As a professional you are in education because you have a vocation. You have the commitment and drive to succeed, and keeping your school successful requires all of your attention. However, you didn't go into education to be an expert in emerging technologies. Managing technology can be a real distraction and pull energies away from running your school. In addition,...
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As Microsoft stops supporting Windows 7 from January 2020, what choices do you have as a Windows 7 user? While Windows 7 will work after January 2020– it won’t just “shut down”–as a business, you cannot afford to use the older version because it makes you vulnerable to security threats. That leaves you with only 2 options. Option 1: Purchase extended...
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We talked in an earlier blog about how not benefiting from economies of scale can hurt a small school’s abilities to take full advantage of technology. In addition to the cloud, another resource to get around these problems is the the outsourcing of certain tasks, including strategic technology planning to optimize the use of new technology. As background, the term economies...
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Unless you are a Silicon Valley unicorn, smaller institutions, especially newer ones, usually face serious limitations to accessing the funds to finance significant capex investments. This can be a particular problem with the IT hardware necessary for the growth of the school as well as for backup and redundancy. Today we’re talking about two areas where hardware requirements create problems and...
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Microsoft has officially announced the “End of Life” date for Windows 7. It will come January 14, 2020. Windows 7 was introduced in 2009 and is one of the most popular versions of Windows. It is estimated that around 40% of Windows OS is 7. So, if you are one of the Windows 7 users, read this blog to understand...
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One of the errors many smaller firms make--and some larger ones--is that they really don’t understand the broad-reaching effects of a cyber attack. If someone breaks into your home and steals a laptop, you may think “ well, insurance will pay for the laptop and the broken lock, let’s move on.” In reality, that usually isn’t the end of the...
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Investing in firewalls, anti-malware and data encryption software Firewalls and anti-malware tools can help you by keeping unwanted actors out of your IT network. These tools work by restricting access to only pre authorized users and these are primarily defensive measures. Data encryption software, on the other hand, is more proactive and works to code your data and store it in...
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SD WAN - What’s up with that? So what is this SD-WAN that you have been hearing about? SD-WAN, the acronym for Software Defined Wide Area Network is a new take on the traditional Wide Area Network (WAN). A standard WAN’s goal was to connect users at a branch to a main campus or central office. A WAN is fundamentally hardware-based,...
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Think you are too small to be a cyber attack victim? Think again! A recent study pointed out that SMBs are increasingly becoming targets of cybercriminals because their cybersecurity measures aren’t as strong, sophisticated, or effective as those of large companies. Often, SMB owners tend to think they are too small to be targeted; in fact, their size and lack of...
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Employee training is a critical component of cybersecurity. Every employee, from the first day of their onboarding, should be educated about cybersecurity best practices....
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