Tag Archive for: Technology Services

Encrypting is the Key to (Secure) Success

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The threat of a digital security breach has never been more prevalent, and encryption is one of the best ways to defend your data from hackers. When it comes to protecting your growing business, having a secure network ensures the safety of servers and databases, but encryption protects the data within your network. Business data is shared across devices, web browsers, often the cloud, providing a multitude of opportunities for hackers. While data encryption is not an impenetrable defense (as demonstrated in The Imitation Game), it renders the data useless to any third party and has been widely successful in deterring hackers. Since the smallest vulnerability can lead to the compromisation of an entire network, having reliable IT and secure data management is crucial to a company’s success. Keep reading for a crash course on encryption and why it’s so important in this day and age.

CRYPTOGRAPHY TO ENCRYPTION

Data encryption has been a standard practice for hundreds of years, and prior to the digital era, was synonymous with cryptography. Cryptography (also referred to as cryptoanalysis) is the study of writing and solving codes. The earliest use of cryptography has been traced back to ancient Egypt and was a very popular method of military communication in WWII. Once computer technology became available, encryption developed its own definition within the field of cryptography as a practice that utilized computer-generated algorithms in the writing and solving of codes. Today, data encryption is one of the most effective tools against security breaches and can be applied to data, email, and even devices.

ENCRYPTION 101

The purpose of encrypting your data is to make information accessible to authorized users and useless to any unauthorized users. In the encryption process, computers and algorithms convert data into an unreadable code that can only be deciphered with the encryption key. An encryption key is crucial in this process as it translates the data from plain text to code and vice versa. Without the key, any data retrieved by hackers becomes obsolete. There are many types of encryption and various algorithms used, but the use of these practices will depend on the data being encoded. For example, encrypting a server would require a strong encryption and could maybe even several rounds of encryption. Deciphering that data would be a lengthy process to decipher, which is appropriate for information accessed infrequently. Understanding the basics of encryption will only help any consulting or training required to secure your company’s data.

WHY ENCRYPT?

The threat of a security breach has never been more imminent. Today, no one thinks twice about sharing information across devices, accounts, or browsers, but the increased connectivity also increases your data’s vulnerability. Not only does encrypting your data provide a significant deterrent to hackers, but it also protects the growth of your business. Whether the data are on devices, servers, emails, or the cloud, encryption is the best defense available.

Combating these potential hackers is a significant part of the Managed IT Services we provide to our clients. Ready to get your business on track? Send us an email at consult@amshot.com and let’s set up a free consultation.

The Supported Ascent: Cybersecurity and Data Management For The Growing Business

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A small business seeking growth has a lot to consider. Obtaining and managing data now can affect decades of market presence, and swift management can mean meeting goals in months instead of years, but as with any organism, a business is at its most vulnerable when it is in its earliest stages. Security breaches are only becoming more common, and it is easy for a single software vulnerability or user error to compromise entire systems. That’s why reliable IT support, secure data management, and strong IT training for staff are essentials for directing growth and protecting company data regardless of company size or structure.  

 

The Techno-Interpreter 

What are your hardware and software needs? What software packages work best for your budget and goals? What specially designed applications could increase productivity and enrich user experiences? How do you gather and apply user and market data to direct company growth? Where are your vulnerabilities within your desktop ecosystem and IoT (Internet of Things) devices? How do you ensure that essential company data isn’t lost? These can be daunting questions that are relatively simple ones to experienced IT personnel, and lead us into our next point: 

 

Knowing Yourself Through Client Data 

This one is no secret: In many ways, applying gathered consumer data is the only real way to keep your feet planted in a chaotic, competitive environment. But what information matters? How do you gather only the important pieces in a sea of endless data? Specialized software allows you to identify trends, demographics, and observable curves in the market and apply them to your goals. Predictive analysis is an art that, when finely honed, can make an estimated guess into a confident statement that ensures success.  

 

A Watchful Eye 

Software vulnerabilities are always a concern, but user error is almost a certainty at one point or another. While you may trust your employees, nobody is exempt from making mistakes 100% of the time. Because everything is connected, one click on a phishing e-mail or the use of a less-than-savory external application can compromise your entire infrastructure. That’s where attentive administration and software procurement is key. Augment this with IT training for staff and you significantly lower your risk of technological catastrophe.   

 

Back It Up 

So let’s say the worst case scenario happens and your data is lost. This can happen either by cyber attacks or physical destruction of on-site storage systems by something such as natural disaster. This is where data backup services such as Datto save the day. Keeping your data in the cloud allows it to flow efficiently and securely throughout your company. 

Succinctly, the companies of tomorrow are being built today, and without harnessing new standards and technologies they will likely be overshadowed by their peers who have, and also are at increasing risk of digital breaches from outdated hardware, software, and practices. At amshot, we work with businesses who are ready to grow – that means providing technology training, developing software and applications, managing IT services, and more. Questions, concerns, or big dreams for your company’s data? Schedule a free consultation by emailing consult@amshot.com or calling us at (405) 418-6282. 

The Empirical Elegance of Data

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Our modern lives have been built on the back of unwavering certainty. Steam engines allowed us to spread out, trade, and communicate across vast distances. Modern medicine is built on guaranteed biological reactions within us. That’s the kind of definitive cause and effect we’re finding in big data and data analysis. Couple that with the computational prowess of machine learning, capable of sifting through billions of business variables in seconds, and suddenly you have a resource that is not simply additive, but multiplicative, and free to shift and scale according to any demand.

Business Driven Data/Data Driven Business

A company is comprised of every decision made at every level by management and staff. We can only make decisions based on the information we digest, and in the past the direction of a business was driven by obvious bits of information that most people could interpret. 10,000 products sold is an effective indicator that there’s a market for that product, but what about the unseen, mercurial undercurrents that drive a consumer economy? That’s what a data driven business model employs to insure success and profit. With data, you don’t have to take a single step without knowing the ground on which it will land.

The Internet of Things and Data For Customers

Computers are a part of everything now, and everything is communicating. We’re able to draw statistics about how products are being used by utilizing consumer input. The context of this usage can be extracted to form a perfect picture of a consumer’s relationship with a product. It’s not just for the business, either, because making select information available to your consumer enriches their experience with a product or service. Examples of this include exercise watches that track your progress and shows how you compare to other users, and a streaming service that makes suggestions based on what others with similar viewing histories also watched.

Information, Learn Thyself

The most world-changing aspect of data is its ability to build on itself by way of machine learning and automation. With little input from the user, systems can gather, sort, and interpret data at speeds and in ways that a human could never fathom. With the inclusion of products capable of obtaining data by themselves, what we find is that a well-nurtured, but more hands-off approach to data is becoming increasingly prevalent. To put it simply, it’s the difference between picking fruit and planting a seed.

One Size Fits All

Data is flexible, too. Data analysis can be a panorama or a microscope, depending on business needs. A small company cannot afford to miss any scrap of usable information, like recurring complaints, common user issues, or simply what color of product consumers in a particular region are more likely to take home with them. Likewise, a large company receives such an incredible amount of information that interpreting patterns and trends from this chaos is the only way this company can stay mobile and ensure growth.

The beauty of data is not from form, but function. The form that data takes is increasingly massive heaps, growing into mountains, of information that make increasingly less sense to decision makers concerned with the broad, immediate path. The function, however, is an assured honesty, an empirical statement that can be the answer to any question a business may have. That’s what makes data beautiful.

There’s so many sides of data, so many angles from which to extract, and this only grows with our ability to collect it. Every day at amshot we are devising new ways to make this process seamless for the end user, be it business or consumer. Get in touch with us and start your way down the certain path that data can lay before you. Give us a call at (405) 418-6282 or send an email to consult@amshot.com for a free consultation.

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Big Data and Predictive Analytics: The Competitive Edge

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How does using data/business intelligence give businesses an edge over those who don’t utilize customer or company data?

Data is the most valuable commodity for any modern business. Small bits of information — such as customer age, consumer habits, and location — all add up to a bigger picture. Minute, seemingly disposable data accumulates to form what we call “big data”, an ocean of information gathered by a company’s day-to-day interactions with a consumer. Business intelligence is the practice of forming this bigger picture, making vast quantities of information easily digestible and actionable. Here are a few questions that data analysis can answer for you and your company.

Who is our customer?

Millions of people are regularly engaging with millions of products and services. Each and every day, a single consumer interacts with dozens if not hundreds of businesses by way of advertisement, digital applications, brick and mortar establishments, and subscription-based services. Add in what they’re not partaking in and you’ve got a much more vivid picture of who your customer is. By knowing the habits of your consumer, and by way of predictive analysis, a business can know how the market will respond to an idea before it’s even rolled out.

How are customers interacting with our product or service?

People’s personal relationship with and perception of your brand can make or break your business. Do you find that more of your sales come from older people or younger? Do they sell especially well at a certain time of day or time of the year? Do customers frequently pair another product or service with yours? These details can seem like minutiae, but they form the trends that will completely determine your success.

What is our public image and what do consumers expect from us?

Data analytics aren’t just important for the direct interaction consumers have with your brand. They also help summarize how those customers are responding after those interactions take place. Posts and digital reviews — across social media platforms and Google listings — give you the most honest, unfiltered representation of how your brand is perceived. Be it positive or negative, this data allows a company to self-reflect and apply tweaks to their image that will foster a positive relationship with consumers.

Who are our competitors?

Mistakes are the growing pains of any business, but data analysis of the mistakes of others is a much more painless experience. In today’s world everything is shared, and deep in the data trail are the reasons why others have failed or succeeded. For example, if a similar company’s product failed, look and see if the mistake wasn’t in targeting the wrong demographics, or casting too broad a net when choosing an audience to advertise to. These are the foundation of what is called competitive intelligence, and it is a vital practice. If you aren’t learning from others’ mistakes, they are most certainly learning from yours.

Knowing your customer, how they perceive and interact with your brand, and how you compare to your competitors are some of the answers that can steady a business during turbulent times or take profits to the next level for even the most successful business. Information is the single most important asset, and it’s just waiting to be taken.

That’s what we at amshot aim to do for your company. We know where to look, and our expertise is in creating custom programs and applications that make it possible for this data to be gathered, deciphered, and interpreted for easy understanding by decision makers within a business. If this sounds like something your company needs, email consult@amshot.com or give us a call at (405) 418-6282 to set up a free consultation.

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Beyond the Five Percent Rule: When Outsourcing IT is the Best Option for Businesses

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In our previous blog, we discussed the need for businesses and organizations to devote at least five percent of their overall personnel budget to information technology. However, reaching that five percent threshold can be difficult for some startups, sole practices, specialized small businesses and even larger organizations. So what’s a business to do? As with any major decision, businesses should consider current and future security and support needs as well as the potential cost for in-house IT versus partnering with a consulting company.

Here are five things to consider when weighing options for your information technology:

1. Cost – Let’s be honest, in-house IT can be expensive. Some start-up costs for a new department can include infrastructure, software, planning, and updates, not to mention training and competitive salaries for dedicated personnel. In fact, cost is often cited as one of the primary reasons businesses make the switch to an external consulting company.

2. Risk reduction – Another major benefit of outsourcing your IT over building an in-house department is that companies which specialize in information technology have a greater grasp on best operational practices and new trends as well as current threats and how to overcome them.

3. Additional resources to focus on growing your business – Most organizations have limited resources, whether it’s time, materials, or even human capital. As a result, there are limits to what an internal IT department can accomplish on its own, making problem solving a more lengthy process. By outsourcing IT support, you can spend less time troubleshooting computer glitches and more time concentrating on what your business does best.

4. Access to a wider variety of IT knowledge – For many small organizations, an internal IT department may only consist of a single person, who (no matter how experienced) is not a replacement to a panel of specialists who are proficient in IT solutions for a variety of industries. In addition, by outsourcing IT, your company can gain access to higher levels of technology and resources that can give you an edge against other small businesses.

5. Improvement to company focus – An ongoing IT problem can impact your whole business if not handled quickly and thoroughly. Unfortunately, when you’re handling all of your IT support internally, your focus is split amongst the different technical priorities needed to keep your site, products, and applications up and running. An outsourced IT partner, on the other hand, can address those worries and often solve problems more quickly, allowing you and your employees to focus more fully on achieving your company’s goals.

In today’s technology-driven world, IT infrastructure and support are essential to any successful enterprise, regardless of size. And while no company wants to be the patient zero in a data breach, the fact is that launching and maintaining an in-house IT department can be costly and not always the best choice for every organization.

If it’s starting to seem clear that outsourcing IT is the best option for your company, or if you have questions about what a partnership with Amshot would look like, email consult@amshot.com to set up a free consultation or give us a call at (405) 418-6282.