A hacker is hacking a computer and Nerd Support IT Security is stopping the hack

7 Tips to Prevent a Cyber Hack for Small and Medium Sized Businesses

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Every day there’s a hacker hacking a company. The news is flooded with new victims every day.  Most of us turn a blind eye until it happens to us.

Many leading companies from all over the world were affected by the Wipro data breach.

Even the most loved, trusted, and popular companies in the U.S. have been hacked. Renown and loved Arizona Beverage Company, to large Fortune 500 financial firms have become victims of cyber-attacks.  Every company big or small, no matter the industry is at risk. From e-commerce, retailers, healthcare manufacturing, financial, and Managed Service Providers.

What does that mean for small and medium sized businesses? If large, Fortune 100 companies are being hacked and data is being breached. How can my business survive?

Some businesses cannot survive the reputational risk of being hacked at any level. The productivity time lost, the employee moral plummets, possible litigation issues, lost revenue and the most valuable asset lost – clients’ trust.  

Luckily, there are steps that small and medium sized businesses can take when it comes to cybersecurity.

  1. Employee training – Most cyber hacks happen because of phishing. Basically a fancy word for an imposter. In Miami, unfortunately, these types of scams are the norm. A solution to this is quarterly or bi-annually mandatory IT Security presentations and assessments. Let’s be honest most employees find this boring and tedious but it needs to be done. Better late than sorry.
  2. Tip – Incentive employees and set a deadline to complete this assessment. Make clear that this is mandatory.
  3. Two Factor Authentication and routine password changes – We recommend password changes every 30 days with specific requirements. Social engineering is a real problem.
  4. Look out for common phishing signs such as :
    • Grammatical errors
    • Being asked to disclose personal or confidential email
    • Unknown company or sender
    • Too good to be true
  5. Social Media – Yes, social media. Hackers use this to try and guess your password. Example – Most people use their birthday, anniversary, or important events in their password. This is how a lot of celebrities get hacked.
  6. Record your phone calls – Sometimes a hacker might call and disguise as an IT tech, colleague, or partner to gather information and target the company. By recording the call you can refer back to the original target.
  7. Partner with the right Managed IT firm – Ask questions, do your due diligence. A trusted Managed IT provider should provide references, recommendations and truly understand your needs. Try partnering with a partner that has experience in your industry and has good referrals. We encourage our prospective clients to visit current clients.

Some questions to ask include :

  • What verticals are you experts on ?
  • Are your engineers certified? What certifications do they have ?
  • How long have you been in business ? And do you use what you sell ?
  • What is the SLA ? How do you honor it ?
  • Can we speak to current clients ?

The old saying is true…. You get what you pay for. When it comes to IT, oftentimes, the cheaper route is not the answer. Investing in the right team is imperative. One hack and your company can be out of business and never recover. According to the Florida SBDC, the cost of a cyber attack is over 20k for a small business and about 63% have already been hacked. 

With Nerds Support, you get a team full of Microsoft certified engineers that have gone through a vigorous hiring process. We have the procedures in place so you never have to worry about a cyber-hack or data breach. We do the worrying for you.

We truly care about helping small and medium sized businesses with their IT needs.  As your Miami IT Services partner, we will secure your information and act as your very own IT team.

You deserve the best team there is. Leave it to the Nerds to help you increase productivity, secure your information and handle all IT hiccups.

Schedule your free IT assessment. Hurry, slots are limited.

Contact us today at 305-551-2009

A team working on a an IT solution project

Three Easy Ways to Improve your Security

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Cloud-based storage and computing lets you get out of the IT business and focus on doing what you do best. It’s also, as we’re about to see, far more secure than your own servers and storage.

Here are three ways to take advantage of this extra security:

01 Move your files to the cloud

Cloud file sharing and storage saves you from disaster. Say bye to lost attachments, file size limits and unsecure collaboration. More importantly, it puts the security of your files in the heavily-protected server room of an IT partner or technology provider – so you have a far safer back-up of all your files as well. It’s the easiest of all the cloud security steps and it dramatically improves your security overnight.

CIA uses the cloud for their most sensitive data and workloads

02 Move your applications to the cloud

Save over $30,000 a year by switching to the cloud per application

You probably already use cloud apps such as Facebook, Gmail, Slack or Office365, but you can also put your most important on-site apps, the ones stored on your computer, on the cloud. Application virtualization transforms any noncloud app into a cloud app, easy, so your users access it from a browser and any device. An example of this is Quickbooks, Bloomberg, Descartes and Thomas Reuter. Those times that you leave your laptop at home and have to rush back to pick it up before your 10 am meeting are gone. You can access that Excel and Powerpoint presentation in an instant.

03 Move your desktops to the cloud

Managing many PCs is a lot of work and can lead to many unsecure devices. Your users can work on any device, any browser, anytime. And if they leave their laptop in an Uber, the airport, or at home, no problem.

Contact us today to start migrating your apps to the cloud. Scale and grow your business

Nerds Support has over 17 years of experience, working with small and medium sized businesses in IT Cloud Solutions.

Contact us today for a FREE IT Audit! 305-551-2009

Cloud made of paperclips with computers, tablets, and phones surrounding it

Using the cloud to improve your workforce

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The new way of working allows employees to work from home

Team is what makes a business successful

The ability to collaborate in the cloud is becoming a key driver of competitive advantage - Forbes Media

Products may come and go. Services are another buzzword. Brands have a lifespan.

Culture and leadership are the most important things a company has.

But also technology can serve as a tool to help guide culture and leadership.  

So as your business grows and gets more complicated – with work from home workers , you need an IT infrastructure to help.  

One thing is clear: old with the old and in with the new

→Email threads become a labyrinth .

→Document versions get lost in sync.

Using the cloud means always being able to access your most important assets, whether they're Word docs, spreadsheets, or photos - PC Mag

→WFM workers get lonely.

Old-school IT systems – the kind you manage from your own servers – are no longer the norm and are not letting you progress

These days, the advent of cloud computing and all the benefits that come with it have paved the way for collaborative cloud-based services that are reshaping how employees work together over the internet, whether it's a trio of founders at a startup or a mid-sized company with 500 staff - TechRadar

The new way of working

The cloud is here to help you grow your business.

This guide shows some of the ways cloud-based applications and services can help your business

→Speed up decisions

→Getting files faster and to the right team member

 →Making the most of company resources

→Increasing your security

→Minimizing your IT costs and overhead

Now it’s time to use them to modernize the way you work, and turbo-charge your teams.

We’re here for you.

The best part of using an outsourced service is that upgrades and feature add-ons are automatic. Your company benefits from the latest and greatest and it's installed for you without any worry or work

We’re your local Miami based IT Services provider.

We specialize in helping companies simplify their IT systems, support work from home and improve collaboration by moving to the cloud – in easy, steps. We can help you transition to a simpler, more productive world while supporting you and your users with the best customer service.

Contact Nerds Support the premier IT Solutions Provider for a FREE IT Test.

With cloud solutions, you can keep your business safe and secure against hackers

IT Cloud Solutions : The secret answer to stopping flu season ?

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How can IT Cloud Solutions make your employees happy?

Yes. you read that right, the cloud can help prevent sick days by allowing employees to work from home. Also, allowing the employee to rest and not get the team sick.

From days when you’re under the weather, to when the kids have days off from school, working from home is essential in today’s workforce.

WFM is no longer a perk but a necessity.

The rise of technology solutions makes this a reality.

People want mobility.  Mobile devices and apps allow employees to be productive from anywhere, at any time. That’s great for the business—but it complicates life for IT.

The more options people get, the more diverse risks are involved. Plus, the more difficult it becomes for IT to secure and update all the software and infrastructure.

Welcome to the reality of today’s enterprises that are ever changing.

These headaches are simply growing pains on the path to a cloud-first world. That once you standardize on a single cloud platform, your headaches will go away.

Unfortunately, that’s just wishful thinking.

In fact, a majority of organizations that already in the cloud are in multiple types—whether on-prem, off-prem or hybrid. (A recent study put the percentage at almost 73 percent, with that number rising every year.) The reason? Flexibility, pure and simple. One cloud platform might work well for content collaboration, but it doesn’t necessarily do what you need for delivering apps or services to distant users.

The surprise for most, however, is that you don’t have to give up all the choices and flexibility to avoid the dreaded complexity that today’s distributed infrastructures create.

A secure digital workspace can make work and IT simple. A secure digital workspace provides a uniform place for employees to securely access all their applications and data from anywhere.

Employees become more productive because they only have to sign in once to get started on work, whereas singing into multiple apps everyday reduces productivity:

  • Any device
  • Any cloud
  • Any network
  • Any type of app—SaaS, Ouickbooks, Microsoft Office, web, mobile, Windows
Our Miami IT Cloud Solutions team allows you to access all your documents from anywhere, anytime

On the back end, a secure digital workspace gives IT uniformed security and control.. Plus, they can simplify endpoint management and security, which is a good thing since the number of network-connected devices is expected to be almost 50 billion connected devices by 2020.*

More importantly, a secure digital workspace can help you increase business agility. Because you can onboard employees and offices faster and roll out new services and apps in less time, you—and your users—can respond to new opportunities in ways you never thought of before.

So if you’re finally ready to start using the cloud, be sure to deliver a strategy that works not only for the business, but your workforce as well.

Contact Nerds Support today to learn more about how IT Support Miami Services can help your organization succeed.

Our IT Services Miami team will respond to your inquiries in a timely manner. Customer service is our driving force.

We learn from the best – clients like you.

* “Number of network-connected devices per person around the world from 2003 to 2020,” Statista.com

Startup

Are You an Accountant? What You Should Know About SOX Compliance

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The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX Compliance) Act of 2002 mostly came about thanks to a great deal of national attention surrounding several financial and accounting scandals by major corporations in the mid-to-early 2000’s. These corporations, such as Enron, Tyco International, AIG, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems, and WorldCom were discovered to have had executives within each organization who falsified accounting records to either secretly steal money for themselves, or to disguise decreasing company earnings, which falsely maintained higher company stock prices.

As a result, most of the corporations either failed or were sold off, and left in their wake thousands unemployed and billions of dollars lost.

As a result, Congressmen Paul Sarbanes and Michael Oxley joined forces to create the SOX Act, creating an enforcement method with the goal of protecting shareholders and the general public from accounting errors and fraudulent practices in the enterprise, as well as improving the accuracy of corporate disclosures.

There are many elements of SOX compliance, all of which Nerds Support are well familiar.

IT SOX compliance solutions for accountants and CPA professionals

Most important points for SOX compliance

● Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) – provides independent oversight of public accounting firms providing audit services, as well as enforcing registration of auditors, defining the specific processes and procedures for compliance audits, inspecting and policing conduct and quality control, and enforcing compliance with the specific mandates of SOX.

● Auditor Independence – establishes standards for external auditor independence to limit conflicts of interest, as well as addressing new auditor approval requirements, audit partner rotation, and auditor reporting requirements.

● Corporate Responsibility – mandates that senior executives take individual responsibility for accuracy and completeness of all corporate financial reports.

● Enhanced Financial Disclosures – sets enhanced reporting requirements for financial transactions, as well as requiring internal controls for assuring the accuracy of financial reports and disclosures.

● Analyst Conflicts of Interest – includes measures designed to help restore investor confidence in the reporting of securities analysts.

Commission Resources and Authority – defines practices to restore investor trust in securities analysts, as well as the SEC’s authority to censure or bar securities professionals from practice.

● Studies and Reports – require the Comptroller General and the SEC to perform various studies and report their findings.

● Corporate and Criminal Fraud Accountability – describes detailed criminal penalties for altering or destroying financial records, including any other interference with investigations, while providing certain protections for informants.

● White Collar Crime Penalty Enhancement – increases the criminal penalties associated with white-collar crimes and conspiracies.

● Corporate Tax Returns – states the Chief Executive Officer must sign company tax returns.

● Corporate Fraud Accountability – identifies corporate fraud and records tampering as criminal offenses, and lists to specific penalties for such offenses. The SOX Act contains several specific, severe consequences for violations of any and all specific parts of the act.

How certain are you that your organization is operating within strict SOX compliance? With Nerds Support, you will be quite certain, indeed.

Your nerd is just a call away.

Our Miami IT Solutions team is ready to help you tackle all your IT needs.

With over 17 years of experience in helping leaders in the accounting industry we know how to help you succeed.