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

The COVID-19 Situation

Assorted state regulations have imposed lockdowns across the country that have caused various issues for businesses. As you would imagine, many of them are not good, and when compared to a few recent trends, they only seem worse. For instance, in the first quarter of this year, the CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Confidence Index demonstrated a generally positive outlook, and mere weeks later, it plunged from 64 to 48. The National Small Business Association saw similar drops in confidence, witnessing a benchmark far below the levels seen during the Great Recession.

With 2019 serving as a great year for many, businesses have truly been thrown for a loop across the board. 72 percent of business owners are predicting that COVID-19 will have a lasting impact on the way their businesses will operate in the future, and many businesses simply won’t be able to outlast the pandemic. Adding to these concerns, many businesses fear that the uncertainty and inherent issues with restarting operations on a regional basis could create issues pertaining to competition and other crucial market factors—in addition to the potential health risks associated with reopening too soon.

The hard truth of the matter is this: moving forward, businesses will need to redefine the status quo to survive (especially as the tide of the pandemic ebbs and surges). With the future still uncertain regarding how COVID-19 will play out moving forward, businesses need to adapt and move forward to any extent possible.

What Businesses Will Need to Do

There are a lot of factors that organizations of all kinds will need to consider as more people return to (some approximation of) business as usual.

Communication

People all over the world are really concerned about their job security, in addition to all the other concerns that COVID-19 has brought up. Maintaining an open stream of communication with your employees in addition to what your operations require will prove to be crucial. Face-to-face contact is also likely to be seen as a largely unnecessary risk, so other forms of communication are more likely to take over for some time. This all means that your business will need the tools to make this possible.

Workplace Safety

While we have already touched upon the concerns that your employees may have working face-to-face, many businesses will likely re-examine their approach entirely. Using more of their digital tools and the improved opportunities that they offer will only make it safer for your employees to do their jobs effectively. If these tools don’t fit your business’ operations, other means can work great for you—such as staggering your employees’ shifts to ensure social distancing.

Look to the Future

Of course, with the future so uncertain right now, you need to prepare as best you can for any eventuality. The technology that is available today enables your employees to work remotely while still collaborating with their fellow team members. Ensuring that you have the capability to scale to meet your needs by using the cloud will be more than helpful, it will be crucial.

Businesses have always needed to shift and adjust to meet the changing times—the current situation we are all facing is just another example of that, dialed up to eleven. Technology has always been developed to address these complications.

PC Technologies can help you to do so with the key IT solutions and services to support your operations. For assistance, give us a call at 360-491-2227.

Creating the Ideal Task

Many productivity gurus (and assorted other authorities on the subject) have lent their expertise and created a rubric to help do just this:

Step + Detail + Deadline + Context = Task

This rubric Is particularly useful for creating single tasks, as well as individual steps in a larger process. Let’s go into these four components piece-by-piece.

Step

With each task, there is going to be some inherent action necessary, so you need to address what that action needs to be. Does someone need to research something, write something, or simply check into something? Tell them what needs to be done for their goal to be accomplished.

Detail

You also need to provide additional information concerning each task for context and clarity. This would include things like:

• The person or department who is responsible for completing this task
• The purpose of the task that they should strive to accomplish
• Why this task is important to the overall goal
• Where any resources can be found to assist with the task and general guidance to help complete it

Deadline

Once you’ve outlined what the task is, you need to identify when the task should be completed by. This helps ensure that projects are completed in a timely fashion, with certain milestones achieved within a certain timeframe.

Context

Finally, you need to include other pertinent details about a task, including how much time may be spent on it, which project it is for, and what priority level it should have. This gives the person responsible for the task more information as they organize their schedule.

Let’s assume that you want to throw a surprise pizza party for your team, and so you wanted to give one trusted employee (we’ll assume he’s named Bob) the responsibility of ensuring the food was ordered ahead of time. The task you assign to Bob might look like this:

“Order Food for Staff Surprise Party on Friday

Assigned to BOB – Priority 3
*If unable to complete, please inform HR*

Wednesday:

• 3:15 – Get credit card from HR and call Pizzeria Porfirio. Place order for three large pizzas with peppers and onion and 75 of their house special chicken wings to be delivered Friday at 4:45.

Friday:

• 1:00 – Call Pizzeria Porfirio to confirm delivery”

That’s all there is to tasking out a process for your team to follow. There are also software solutions available to make this even easier for you and your team, so long as you keep these practices in mind and completely task out the things you assign to others. The clearer the process is, the more likely it is to be successful.

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Protecting Home Base

Physical security is one of those elements of business that you either love or hate. The people who love it tend to be deliberate, patient people. The people who don’t tend to want access right now and without hindrances. First, it is a balancing act. Secondly, it’s ants vs. elephants. You need to protect your investments, your staff, your data, and your physical technology. 

There are all types of things that you can do to increase your level of physical security. 

• Get an access control system - This option is probably the most prudent physical security investment you can make. There are all types of solutions: key fob, ID card, smartphone, even biometric. The idea is simply to get a read on when people come and go, what they need access to, and to protect company assets with the use of technology.
• Get some security swag - When people feel like they’re being watched they don’t tend to be as foolish as when they know they aren’t. Getting some digital security cameras can provide you with eyes (and ears) all over your business, and they serve as a pretty good deterrent, too.
• Security! - If you don’t mind spending some money, one of the very best ways to promote security at your place of business is to, in fact, hire some. Albeit, expensive, if you have personnel on duty, not many physical security problems will come your business’ way.

Protecting your place of business is extremely important and, on some level, has to be a priority. Problems of physical security don’t just extend to peddlers and madmen; they can more often result in more subdued problems such as cybercrime. To that end...

The Battle Against Cybercrime

Cybersecurity can be a problem from inside your office, but more often it comes from outside your network, even if (as we’ll talk about later) it’s often triggered by someone on your side. In order to sufficiently protect your Internet-facing systems, you’ll need a plan that includes the following routine actions:

• Software patching - In order to keep the software your business relies on from being a direct avenue to your data, you will need to ensure that each piece of software is routinely patched and updated regularly. 
• Spam blocking - Your organization gets literally hundreds or thousands of messages per day coming in from senders you didn’t request anything from. In order to separate the legitimate mail from all the other rubbish, you will need to have a spam blocker in place.
• Firewalls - You will want to make sure that firewalls are set up on all applicable spots on your network. A well-updated enterprise firewall will catch most malicious software that is thrown at it. 
• Multi-Factor Authentication - Where you can, you should be using two-factor authentication. It may take a few moments longer to get into your account (more if you left your smartphone in the car), but it will be worth it when you don’t see a data breach. 
• Use of security tools for work outside of the office - Today’s business is a remote business. Making your team utilize secure connections--whether it be through a password-protected remote access software or with the use of a virtual private network--is a great strategy to keep business data safe. Mobile management is also extremely important as many people are now working on their mobile devices. 
• Get tested - Once you think you’ve created the comprehensive cybersecurity strategy, get it tested. You need to be sure that it is effective at stopping today’s most powerful threats. Call PC Technologies today and our team can help you set up a test of your organization’s cybersecurity.

Now that you have all the tools in place, you have everything updated and you have eyes (actual or virtual) on your access points, you then come to the most difficult part of creating a three-level security plan that will protect your business’ digital and physical assets: training the assets themselves. 

Keep Beating the Dead Horse

It’s true that you need to have a plan to train your employees on solid security practices. The problem becomes when you have taken all the steps that you were supposed to, invested heavily in the training and testing of each employee only to have someone make a mistake and cause major problems for your organization. 

Most of the threats your business faces come into your network from cybercriminals and scammers of all types through your communications platforms. Each day, literally billions of phishing emails are sent, and you can only imagine how many scam calls someone may get per year. The point is that these problems are coming at your business from all directions and it would be a shame if someone on your team was the reason that your business is dealing with a major data leak or other digital disaster. So, if you aren’t actively training your staff about phishing and other cyberthreats, you have to start today. Some points of emphasis include:

• Password Hygiene
• Data Security Practices
• Secure Processes
• Access Control Standards
• Social Media Use
• Conformity to Policies

Don’t let your business get hacked. The IT security experts at PC Technologies can help implement the cybersecurity policy (and the tools) needed to ward off cyberattacks and keep your business’ data secure. Call us today at 360-491-2227.