IT Risk #7: Untested Backup Power Supplies (UPS) When winter rolls around, we here at Shandam know we can expect: Gifts of unwanted fruitcake An ugly, homemade sweater from a distant  relative Extended client IT outages caused by power failures. This is where you smugly smile to yourself and say, “But we have battery backup, and I actually  like fruitcake!”…

IT Risk #6: Unrestricted Employee Internet Usage Guardrails Stop signs Traffic signals Speed bumps Question: What do all these things have in common? Answer: They are designed to protect us from ourselves. Organizations that allow their employees to surf the web without restriction place their employees at risk of viruses, other malware, hostile workplace lawsuits, and lost productivity, to name…

If you were born in the 1940’s, you could expect a TV to last 10 or more years. If you were born in this century, a 5-year-old TV is positively ancient. The speed of obsolesce has increased.  This impacts those of us who work in Information Technology as well, with technology changing so quickly that identifying a replacement technology is…

Software vendors often discover issues with their software may affects its performance, stability, security or functionality after it has been released that. To address these problems, they release software updates (or “patches”) along with a detailed explanation of the vulnerability and its associated risks.  Hackers know this, and what better way to “discover” a critical security flaw than have its…

If you have kids, their school probably has some sort of web portal that lets you track their educational progress:  current grades, homework status, attendance, etc.  Every parent learns that having a dashboard lets them identify problems early and address them before they turn into poor grades. Running a IT organization without a similar dashboard is really nothing more than…

IT Risk #2 – Untested antivirus software.   Jim: “This crocodile repellant works great! Bob: “How can you be sure?” Jim: “Well, you don’t see any crocodiles around here, do you?”   This represents the approach most organizations take with antivirus software – everyone knows they need it, so it gets deployed in some manner, but is never actually tested.…

IT Risk #1 – Not having a formal Data Backup Policy All organizations realize the importance of data backup, but often have little interest in the mechanics of the data backup process. Frankly, it’s boring, geeky, and therefore business leaders typically assign this task to IT and promptly forget about it. That is, until something bad happens: data corruption, malware,…