If you’re like most organizations, you’re using consumer data to inform decisions, improve strategies, and provide better customer experiences. But with limited resources and always-evolving data protection laws, many businesses struggle to maintain data privacy compliance. Here, we go over how you can build a data privacy compliance program for your business, and how AccountabilIT can help. What Is Data Privacy Compliance? The Impact on Your Business’s Security Data privacy compliance refers to the laws and regulations governing how your business handles valuable data. Because these laws are designed to ensure data is safe from misuse, security breaches, data leaks, and more, they naturally obligate organizations to establish robust security measures. Luckily, you can make it easier to enhance [...]

Your business just experienced a cybersecurity event: How do you handle it? Do you have a clear, coordinated action plan already in place? Or do you need to throw together response steps at the last minute? If you said yes to that last question, your organization might experience significant downtime, monetary loss, and damage to your reputation. To stop that from happening, you need to be prepared with an incident response plan in the face of a security breach. What Is an Incident Response Plan? The 6 Stages. When a cybersecurity incident occurs, businesses of all sizes needs a quick, uniform way to respond. That’s where your incident response plan comes in. As the go-to set of security tools [...]

Wondering how you can help keep your IT systems running smoothly, eliminate security risks, and meet ever-changing regulatory requirements at the same time? You need a data loss prevention policy. What Is a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Policy? A DLP policy is a set of rules, best practices, and technologies, all of which work together to ensure unauthorized users never access your data. While commonly used to protect sensitive information against attackers, a DLP policy is meant to safeguard confidential data against any form of loss, whether it be caused by human error, ransomware or a natural disaster. How Is Data Lost? There are many ways your businesses data could end up at risk, but some of the most [...]

Today, the world produces an astronomical amount of data. Every second, a single individual creates an average of 1.7 MBs, and that data goes on to be analyzed and distributed at lightning fast rates. This means the risk of a data leak is higher than ever for businesses everywhere. Get the key information you need to know to start shoring up your cybersecurity and securing your organization from the potentially disastrous consequences of data exposure. What Is a Data Leak? Not to be confused with a data breach, which involves a bad actor intentionally exploiting vulnerabilities, a data leak occurs when sensitive data is exposed in any form, whether due to an attack or simply misusing technology. MALICIOUS INSIDERS [...]

Are you struggling with a pieced-together cybsercurity strategy that’s leaving your business vulnerable? If so, it’s time to implement zero trust architecture. Zero trust is an approach to cybersecurity that removes implicit trust from all digital interactions across your entire IT environment. In other words, organizations that use a zero trust model operate with a “never trust, always verify” mindset. If that’s zero trust, then what is zero trust architecture? Put simply, zero trust architecture refers to when all aspects of your IT, from your information security to your applications and infrastructure, are designed, built, and used with a zero trust approach. This usually means: All communication, whether external or internal, is secured All users are authenticated before gaining [...]

In a fast-changing technology landscape, you need to keep your IT aligned with your core business objectives and strategy, but how do you actually get it there? You need to implement an IT governance framework. An IT governance framework outlines principles and methods for effectively using IT to generate business value. The framework guides all aspects of an organization’s IT, from the people and processes to the technology, and it helps organizations produce measurable results towards achieving their goals —all while managing risk and minimizing costs. What IT governance frameworks are already available? While it’s possible for companies to develop their own framework from the ground up, many choose to utilize one of the main types of governance frameworks [...]

Does fighting for IT budget sometimes seem like an uphill battle? Some in your organization may see IT requirements as conflicting with the broader needs of the business, or they might not want to prioritize IT spend. But prioritizing IT risk management within the overall business objectives — and budgeting for that risk management — isn't a nice-to-have; it's a must-have. That's because doing business in today's environment — when so much data is online and in the cloud — brings massive threats and vulnerabilities. An IT risk management strategy comprises the policies, procedures, and technology organizations must adopt to reduce these vulnerabilities and threats. But risk management programs can be costly, particularly as threats constantly evolve. And even [...]

In the early days of the internet, you only connected computers to the world wide web, with actual physical wires, not over wifi networks. With the advent of wireless technology, we all connect countless devices to the internet, from computers to tablets to cell phones to thermostats and even light bulbs. Each connection is a security risk. Here'sHere's what you need to know.What is IoT?IoT stands for the "Internet of Things." What are those things, exactly? They'reThey're all the connected devices we use every day. Essentially everything "smart" — smartphones, smartwatches, thermostats, TVs, tablets, security systems, voice controllers, and speakers provide just a starting list.These IoT devices and more have become central to our daily lives and the running of [...]

For business owners and department heads, the New Year countdown starts well before New Year’s Eve. It begins at least a full quarter earlier, as you lay out the goals and objectives, along with the budgets and investment required, to get there. Information technology planning is no different. If you have yet to outline your strategic initiatives for 2022 as they relate to technology, now is the time. Here’s our guide to getting started. Do understand the business strategy. This guides everything, right? No departmental strategy should be created in a silo, and the IT strategic planning process is no different. Start there, and let those marching orders provide a basis for the shape technology will take over the [...]

A multicloud approach involves leveraging two or more cloud providers to meet an organization’s infrastructure needs, leverage the best cloud technologies and control cost. Rather than using a single cloud vendor that covers hosting, storage, and applications, a multicloud approach involves the use of several. That cloud mix may look like a combination of Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), for example. You might select which services from each provider will be best for your organization based on technical requirements, costs, and the need to manage workloads. Multicloud solutions are most often built on open-source, cloud-native technologies that are supported across the major public cloud providers. It combines software-as-a-service (Saas), Platform-as-a-Service (Paas), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service [...]

Is your organization dealing with patched together legacy systems that are clunky to use and costly to maintain? Learn more about hyperconvergence and why so many businesses are turning to this streamlined IT solution. The Basics of Hyperconvergence Hyperconvergence is an infrastructure that combines computing, storage, networking and virtualization into a single system. This building-block method allows you to expand when and where you need it, reducing the tendency toward overprovision to allow for future growth. Consisting of a hyperconverged platform with a virtual machine monitor (VMM) or hypervisor, this system allows one host computer to support multiple virtual machines that share its resources. In other words, hyperconvergence could be data center infrastructure modernization at its best, thanks to [...]

What is IT strategy consulting and does your business need it? Here we cover some top questions about IT strategy consulting. Say the word “consulting” and many business owners immediately think of a third party that swoops in, tells their business what to do, and then charges a hefty price for it. And yet, bringing in a consultant to help you with certain sticking points in your business can help you be more effective and even more profitable. This can certainly be the case when it comes to bringing together your business and technology. After all, your head is in business strategy and business processes, so when it comes to nailing the technology piece, some outside expertise can make [...]