Insights

IT Change Management is a critical process that helps organizations to manage and control changes to their IT infrastructure, applications, and services. By implementing a structured and controlled approach to managing changes, IT Change Management helps to reduce disruptions and minimize the risk of errors or failures. This, in turn, leads to improved system stability and reliability, which enhances the overall productivity and efficiency of the organization. By reducing disruptions and ensuring that changes are made in a controlled and structured manner, IT Change Management helps organizations to minimize the impact of changes on business operations, reducing downtime and the associated costs. This improves the organization's ability to deliver services to its customers and improves customer satisfaction. In addition to reducing disruptions, IT Change Management also helps organizations to create more alignment with regulatory compliance. Many regulatory compliance frameworks require organizations to have a formal change management process in place…

During an economic downturn, many businesses focus on cutting costs and streamlining operations to stay afloat. This often leads to budget cuts in areas that are not deemed essential for the immediate survival of the business, and unfortunately, cybersecurity is often one of the first areas to be hit. However, this can be a dangerous move for a few reasons. First, cyber threats are not limited to prosperous economic times. In fact, cybercriminals may view economic downturns as an opportunity to target vulnerable businesses. For example, phishing attacks that attempt to steal sensitive information from unsuspecting employees can increase during times of financial stress as people may be more likely to fall for these scams when they are concerned about their job security or financial stability. A key example being the recent uptick in phishing emails with the titles of "Layoff Notification" and "Sorry, you've been let go". Second, the…

In an increasingly digital world, security is paramount. We rely on technology for everything from communication and entertainment to finance and healthcare. However, the convenience of technology comes at a cost - the risk of cyberattacks. Cybercriminals are always looking for ways to access sensitive information, and the stakes are high. This is why physical and biometric security keys are becoming increasingly important. Physical security keys are hardware devices that are used to secure digital assets, such as online accounts or sensitive information. They provide an extra layer of protection beyond traditional passwords or PINs, making it more difficult for attackers to gain access to your accounts. Biometric security keys are a type of physical security key that use unique physical characteristics, such as fingerprints or facial recognition, to authenticate the user. They are considered to be more secure than non-biometric keys as they use unique identifiers that are difficult…

In this post, we will discuss Control Three, Data Protection and while our focus is on Electric Membership Cooperatives (EMCs), this control applies to every organization of every size and discipline. The Importance of Data Protection - this is a big one. Traditionally, organizations have stored data on their own servers in-house, out of convenience, necessity, or because that is how their managed IT partner designed the network. In addition, employees use the convenience of external memory devices to be able to take work with them to their homes, to coffee shops, to clients' offices, etc. These habits mean that data lives locally, somewhat controlled, and in some cases, in cloud-based environments for productivity and business operations. What we described, seems normal, right? Under this scenario, if you think about data management, it seems that a couple policies would be enough to care for and maintain the data. However, in…