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Network Solutions Blog
Tips and trends in design and installation of wireless communications networks, wired infrastructure design and implementation, network peripherals and more.
With SimpliVity hyperconverged infrastructure, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) simplifies the process of enterprise data protection and backups.
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It is becoming increasingly difficult for enterprise IT teams to deal with every cybersecurity threat to their organizations, but artificial intelligence represents a promising solution.
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BYOD | Cybersecurity | Mobility | Network Security | mobile
From our friends at bestvpns.co.uk
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Cybersecurity is a critical part of every enterprise’s success, but if executed poorly, it can compromise network performance.
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Tomorrow’s office environments will be defined first and foremost by IoT devices, but enterprises won’t be able to make good use of them without powerful networks that can support the dozens or hundreds of demanding new connections.
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Managing an entire IT infrastructure can be prohibitively expensive, which is why many companies are starting to outsource some or all of their IT operations.
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Enterprises of all kinds face more network security threats today than ever before, and they must be proactive their approach to cybersecurity if they hope to protect their IT infrastructure.
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Securing a corporate network usually requires hiring outside experts to perform a comprehensive network audit, but this initial outlay is more than worth it.
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Designing and implementing a wireless network that is equally reliable and secure can be a challenge in a large venue, but it’s possible with the right approach.
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Cybersecurity | Network Security
Despite being particularly vulnerable to cybersecurity threats, the oil and gas industry has yet to take appropriate steps to secure its digital infrastructure.
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As enterprise IT becomes increasingly defined by virtualization and cloud computing, network microsegmentation will be the only way to ensure proper information security.
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Cybersecurity | Network Security | Wireless | wifi
President Trump spends a significant amount of time away from the White House at his own real estate properties, where some experts worry he is potentially exposing his and his staff’s digital communications to prying eyes.
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Seeking a new network solutions partner? Looking for a company to perform a review of your IT infrastructure? On the hunt for someone who can implement a hardware installation at your organization? Regardless of your networking needs, the search for an experienced and knowledgeable provider is often a complex and frustrating experience -- so much so that many in this predicament become paralyzed by the plethora of options available to them and are unable to make a decision.
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IT solutions seem to evolve at an unprecedented rate. The top network and security trends this month aren’t what they were last month (let alone last year!). So, how are organizations and enterprises expected to keep up with the most current updates and emerging concepts? In today’s business climate, falling behind with your technology solutions simply isn’t an option. That’s why Turn-key Technologies is launching this new series on the latest trends in IT solutions.
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Cybersecurity | Network Security
The modern hacker is intelligent and innovative -- and probably attempting to breach your business systems as we speak. Today’s cyber attackers are evolved. They’re constantly learning from new security protections and finding ways around them. They’re relentlessly identifying opportunities to plunder data and hold networks hostage. They’re progressive, not stagnant. To have any chance of defending against them, your approach must be just as fluid.
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Cybersecurity | Network Security
You wouldn’t attempt to build a home using tree branches and twine. You wouldn’t try to contact a friend via telegram. You wouldn’t think of playing your favorite album on a phonograph. These tools are outdated and highly insufficient to meet today’s needs. Even alluding to them seems absurd. Why, then, would you consider relying on outdated, insufficient network security solutions to protect your critical assets in this increasingly advanced age of cyber crime?
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Cybersecurity | Network Security
You know there are cyber security threats out there, growing more dangerous and more complex every day. You know you can’t afford to put your organization’s data, clients, employees or assets at risk. You know you need to fortify your network before a security breach assaults your operations and inflicts irrevocable damage. But how do you make this happen? Designing a network that’s built on a foundation of solid security takes knowledge, experience and the right approach.
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Hackers are targeting enterprise networks with greater determination than ever; these recent cyberattacks are keeping enterprise CISOs up at night.
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When the time comes to make some changes to your network capabilities, and you’re tasked with evaluating network design proposals aimed at delivering the most suitable, cost-effective solutions, it’s important to make sure you’re not overlooking any essential factors. If you don’t know exactly what you should be looking for from a prospective provider, the process is apt to become complicated and frustrating, and you’re unlikely to end up with the outcomes you’re expecting.
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Cybersecurity | Higher Ed | Network Security | k12
Is your school district putting the necessary amount of attention on addressing the growing challenge of cybercrime in education? Recent attacks on schools throughout the country are serious warnings to tighten up your information security awareness efforts and develop a plan to ensure that your schools are protected.
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Cybersecurity | Network Security
Although you may have heard this all before, hackers are more innovative now, than ever. It’s time for a refresher. As you are well aware, your company has a lot of information and communication flowing from person to person, within and outside the organization. This flow keeps your company running, and it’s an integral part of the relationship between your business and your clients. So what would happen if that exchange was suddenly severed, or if the sensitive data being transmitted was compromised in some way? Today, these security risks are all too real -- and they could cost your organization significantly. Unfortunately, the problem may be caused by your own employees.
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Even if IT professionals have dotted their i’s and crossed their t’s when it comes to cybersecurity, uninformed employees can accidentally expose enterprise networks to digital threats.
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When you consider what’s involved in a network assessment, you’re likely to categorize the entire effort as a technical check-up. It’s true that a major component of a network assessment is examining the technical aspects. This involves a complete evaluation of cabling, firewalls, access points, switches, routers, VPNs, firmware, hardware, traffic, workstations, security vulnerabilities, devices, sources of interference and so on. But as important as this technical side is, it’s not the only consideration in a network assessment. There’s a vital business element that you must address in order to ensure a top-performing network.
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An enterprise-grade network audit can vastly improve your network’s performance. From BYOD to bandwidth demands, these are the 6 things you need to include in your network audit checklist:
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As the education landscape evolves, Internet access becomes more and more integral to each school’s curricula. Unfortunately, funding this need can be difficult for some in the K-12 school districts. That’s why E-rate is so valuable. This government-funded discount program enables schools and libraries to secure affordable Internet access and telecommunications services. Are you up to speed on how your school can take advantage of the program this year?
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Healthcare | Network Security | Wireless
Smartphones, tablets, laptops, monitors and other medical technology -- all of these devices are trying to access your healthcare organization’s WLAN, which is likely to be causing some significant frustrations across the network. Perhaps this problem is resulting in insufficient performance and impacting mission-critical applications. If this is the case, you’re failing to ensure optimal healthcare IT, and that’s no way to achieve a high level of quality, efficiency and security in daily operations. There’s always going to be a high volume of people visiting your organization, which translates to many devices trying to connect. The fact is patients want both quality care AND service, so you can’t ensure patient satisfaction if you’re offering a slow connection or denying guest access. With so many options available in healthcare today, it is essential to stay competitive and keep patients happy. After all, you can’t afford to lose them. Is there a way around this predicament? How does a healthcare IT department go about handling it?
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The healthcare environment has been making a colossal evolution toward patient-centric care. As competition between the myriad of hospitals and care centers has become more fierce, healthcare organizations must step up and meet the demands of patients -- or risk losing them. That is why the model of patient-centered care is so crucial. With this shift in focus, however, comes a shift in how information must be delivered to meet the requirements of the new environment. Communication and data need to be transferred quickly and accurately through improved healthcare IT solutions. So, what steps should CIOs be taking to plan for a smooth and successful transition? Use the following four recommendations to help prepare for the emerging healthcare environment, enable your team to reach maximum levels of efficiency and provide the highest quality of patient care and service.
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Hiccups while running mundane applications. User headaches. Network administrator's nightmares ... these are a few of the symptoms of an unhealthy network. Network problems can cause a wide variety of problems, including slow or spotty connectivity, poor network performance, and low user satisfaction.
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To ensure your enterprise network achieves peak performance, enterprises must execute regular health checks on their IT infrastructure. Use this checklist to learn how to perform a health check on your enterprise network.
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So, you know that your wireless network needs to be upgraded and optimized, and you've heard of this thing called a "wireless site survey".What is that? How can it help you? What's involved? And perhaps the most important question: How will the site survey affect your daily operations? We're glad you asked! Here's what you can expect when you get a network survey.
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If businesses were ships, the business network would be the mast. No business gets where it's going nowadays without a well-working business network. Is yours delivering lots of latency, poor security, and user frustration, instead of steering the ship where it ought to go? Then your first step is a wired network assessment. What can such an assessment of your wired network do for your business? You'll be surprised!
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The years 2014 and 2015 were hard for businesses, as hackers made their way into databases that included countless financial records, government and military secrets, and highly sensitive and valuable proprietary information (think Sony and Ashley Madison). This year, hackers seemed to shift their focus, targeting medical organizations with a vengeance. By February, NBC news had declared that health care records hacking had "skyrocketed", jumping a mind-boggling 11,000 percent (nope -- not a typo) in a single year. If that doesn't make you want a network security audit to access your vulnerabilities, nothing will.
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It seems like for every good thing out there, there's a bad counterpart. Such is the case with tech support, which is a vital and valuable service that helps get your workers back to business after a virus, software crash, or hardware failure. Great tech support teams can improve the performance of the machines, remove adware, viruses, and other unwanted software (often called crapware or junkware), and even help you install new systems, software, and peripheral devices like printers and modems for greater employee efficiency.
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The world of networking is growing ever more complex. At the same time, businesses are more dependent on their networks than ever before. Connectivity is the lifeblood of the organization. Without it, it becomes impossible to be productive, service customers, or generate revenue. How long has it been since your network had a checkup? Like your own body, over time problems can crop up that, left unaddressed, can lead to disaster. A network assessment utilizes sophisticated tools and expertise to determine the vitality of your network, as well as to make sure your networking technology is poised to carry your business into the future. How can you tell if you need a network assessment? Here are several times when one is called for.
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By investing in a wired network assessment, enterprises can ensure they're getting the most out of their wired IT infrastructure while pinpointing assets and issues that are holding them back.
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A decade or two ago, the hacking community consisted mostly of a bunch of bored teenagers, with scant few high-level hackers capable of penetrating enterprise-grade security. For every Kevin Poulsen, you would find thousands of pimple-faced high school juniors hiding in their parents' basements killing time until their application to MIT got accepted. That is no longer the case.
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Business network security gets a bad rap for being expensive. Yet a single data breach, ransomware attack, or other security breach is more costly than many years' worth of good security. Too many businesses take a 'wait and see' approach to security, opting to address issues as they pop up instead of being proactive about security. Those businesses can expect to fork up $154 for every record that gets swiped, for an average cost of nearly $3.8 million per breach. Good, proactive security measures are far, far cheaper, and unlike the network security breach, there is no damage to your corporate reputation, no legal expenses, and no PR nightmares involved. Here are the steps to taking a proactive approach to business network security.
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'Global 2000' is a listing by Forbes of the top 2,000 public companies in the world. The list is released once per year, and is based on the company's performance in four areas: sales, profits, assets, and market value. The company ForeScout is one of Silicone Valley's tech businesses, specializing in networking security. ForeScout just released a new report, designed to assess the status of Global 2000 companies in terms of network security.
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There are essentially two types of companies today: those that have gone through the pain, anguish, and expense of a data breach, and those that will be going through it sometime in the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, there are businesses that fall into both camps, so just because you've been there, done that doesn't mean you're forever in the clear. Hackers don't write free passes to excuse you from being get targeted again.
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Hospitals are naturally attractive prey to hackers of all sorts. First, they hold vast databases filled with lots of patient information. This data is much richer than the data held by most financial institutions, because it includes all of the personal identifiable information for that person, as well as data on their family histories and a lot of financial information.
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Verizon Enterprise Solutions is a security product, designed to help clients respond to security breaches. As such, it naturally becomes the target for hackers who would love to slay the mightiest dragon in the land. One group of hackers has done so.
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The Apple OS X is known for being one of the most secure operating systems around. But mostnetwork security expertswill tell you, that's more about less malware affecting Apple systems than it is about system security. The fact is, the majority of business users are on either Linux or Windows operating systems. Hackers just don't have much pay dirt when it comes to Apple.
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At the end of each year, cyber security experts identify the threats that they believe to be most significant over the course of the next year. This year, a number of security specialists named ransomware as the threat to watch out for in 2016. Here is what ransomware is, why it's becoming a real threat, and how you can safeguard your business against it.
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Thanks to the rise of BYOD policies and cloud computing, shadow IT seems to be here to stay. But is it a threat to enterprise security, a boon to IT teams, or something in between?
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Business network security managers are probably ready to take a gigantic deep breath after 2014 and 2015. As soon as 2014 was unanimously declared the Year of the Data Breach, 2015 swarmed in and easily met (if not surpassed) its predecessor in terms of data breaches. What does 2016 hold? Well, the APTs, DDoS, and a good old-fashioned blunt force data breach are not yet out of vogue. But better security monitoring and incident response techniques mean that the hackers have to be a little more suave to be truly successful. Here's what to expect on both sides of the security fence this year.
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Enterprises seeking to improve network performance should start with a third-party network assessment. Here are the top 6 benefits.
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How important is business network security in your organization? Here are a few stats to consider before answering that question.
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The Internet was born and bred on university campuses. The free sharing and exchange of information is a natural fit in a learning and studying environment -- which is exactly what the Internet is all about. Unfortunately, networking security was born elsewhere and never got official adoption papers from American universities. Why is it such a challenge to keep university networks secure?
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In 2014 and 2015, breach after breach led to a torrent of numbers and statistics. Two million passwords leaked here, another million there... It all adds up! But as it happens, theft of your passwords may not be the most significant threat. Silly passwords and password management are a much worse threat, because hackers don't have to break in and steal those -- they can just simply guess them using an algorithm, or wait for the user to do something crazy and nab it while it's hot. Here are the top problems with weak passwords.
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This article originally appeared on the Palo Alto Networks Research Center blog. Please visit Here Are 5 Things Your Cybersecurity Team Must Do for more information on developing an end-to-end cybersecurity plan.
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It took some time, but the enterprise has finally begun adopting the cloud. In fact, about half of all large corporations have taken on at least some cloud-based services, and that number is climbing all the while. What has caused the change of heart? Here are the reasons the enterprise is finally learning to rely on the cloud.
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'The cloud' is not new. The foundation for today's cloud computing platforms was developed way back in 1969, and the modern concept of cloud-based applications (sometimes also called SaaS, or Software as a Service) was laid out in 1999. The product Salesforce was among the very first cloud-based software applications to make it to mass market, rolling out an SaaS CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution.
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Did you know that 90 percent of all large businesses have already faced a cyber attack of some kind? Worse, the effectiveness of these attacks have increased by an astounding 114 percent. In today's online environment, it isn't a matter of if your network will fall under attack; it is simply a matter of when, how bad it's going to be, and what you can do about it.
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An IT department is no longer something you can wait to add. From the infantile startup to the massive enterprise, IT equipment and services are essential. But the hardware and personnel aren't cheap, and in many environments, the right talent can be difficult to come by.
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Maintaining the network health of a wired network is one of the most important aspects of an IT department, regardless of the size of the company. As an increasing amount of business operations are digital, the reliability and stability of a company’s network can have a direct impact on the ability of a company to succeed. Typically, over 65% of the issues reported on a newly installed WiFi network point back to the wired network in some form. Additionally, today’s applications also require much more bandwidth across the network than even a few years ago.
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