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Detailed Strategy and Strong Teamwork Surmount Unusual Challenges to Design Successful Network Upgrade by California Department of State Hospitals
 Detailed Strategy and Strong Teamwork Surmount Unusual Challenges to Design Successful Network Upgrade by California Department of State Hospitals 150 150 Shandam Consulting

The California Department of State Hospitals is the nation’s largest inpatient forensic mental health hospital system, employing approximately 12,000 staff and serving, according to 2015 data, more than that many patients annually. When the California DSH IT leadership chose Shandam Consulting in 2020 to design a major wireless network upgrade – with a three-year budget of $43.5 million – the…

Ransomware Risks and Impacts for School Districts
 Ransomware Risks and Impacts for School Districts 150 150 Shandam Consulting

Ransomware is a form of malicious software designed to encrypt important files on a computer, rendering them unavailable to the people to whom they are important and/or rendering the systems that rely on them unusable. Hackers then demand ransom in exchange for decryption, typically via anonymous Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency payments. These ransom demands can run into – or beyond…

IT Risk #7: Untested Backup Power Supplies (UPS)
 IT Risk #7: Untested Backup Power Supplies (UPS) 150 150 Shandam Consulting

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
 IT Risk #6: Unrestricted Employee Internet Usage 150 150 Shandam Consulting

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…

IT Risk #5 – Technology Selection Process
 IT Risk #5 – Technology Selection Process 150 150 Shandam Consulting

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…

IT Risk #4 – Software Updates
 IT Risk #4 – Software Updates 150 150 Shandam Consulting

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…

IT Risk #3 – Lack of Monitoring of IT Resources
 IT Risk #3 – Lack of Monitoring of IT Resources 150 150 Shandam Consulting

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…

We Specialize in Helping You Secure Your SCADA Systems
 We Specialize in Helping You Secure Your SCADA Systems 150 150 Shandam Consulting

If your organization is a utility, it almost certainly has a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system to manage and automate industrial processes.  For years SCADA systems were proprietary platforms that existed as little islands of technology. However, with the advent of the internet, most SCADA systems now share data with business systems in some manner.  This increased sharing…

IT Risk #2 – Untested Antivirus Software.
 IT Risk #2 – Untested Antivirus Software. 150 150 Shandam Consulting

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
 IT Risk #1 – Not having a formal Data Backup Policy 150 150 Shandam Consulting

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,…