The Thurston, Pierce, Lewis, and Mason Counties IT Experts

Automate What You Can

Every business has a lot of moving parts. In a small business, one person could wear a half-dozen or more hats. The more that can be reliably done by machines, the more effective your business is going to be. When you are thinking about how to invest in your business, the answer should always be to produce and sell more and spend less to do it. That’s not always easy, but with tools integrated with artificial intelligence, end-to-end management software, and smart tools this can become a lot easier.

Collaborate Better

These days, businesses are often forced to do more with less. Even if they aren’t, having systems in place that improve the ability for people to collaborate can mean enhanced efficiency and productivity. While there are software systems and other technologies that can individually boost your staff’s ability to collaborate, true collaboration is achieved through a dedication to trust the other members of your team. In order to do that, you need tools that make this easier (or possible). Let’s take a look at some of the tools teams are using to improve their collaboration.

• Customer Relationship Management - The CRM doesn’t just help improve customer satisfaction, it can also help your team work together on projects. The software can help stabilize any task by giving a consistent platform to update team members (and customers) to keep any task or project working efficiently.
• Video conferencing - A video conferencing software doesn’t just help businesses with remote teams—although it is a must-have for organizations that sport them—it is one of the very best collaboration tools there is in business. Not only can team members meet with each other at the push of a button, it can also speed up projects and help ensure tasks are completed correctly more frequently, a major consideration for any business that relies on collaboration.
• Collaboration tools - Today, there are many collaboration tools that are specifically designed to keep project teams working together. Most feature a forum-like construct that allows for person-to-person communication and a myriad of software integrations designed to give every member of a collaboration team the resources they need in one easy-to-use platform.
• Productivity apps - Today’s cloud-based productivity applications give employees the ability to work inside the same document/spreadsheet/presentation. This can not only work to improve productivity, it can bring with it a level of rapid quality assurance that traditionally wasn’t available to businesses with stand-alone productivity suites. What’s best, any person with an active login and an Internet connection can use these tools, providing the flexibility and organizational scalability needed to ensure that any deadline is met. 

Engage with Your Customer Base

Without your customers, your business wouldn’t be one. This is why one of the most important parts of your business is to reach out to your customers and keep them engaged. Studies show that customer retention is almost five times less costly for a business than customer acquisition. Moreover, it is much easier to expand your current customers’ spend than it is to try to find new customers to fill the gaps. 

We listed the CRM above as a crucial collaboration tool, but its main function is to keep your customers in the loop. This provides opportunities to get more feedback from them and to accrue the data needed to make informed decisions. The truth is, your customers are the key to your business’ success, and if you are doing everything right by them, you can really move your organization forward quickly. 

With talks of recession on the horizon, the more efficient your business is at producing solid and supported products is going to be key in your ability to grow your business. At PC Technologies, we work with Thurston, Pierce, Lewis, and Mason Counties businesses every day to get them the technology, expertise, and support they need to take their operational effectiveness to the next level. If you would like to learn more about how we can help you achieve your goals, give us a call today at 360-491-2227.

Defining the Internet of Things

About a decade ago, these new “smart” devices and technologies became extremely prevalent and started to add value to peoples’ lives, making them easier and more efficient. Naturally, businesses wanted to capitalize on the desire for these new technology solutions, leading to the massive growth of smart technology we see today.

And, of course, when consumers find value in smart technology, businesses inevitably do as well. There are now well over 14 billion IoT devices, including smartphones, connected to the Internet. The IoT is also one of the most well-funded technology markets out there with nearly $5 billion invested in it every year. 

IoT Devices Are Everywhere

The IoT has several practical uses for your business, and they all come with their own unique challenges with integration and security. You also need to consider the fact that most if not all of your employees have a smartphone, a factor which could influence the applications your organization uses. Furthermore, you’ll want to ensure that they are not inadvertently putting your organization at risk by bringing threats onto your network.

For enterprises and manufacturers, industrial IoT devices can impact operations and give employees better ways of getting things done. Therefore, you’ll have to train your employees on how to use them. Setting up IoT as a platform for business efficiency might mean building your infrastructure from the ground up with IoT in mind, or it might mean integrating applications with the back-end operations of your infrastructure.

Setup and Security Questions for Implementing IoT for Business

It’s natural that businesses will use the IoT in ways much different from what you might expect a home user would, but that doesn’t mean these consumer-level tools can’t also save you money. You can use IoT devices to save time and resources with smart thermostats, lights, personal assistants, and so on… all adding specific value to your organization.

There are more complex solutions to utilize, too, like asset tracking and inventory management. While these can help you keep tabs on your supply chain and resources, they can quickly complicate your infrastructure if you don’t set them up properly. Still, they enable automation that could be a valuable tool for your company moving forward, enabling you to get data to make better decisions in the future.

To ensure your business is profitable and adaptable to change, you need to implement technology that can scale according to your needs while maintaining security. IoT can complicate this, as it creates several security discrepancies that must be considered if you want to maximize the value gained from using them. It’s true that businesses can use the IoT to cut costs and improve efficiency, but you’ll need to be strategic in their implementation to see these results.

PC Technologies can help you assess your business’ needs and examine how IoT devices can improve your operations. To learn more, reach out to us at 360-491-2227.

What Industries are Often Targeted By Ransomware?

Lately, ransomware has been increasingly directed towards a few industries, in organizations of all sizes. These industries are as follows:

• Professional Services
• Education
• Government
• IT Services
• Healthcare
• Manufacturing
• Utilities
• Finance

Let’s briefly discuss the situation surrounding each of these industries.

Professional Services

The various businesses that fall within the umbrella of professional services—ranging from everything from accounting to consulting to legal assistance—have all been targeted by ransomware attacks with uncomfortable frequency. This is largely due to many of them possessing sensitive data that cybercriminals seek out, and with many small organizations lacking sufficient cybersecurity, they become relatively easy targets.

Education

Considering the sheer amount of data that school systems collect and store on their students—in addition to the faculty and staff that work there—it should be no surprise that educational institutions have been attacked more and more in recent years. 2021 saw operations disrupted across over 1,000 such institutions throughout 88 attacks. Emsisoft, an antimalware provider who provided that previous stat, also reported that at least half of the 2021 incidents resulted in employee and student data being stolen.

Government

Government processes—all that fall under that umbrella term—are pretty important, which makes it chilling to think that 40% of surveyed IT decision-makers from government organizations around the world had been impacted by ransomware within a year prior to the survey. One only has to consider the shutdown of Ireland’s national health service in May 2021, 2019’s ransomware attack on the City of Baltimore that shut down services for months, or 2019’s lockdown of a United States Coast Guard facility to see how severe attacks like this can be.

IT Services

While it may seem like we’re blowing up our own spot, it is important to recognize that even the experts can be suckered by ransomware attacks. This not only highlights how truly dangerous ransomware can be, but also how important it is to ensure that you have an IT provider you can trust, like PC Technologies.

Healthcare

It’s little wonder that healthcare organizations are a favorite target of those who use ransomware to their own selfish and nefarious ends. With tons of critical data and systems being used at all hours in hospitals and health centers, they tend to be highly motivated to pay the demanded ransom to avoid loss of life.

Manufacturing

As of late, manufacturers have been demonstrated to also be popular ransomware targets, specifically by having much of their data published online (as many now threaten to do if a ransom payment isn’t received promptly, or a business refuses to pay a second ransom). Manufacturing was actually the most common industry sector to have stolen data leaked online, and since it was also the most well-prepared industry to restore backed-up data, the least likely to fork over a ransom.

Utilities

On the opposite end of the spectrum, however, are those who provide oil, gas, and utilities. According to Sophos, these organizations are much more likely to pay ransomware demands… and cybercriminals know it. Remember the Colonial Pipeline shutdown a few years ago? While the Department of Justice managed to recover half of the ransomware payment back from the attackers, the attack still crippled a lot of the United States’ eastern operations through fuel delivery disruptions.

Finance

When it has been said that the next major financial crisis could very well be caused by a ransomware attack, it becomes even more concerning to learn that ransomware attacks against the financial industry have been increasing dramatically. The first half of 2021 saw more ransomware attacks against financial institutions than the entirety of 2020, with payments seeing a similar rise in frequency.

In Short, No Industry is Safe from Ransomware…

…which means all businesses need to be prepared to resist it and deal with it as necessary. Unfortunately, this can be a complicated process and is becoming more so all the time, so proactive precautions become a wiser and wiser strategy. We can help you put these precautions in place to prepare you for such a scenario. Give us a call at 360-491-2227 to learn more.