With dramatic performance and capacity gains, flash storage delivers a lot of bang for the buck.

Flash storage has made significant inroads into the data center in recent years, as more organizations seek to tap the performance advantages of flash to support their most demanding workloads.

Cybersecurity is a cat-and-mouse game in which IT professionals and cybercriminals continually refine their tactics in an attempt to stay one step ahead of one another. The evolution of web traffic encryption provides a good case study of this process.

Studies show that more than half of all web traffic is now encrypted, largely due to increased usage of HTTPS, the secure version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol.

What’s the weakest link in your network security chain? It probably doesn’t involve hardware or software. Numerous industry and government reports find that more than 90 percent of all security incidents are the direct result of human error.

The recent WannaCry ransomware outbreak was a jarring reminder that even the most advanced security technology can be undone by mistakes and miscalculations.

Nationwide Insurance just agreed to pay $5.5 million as part of a settlement following a major data breach. UCLA recently warned 30,000 current and former students that their personal data may have been compromised. HBO is investigating a breach in which hackers accessed unreleased episodes of upcoming shows.

Right product, right place, right time, right price – that’s the new customer expectation. Issues must be resolved without delay on the channel of the customer’s choosing. The problem facing businesses is that every customer has different preferences.

In a previous post, we talked about how a multichannel contact center – one that enables customers to seamlessly communicate with organizations through phone, email, chat, text and other channels – is becoming a business necessity. Customers are demanding this flexibility and convenience, and organizations can use solutions such as ShoreTel Connect Contact Center to resolve issues quickly, improve agent productivity, and boost overall contact center performance.

A recent study by research firm Ovum found that 86 percent of consumers use at least five channels for customer support. Although 68 percent believe a phone call is most likely to resolve their issues, 78 percent would opt for a different channel if they knew it would lead to resolution on the first try.