VPN 101: Remote access and safety As we know, the Coronavirus pandemic has brought about a paradigm shift in the way businesses function. Home is now, ‘The Office’. With WFH taking root, companies and employees alike are experiencing so many benefits that it looks like it is here to stay. This has given a boost to various technologies that enable businesses to operate smoothly in the WFH environment. Examples include video conferencing applications such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Cloud data storage options, VoIP, etc., In this blog, we discuss one such technology, Virtual Private Networks, more commonly known as VPN. A VPN or virtual private network is a mechanism to connect to private IT networks using the internet. This gives you the ability to access private networks remotely, yet safely. Thus VPNs play a key role in the remote operations model. Using remote access VPN, employees can access their ‘work computers’ using the remote desktop mechanism. Plus, using VPNs to ac...

WFH is here to stay. Are you ready? The COVID-19 pandemic brought about tremendous, unimaginable changes across the world. Lockdown, shelter-in-place orders, ban on gatherings for safety purposes and national and international travel restrictions meant the world, and businesses couldn’t function as they were doing in the pre-pandemic times. Tradeshows went online, meetings happened from the couch in the living room, company parties meant saying cheers and sharing a glass of wine over a Zoom call with your video turned on. The transition to this work-from-home (WFH) culture on such a large scale and at this level was unforeseen, but it has happened nevertheless. While initially there were talks of this transition being short-lived and people resuming ‘normal’ lives in a couple of weeks, now it is clear that this trend is here to stay. Organizations and employees alike are seeing the numerous benefits of working from home. From the company perspective,three big benefits stand out: they i...

Gaining a competitive edge during the pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic has been tough on everyone. The lockdowns, the need to follow social distancing--though indispensable--have been tough on individuals and also resulted in a lot of revenue loss to businesses. For SMBs though, this time has been particularly difficult, with a general downturn in the economy and the job losses, which has been affecting people’s ability to make purchases. In the middle of all these challenges, SMBs are grappling with yet another issue--the need to keep their business running, even remotely in some cases. A lot of businesses had a tough time adapting to the work-from-home setup. Since this sudden transition to the work-from-home model was largely unplanned, a lot of them became victims of cybercrime and many more are being targeted even as you read this. If you're one of those businesses that implemented the WFH model overnight, then it’s time you paid attention to the cybersecurity angle of it. Here ...

Everyone loves cookies--even cybercriminals When you visit a site, probably for the first time or from a new device or browser, you will see an alert that mentions the site uses Cookies to offer you a more personalized experience and asks you if you are okay with it. Let’s admit it. A lot of us don’t even bother to read what the notification says before we click “Accept” and move on with our browsing. Cookies are tiny information packets that store data related to your interaction and behavior on websites. It is like walking into your favorite local diner and having them serve up the “usual” instantly. Cookies, track your digital footprint on a website and allow the site to offer you a more personalized browsing experience. For example, let’s say you visited Amazon.com and looked at some cameras, perhaps you put one into your cart as well, but never checked out, or added one to your wishlist on the site. The next time the camera is on a sale, Amazon app sends you a notification about t...

Don’t let hurricanes blow your data away! “Life is not about sheltering yourselves from the rain, it is about learning to dance in the storm”, goes a popular saying. But, if you are a small business, you first need to shelter your assets from the rain, before you can afford to dance in the storm without a care in the world. Hurricanes, tornadoes and thunderstorms can catch you off-guard resulting in losses worth thousands of dollars. Your inventory may be damaged, your place of business may be flooded and your critical business data lost. While most small businesses do take timely steps to ensure their inventory and place of business are protected from natural disasters, a lot of them tend to overlook the risk such natural disasters pose to their IT infrastructure and data. To many, it doesn’t seem to be that big an issue--and invariably, this is where they go wrong. Data loss due to natural calamity or any other reason can cause significant damage to a business, resulting in extreme c...