Managed IT Force Blog

The marketing in the technology industry loves using complicated words for simple ideas, making normal business owners feel left behind. Looking past all the fancy sales pitches reveals that the Internet of Things is a practical concept. It just means putting an internet connection inside everyday equipment so those devices can send and receive useful updates.

This allows basic tools like your office thermostat, door locks, delivery trucks, and security cameras to talk over the internet. The main goal is simply getting helpful, quick updates sent straight to you to run things better.

If you analyze any modern corporate data breach, you’ll discover that it’s often not a particularly complicated attack that breaks through. You’d think that intelligent, sophisticated business owners can spot simple attacks coming from a mile away, but the reality is that today’s threats don’t target a lack of intellect or knowledge. Instead, they go for the actual vulnerability in a busy executive’s workday: their cognitive bandwidth.

With inflation squeezing margins lately, one line item always gets a long, hard look: the hardware replacement budget. It usually sounds something like this: "Our office desktops are turning four years old this winter, but they still turn on and load Microsoft Word. Can we just push them another two or three years and save ourselves the capital expense?" 

I understand the desire to save a dollar. Sure, it's nice to get a flashy new smartphone or upgrade a laptop to something much better, but these days it just feels like another expense without really making major improvements. However, it isn’t always a matter of throwing money at a problem to solve it. Sometimes it's just a matter of using the technology you have in better, more effective ways.

If you open any business publication or scroll through LinkedIn, you are bombarded with the message that every company must migrate entirely to the cloud. It is often portrayed as a seamless environment where technical problems disappear.

Let’s skip the traditional marketing slop. There are already plenty of self-proclaimed tech gurus filling the internet with generic jargon to maximize operational velocity. It is exhausting, and it does not help a business owner trying to run a company on a Tuesday morning.

Without experience running a business, the intricacies of accepting credit card payments probably wouldn’t occur to the average person. However, there is a complex maze of requirements, rules, and standards that a business must meet before it may do so. These are what make up the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. Let’s go over what this standard demands and what you need to do to ensure compliance is achieved… plus, why compliance is so critical in the first place.