individual users who might lead them to their objectives, so they are very opportunistic and aggressive. They have the tools, the time, and the determination to break into anything or anywhere they can to find their openings. This activity is common to around the world and includes players such as: US Military/Government, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan and many others. These hackers are also concerned about being caught and in most cases take extreme measures to hide their activities as well.

Criminal Hackers

DANGER. These are the truly bad guys. There are many organized criminal groups around the world who engage in hacking for profit. They are remorseless, determined, and capable. They enlist operatives who want to make a quick dollar, provide them with the tools of the trade, and take a percentage for making them capable of performing their work. This group is growing rapidly as is evidenced in the sharp rise of Ransomware and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) Attacks. These people are performing many of the tactics that the Military Hackers employ. They just recently stole tools used by one of our national security agencies to infiltrate computers and networks and have made them available for sale on the Internet. These are the guys who send you that email with the attachment that when opened, will encrypt every file it can find on your computer or network, and then demand payment for allowing you to regain access to your files. These are the guys who initiated the DDoS attack recently that disabled the credit card verification ability of much of the country. There is one organization suspected of being capable of targeting a victim with up to 100Gb of Internet traffic, which can completely disable the Internet access for the victim. These are the guys who seed the Internet with their specifically designed software that makes innocent users’ computers part of a BOTNET for the distribution of SPAM or a component in a DDoS attack. These are the guys who likely invaded the DNC computers this past election.

The conclusion you can reach here is that the bad guys are out there working 24×7 to invade your computer or network for a variety of reasons. You must be aware that the danger exists from a variety of sources and if you don’t exercise due diligence, they will gladly give you the motivation to do so after you’ve been violated. Unfortunately, it’s not a matter of whether you will experience an attack; it’s a matter of when. No one is completely immune, but you can protect yourself to minimize your surface of vulnerability. In most cases, these hackers want the low lying fruit. If there is a barking dog at the door when they knock, they will likely be motivated to check the house next door.

Ask Bryley how you can reduce your surface of vulnerability in your business. It can mean the difference between an inconvenient disruption and an unmitigated disaster. Call us at 844.449.8770 or email us at ITExperts@bryley.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

Why Is Data Loss So Serious?

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Data Loss Can Completely Cripple Business Operations. In the event of extreme data loss such as the loss of an entire database, even temporarily, it is not uncommon for the impacted business processes to fail at multiple levels. The organization may be rendered helpless, unable to fulfill orders and struggling to update employee records. Producing financial reports and providing customer services may also be impossible.

This occurs because technology is the backbone of most business operations and most of these operations are connected through a central IT system. Therefore, any disruption to the IT system can affect other business areas such as phone systems and manufacturing processes. As a result, employees may be idled for prolonged periods of time while the lost data is being recovered. Productivity will suffer.

The Impact of Data Loss on Sales. Organizations can suffer significant harm when data loss makes it impossible to interact with customers, often resulting in lost sales. Since email is the primary channel of communication between organizations and their customers, if your email system were to go down, how difficult would it be for you to conduct business as usual? Any disruption in your communication with leads, prospects, or clients can translate into lost business. For instance, should you fail to submit a proposal or bid on time, the result would potentially be a major loss of projected revenue.

The same applies when a data breach is directed at a call center or CRM provider. This is particularly true for small businesses that rely on independent call centers for customer support assistance and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) providers for managing customer relationships. In a worst-case scenario, the harm resulting from an attack on either of these two might be enough to force a small organization into bankruptcy.

Data Loss Resulting from Theft. Data loss can also take the form of data theft where a hacker breaks into a computer or network and steals critical private business information. Business plans, product designs, and a variety of other mission-critical information can disappear. The economic impact of information theft is difficult to measure because the extent of the harm caused may only manifest itself over a long period of time.

Data theft often results in lawsuits, breaches of contracts, regulatory compliance failures, and loss of business.

Lawsuits and hefty fines typically go hand-in-hand when a company experiences data theft. As an example, if personal information such as names, addresses and financial account numbers are accessed by hackers, then organizations may find themselves embroiled in lengthy legal court battles.

Data thefts can also result in contract breaches and a variety of fines and lawsuits. Shareholders, for example, can sue an organization for failure to perform duties outlined in a contract. Customers can sue companies for direct and collateral damages resulting from a data theft that caused an order to be delayed or lost.

Regulatory Compliance Failures. In 2007, the State of Massachusetts Legislature passed 201 CMR 17.00, a comprehensive set of regulations addressing data breaches. Under these laws are a set of regulations that affect any business that collects and retains personal information of its customers. For the purpose of these regulations, “personal information” includes names, social security numbers, driver’s license numbers or financial account numbers, including credit or debit card numbers.

The regulations took effect January 1, 2010, and mandate that personal information – a combination of a name along with a Social Security number, bank account number, or credit card number – be encrypted when stored on portable devices, or transmitted wirelessly or on public networks. Additionally, the regulations call on organizations to utilize up-to-date firewall protection that creates an electronic gatekeeper between the data and the outside world and only permits authorized users to access or transmit data, according to preset rules.

Loss of business isn’t uncommon after data loss incidents especially if the loss was a result of a preventable event such as a security breach. Customers may feel that the company didn’t take adequate measures to safeguard their information and may therefore choose to discontinue doing business with the organization for fear of a similar event recurring in the future.

Data loss or theft can strike any organization. The wise choice is to be proactive by deploying an up-to-date and secure data backup system.

The main takeaway from these costly consequences of data loss is that businesses bear a huge responsibility for protecting the data they own. Failure to do so means facing serious operational and legal ramifications.

If you’re ready to get serious about protecting your business data, select a talented Managed IT Services/Managed Cloud Services company, like Bryley Systems, to help you double-check your IT infrastructure, recommend solutions to eliminate weak links in your security chain, and help you develop an organization-wide policy to help prevent data loss. Please contact us at 978.562.6077 or by email at ITExperts@Bryley.com. We’re here to help.

 

Tour of the new maintenance facility of the WRTA

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Bryley’s President, Gavin Livingstone, who currently chairs the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce (WRCC) Ambassadors, arranged for a group of 20 WRCC Ambassadors and staff to tour the new Worcester Regional Transit Authority (WRTA) maintenance facility at 42 Quinsigamond Avenue, Worcester. The tour was conducted by Jim Parker, General Manager of Central Mass Transit Management Inc. (CMTM), which operates and maintains all of the WRTA buses and facilities.

Touring Maintenance Facility

Created in 1974, the WRTA is the second-largest regional transit authority in Massachusetts, servicing Worcester and its surrounding 37 communities. WRTA buses typically run continuously from early morning through midnight (with some holiday exceptions); seven days a week, 365 days a year.

The WRTA’s new, 156,000-square-foot facility is roughly double the size of the original, outdated garage, which was built in 1928 as a trolley barn. The new facility is large enough for 75 transit buses and 30 vans (the current fleet includes 52 buses), and has nine maintenance bays. Buses enter the facility and head to a refueling bay where they can get a wash, repairs, fluid checks and adjustments – even get repainted – before rolling back into service.

Window View from the Upstairs Office

 

The new facility is also home to significant, up-to-date technology, including a WRTA BusTracker app, Track by Text, Track by QR Code, and WRTA-schedule/ tracking Kiosks located throughout the city.

Control Center

All operations run through the sophisticated Control Center, which is continuously manned when buses are on the road.

In 2014, Bryley Systems – the Managed IT provider for CMTM and the WRTA – designed and deployed an IT-infrastructure platform to support the technologies listed above, but with managed redundancies to allow continuous operation. (For details, visit Transportation Company Relies on Bryley Systems to Stabilize Technology Platform and Create Blueprint for the Future for details.)

The Costly Consequences of Losing Your Business Data – Would You Take the Risk?

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Lost data is not a trivial matter. Don’t play with fire! Prevention is worth an ounce of cure.

Like it or not, technology occasionally fails. It can happen to you. Why take the risk when instead you could be taking steps to protect your data and prevent disasters. Being prepared is always the best option. Implementing a system for secure data backup/data recovery is one of the best ways to protect your business against loss of precious data, whether it’s a result of a hard drive crashing, an unintentional deletion, or a disaster such as a fire, flood, or storm.

Data loss, without proper protection, will impact business operations in multiple ways.

First, if the lost data and business records cannot be recovered – and this is a real possibility – you’ll be effectively out of business until the data and records can be replicated. The downtime you’ll experience will be crippling. This is a worst case scenario, but one you should be proactively working to prevent.

Second, the lost data might be recoverable. This is the most common scenario in organizations that back up their data –to an outside location, separate from the primary source. Still, recovering the data can be a lengthy process. There’s also the possibility that not all of the data will be recovered.

And third, when a disaster strikes, whether it results in the temporary or permanent unavailability of data, it can also cause critical business applications to fail. This is especially the case in relational databases. For instance, if the central database containing customer information becomes unavailable, then the sales system might also fail.

If you’re ready to get serious about protecting your business data, select a talented Managed IT Services/Managed Cloud Services company, like Bryley Systems, to help you double-check your IT infrastructure, recommend solutions to eliminate weak links in your security chain, and help you develop an organization-wide policy to help prevent data loss. Please contact us at 978.562.6077 or by email at ITExperts@Bryley.com. We’re here to help.

Artificial Intelligence: Who’s afraid of intelligent behavior?

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By Lawrence Strauss, of Strauss and Strauss.

The early cave paintings of the hunt, Manet’s “j’ai fait ce que j’ai vu” (I did what I saw), computer graphics renderings in contemporary films: people have always looked at and tried to copy nature. And this is the goal of artificial intelligence (AI) researchers. Near the roots of computer science, Feigenbaum and Feldman, in their 1963 anthology, Computers and Thought, wrote that the goal of artificial intelligence research is to “construct computer programs that exhibit behavior that we call ‘intelligent behavior’ when we observe it in human beings.”1 Recently futurist Ray Kurzweil said AI’s goal is to create smarter-than-human intelligence.2 The goal has not moved much in 50 years: scientists are trying to understand the mechanics of the best in human thinking and create devices to match or better it.

The investment in this type of research is growing. As an example, in 2014, Google bought eight AI-related companies, including DeepMind3 that specializes in deep learning, software that “attempts to mimic the activity in layers of neurons in the neocortex, the part of the brain where thinking occurs. The software learns … to recognize patterns in digital representations of sounds, images, and other data” with the goal of building a computer that can understand language and make inferences and decisions on its own.4

The AI with us today includes Japan’s carmakers whose robots work unsupervised round the clock for up to 30 days without interruption. Losing US jobs to less developed economies saves manufacturers about 65% on labor costs; were US companies to replace human workers with robots, the savings is estimated to be up to 90%.5

And there are every day news stories like lawyers being replaced by computer programs,6 and surgeons being replaced by robots,7 it’s easy to think coders and roboticists are out to replace us all with machines that are better than the best of us.

AI places a perhaps never-before-seen amount of power in the hands of very few: particular software and hardware developers. As Lord Acton wrote a hundred years ago, “power tends to corrupt”. And, there is no want of fictional stories of robots and computers being either misused or doing the abusing on their own. Pretty scary prospects. But, beneath the interests in profiting financially from the efficiencies of automation, what is the motivation behind AI?

In May 2007, Steve Jobs with Bill Gates at his side laughing along and applauding, said, “I want Star Trek.” Star Trek was the vision for the future held by the generation of tech leaders behind Apple, Microsoft, Google (Larry Summers and Sergey Brin have each said Star Trek doesn’t go far enough) and Amazon (Jeff Bezos was a crew member in this Summer’s Star Trek Beyond).

Star Trek’s four main characters, Captain Kirk, Doctor McCoy, Mister Spock and the Enterprise were symbols of the spirit of adventure, vulnerable complaint, (half-Vulcan) logic, and technology, respectively. It felt like a balance, such that with that harmony of passion and caution and reason and tech nothing could go wrong. (It could have been more balanced; Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, originally cast the First Officer as a woman, but in 1966 the network would not OK such radicalism.)

Besides the ship itself, Star Trek’s technology consisted of tricorders to see if everything checks out, phasers and photon torpedoes to blast, transporters and Warp drive to beat it out of there fast, and the female-voiced Computer, whose echo we hear in Siri, Alexa and Google Now (which at one time was code-named Majel, after Majel Barrett, the actor who played the Starfleet computer). The computer is an un-conflicted and detached source of information (unlike Spock who had interests, like saving his friends), and yet human — by contrast, was the mechanical-sounding Robot voice in the contemporary TV show, Lost in Space. So the Starfleet Computer was both helpful in a way a person could not be, due to the vastness of its data, but was also comfortably familiar. There is a similarity to Barrett’s treatment in 1968’s HAL (2001: A Space Odyssey), but unlike with HAL, there is never a threat from Starfleet’s computer. Google’s Brin has called for a benign HAL.

Network television made Star Trek a shared utopian vision. One of its main characters was an automated vessel somehow peopled by a crew of 430. Gene Roddenberry explained in “The Making of Star Trek” (1968), “One of the reasons … was to keep man essentially the same as he is now … I believe that man … always will be a social animal. You can’t divorce man from the things that human relationships give him.”

Roddenberry’s answer is not much comfort for people feeling the need of having to earn a living. It must be asked with the transition to more automation: how will we and our children continue to earn and survive?

“We end up with a universal, basic income … people will have more time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things,” Tesla founder, Elon Musk told CNBC in November. Musk is convinced that jobs won’t be replaced, and that machines will soon be powerful to the point of disrupting our way of life.8

In December 2016, President Obama issued a report that read, “we should not advance a policy premised on giving up on the possibility of workers’ remaining employed [in spite of increased automation] … our goal should be first and foremost to foster the skills, training, job search assistance, and other labor market institutions to make sure people can get into jobs.” The report proposes government interventions like more funding for technical education and AI research.9

According to the Economist, “digital technology has already rocked the media and retailing industries, just as cotton mills crushed hand looms and the Model T put farriers out of work. Many people will look at the factories of the future and shudder. Most jobs will not be on the factory floor but in the offices nearby, which will be full of designers, engineers, IT specialists, logistics experts, marketing staff and other professionals. The manufacturing jobs of the future will require more skills. Many dull, repetitive tasks will become obsolete.”10

Fortune’s senior editor-at-large Geoff Colvin wrote, “don’t ask what computers can’t do. As their abilities multiply, we simply can’t conceive of what may be beyond them. To identify the sources of greatest human value, ask instead what will be those things that we insist be done by or with other humans — even if computers could do them. These are our deepest, most essentially human abilities, developed in our evolutionary past, operating in complex, two-way, person-to-person interactions that influence us more powerfully than we realize. When Oxford Economics asked global employers to name the skills they most want, they emphasized ‘relationship building’, ‘teaming’ and ‘co-creativity’.”11

In the 2015 film Ex Machina, writer/director Alex Garland has a Dr. Frankenstein/ Mark Zuckerberg-like character, Nathan, create a lifelike robot-woman, Ava. According to Nathan’s protégé, Caleb, Ava passes the Turing Test for judging artificial intelligence. But Ava turns out to seem to the audience flawed by her logic, in that while she figures out Nathan’s ultimate puzzle of getting free by using sophisticated stratagems, she appears oblivious to the needs of others and callously abandons Caleb to die. Ava has a goal without thought of the ramifications. At the same time, Garland imbues Caleb with human flaws that, though different in the way they look – it looked like a falling in love story – have a similar effect: Caleb was unwilling to intervene on behalf of a different robot-woman, one for whom he did not have an attraction, which led to her abandonment and death. Perhaps Garland is trying to teach us that AI may strike our sensibilities as a strange, alien cruelty, but man’s inhumanity remains our once and future true enemy.

Out walking one night with my wife, looking at the Christmas lights, we came to a house with colorful computer-controlled LEDs flashing a somewhat starry pattern near the front door. “That’s pretty,” she said. A few minutes later she pointed out the sunset with its pink sky and indigo stripes of clouds, and it took my eyes a few seconds to adjust from the house decorations to this other light, which was sublime. It was for me a good picture of humanity in pursuit of Intelligent Behavior. As Beethoven wrote: [humanity] feels darkly how far he is from the unattainable goal set for us by nature.12

 

Sources and references:

1Computers and Thought, Feigenbaum, Feldman, 1963, McGraw-Hill, New York

2http://www.businessinsider.com/ray-kurzweil-law-of-accelerating-returns-2015-5+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

3https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/05/robot-revolution-rise-machines-could-displace-third-of-uk-jobs

4http://www.technologyreview.com/s/513696/deep-learning/

5https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/05/robot-revolution-rise-machines-could-displace-third-of-uk-jobs

6http://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-first-artificially-intelligent-lawyer-gets-hired-2016-5

7http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/12/health/robot-surgeon-bowel-operation/

8http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/04/elon-musk-robots-will-take-your-jobs-government-will-have-to-pay-your-wage.html

9https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/documents/Artificial-Intelligence-Automation-Economy.PDF

10http://www.economist.com/node/21553017&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0

11http://www.wired.co.uk/article/robot-takeover-geoff-colvin

12http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3528?msg=welcome_stranger#2H_4_0003

Do’s and Don’ts of Password Security

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We can’t say enough about the importance of passwords for your security

Strong passwords are the frontline against cyberattacks.

Passwords are the primary gatekeeper to secure your data, so it’s imperative to ensure it they’re as strong as possible. We have compiled a list of DOs and DO NOTs to help you create secure passwords.

DO create a complicated password. While passwords such as “123456” and “password” are easy to remember, they are also easy to hack. It is best to create a password that has at least 8 characters and uses a combination of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. This makes it harder for hackers to gain access to your accounts. One way to accomplish this is to take a sentence and convert it into an acronym, using numbers to replace words such as “to” or letters (3 or $ for “s”, 1 for “I”, @ for “a”, etc.). For example, take the sentence “my favorite activity to do is swim” and convert it to “mF8a2di$!”

DO NOT keep written passwords within reach. There’s no point in creating a secure password if you are going to have the password in plain view. That’s akin to locking the deadbolt on the house, but having all the windows open! If you would like a written reminder of your passwords, keep it in a secure place (a locked cabinet or car glovebox are good examples). You may also consider a Password Manager Service.

DO change your password regularly. Even the most complicated password can be compromised given enough time. It is recommended that passwords be changed every 90 days (or sooner depending upon the importance of data that they safeguard). When you change your password, do not reuse an old password. Instead, create a new one for better protection.

DO NOT use the same password for multiple accounts. While this may be easier for you to remember, it also makes it easier for cybercriminals to gain access to all of your information!

DO use two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication (also known as 2FA) is a method of confirming a user’s claimed identity by utilizing a combination of two different components, generally something you know with something you have. A good example in everyday life is the withdrawal of money from a cash machine. Only the correct combination of a PIN (something you know) with a bank card (something you have) allows the transaction to be carried out.

This provides another layer of protection and significantly reduces the risk of a hack. That being said, it’s imperative that you update your personal information when something, such as your phone number or email address, changes.

For more information on password protection and security, connect with Bryley’s cybersecurity experts by calling us at 844.449.8770 or emailing us at ITExperts@Bryley.com.