How does your tech measure up to 2022?

Last week we discussed what a properly equipped home office might look like, but another component that is just as important is the technology infrastructure of the company itself. Thanks to the unstoppable force that is the Internet, small and medium-sized businesses now have access to technology platforms and services that were previously the exclusive purview of larger companies with dedicated IT staff, without the associated enterprise-grade price tag. It’s 2022 – is your company still running on technology from the 90’s?

What we consider to be the standards for SMB infrastructure

If you are a decision maker or manager of organization that has survived and possibly thrived during the pandemic, you probably already understand the fundamentals of a successful business, and possibly grasped the core technology concepts that were a part of keeping your business a going concern while we struggle with Covid. Make no mistake, good people are at the root of your success, but so is making sure your technology is secure, readily accessible, and reliable. To make sure they are all these things, we make the following recommendations to all our clients:

1. Hosted Email – For reliability, extensibility and widespread familiarity, your email should be hosted with either Microsoft on the 365 platform, or Google Workspaces. There are other providers out there, but from a support point of view, they are distant, distant thirds to the two giants in the industry. While the primary functionality of email will appear mostly the same to the typical end-user, hosting it on a fully modern and robust platform provides you with better expansion and management, and most importantly, security and the ability to implement multi-factor authentication, something that most simple POP/IMAP services don’t offer. And you should definitely not be running it on a free-mail service.
2. Cloud File Sharing – Up until recently, we were staunch advocates of premised-based fileservers. They are fast, secure (if maintained properly) and relatively inexpensive to operate. Then Covid came along and rocked the modern office’s world and suddenly premise fileservers became an obstacle to working from home effectively. Just like Zoom swooping in to fill the meeting gap, platforms like DropBox, Google Drive and OneDrive stepped up to allow geographically dispersed teams to collaborate, just like they did in the office, if a little slower and, of course, much more dependent on the Internet not being down.
3. Cloud Collaboration/Communication – Everyone’s fairly familar with Zoom, and while we may be heartily sick of it some days, it’s keeping us safe(r) and connected in the “new normal” working world. There are other tools that allow your scattered workforce to collaborate in robust ways, group chat apps like Slack and Teams are great for staying in touch with (and keeping a gentle hand on) everyone in your organization, as well as offering addons to manage projects or tie-ins to your ERP and CRM systems. Just because they are in isolation does not mean they have to be isolated from their co-workers or critical information. Cloud-based VOIP phone systems can also bring some old-school feel to a completely virtual office, while still providing modern, must-have features like SMS messaging, voicemail to email transcriptions, and fully-automated auto-attendants that can deliver office calls to cellphones, mobile apps and softphones on your home office computer. You can also have a desk phone in your home office that uses your internet to make and take calls, just like you were sitting at headquarters.
4. Remote Access and VPNs – For those organizations that cannot (or do not want to) get away from premise-based fileservers, you need to put in better, faster internet (if it’s available, not always a guarantee still in 2022!) and provide centrally managed means for your remote workers to access the premise-bound services. While it’s possible for folks to get access to “free” remote access platforms, using one that is “blessed” by the company and their designated technology support will provide much better security and supportability.
5. Malware and Network Protection – Regularly updated and centrally managed malware protection and network firewalls are crucial to keeping all of your technology and services secure. We don’t recommend self-managed solutions for any size organization primarily because your focus should be on your business, not staying abreast of the numerous changes and updates in the cybersecurity world. Not only do we recommend this for all workstations and servers, home and office networks, we also recommend additional filtering services for your cloud-based email, above and beyond the default offerings that are provided. Think of it as a firewall for your email.
6. Cloud-based/Remote Backups – your data is the lifeblood of your organization, regardless of the industry. On premise backups are better than nothing, but for improved peace-of-mind and significantly improved continuity and recovery prospects in the event of a catastrophic event (either natural or digital), having your most important data stored somewhere else, encrypted and safe is a must-implement standard. Also consider email and cloud sharing platform backups. Yes they are in the cloud already, but that doesn’t prevent them from being deleted accidentally or even on purpose. Even services like Microsoft 365 only offer a limited roll-back period, whereas managed backups can literally go back to Day 1 (of the backups).
7. Regular Security Trainings & Checks – This is something we don’t see very often, even in the most technically-savvy organizations. Your weakest link in technology security is always human. Sometimes its a software developer over whom you have no control, but most often it’s your own employees or vendors. Thankfully there are platforms that can assist with keeping your people current with the most important security fundamentals without taking a lot of their time, or forcing them to sit through boring PowerPoint presentations. Keeping your people vigilant and well-informed will reap huge, long-term security benefits that can’t be realized with hardware and software alone.