A regional health network in Illinois was forced to shut down two rural hospitals last summer, in part due to losses sustained during a prolonged ransomware attack two years earlier. It marked the first time a hospital closing was directly linked to a cyberattack.
Since the beginning of the computer age, IT teams have doggedly worked to prevent all cyberattacks and system outages that could disrupt operations. That may no longer be an achievable objective. Modern technologies and threats have become so complex and sophisticated that IT failures now seem nearly inevitable — 96 percent of IT organizations worldwide experienced at least one outage in the past three years, according to one study.
Managed, co-managed and professional service models offer different methods for accessing IT expertise.
Most IT organizations today face the challenge of supporting growing numbers of applications and services with too few resources. Nearly three-quarters of business leaders say they are struggling to fill open technology positions, according to a recent study from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
The talent shortage impacts organizations in significant ways.
How to protect your organization from fraudulent wire transfers and other payment scams.
Ransomware attacks tend to garner headlines, but there’s another threat that’s costing organizations billions of dollars. These are social engineering scams involving fraudulent wire transfers or data theft.
Long ago, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) long ago became the go-to communication solution for organizations looking to reduce their telecommunication costs and support increasingly decentralized operations. However, pairing the technology with softphones is the key to realizing the full benefits of IP communications.
Ransomware is among the most damaging cybersecurity threats of all time, costing the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually — and there’s no relief in sight. Analysts predict that these digital extortion schemes will represent more than half of all global cyberattacks in 2024.
Worse yet, the attacks are becoming increasingly complex and sophisticated.
Gartner predicts that by 2028, most organizations will view the cloud as a necessity. That’s due in part to IT modernization efforts and the migration of more business-critical applications. In five years, 70 percent of workloads will be running in the cloud, up from just 25 percent today.
In 1978, a marketing manager with Digital Equipment Corporation sent an unsolicited electronic message to hundreds of ARPANET users promoting the company’s new mainframe computers. It is the first known instance of spam, and it kicked off more than four decades worth of unwelcome, unwanted and unrelenting email abuses.
Cloud and collaboration technologies have changed both the way we work and the workplace itself — and closer integration of these technologies will create new opportunities for innovation, efficiency and profitability. For smaller organizations, unified communications (UC) solutions provide the logical platform for seizing these opportunities.
Stolen or compromised credentials are the leading cause of data breaches, but password-based authentication isn’t going away anytime soon. With more than 80 percent of organizations still depending on them, passwords are easily the most prevalent method of user authentication.
