Tag Archives: IT Strategy

The Role of Cloud Computing in Modern IT Services

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Did you know a small business in Calgary can compete with big businesses? Or that a local IT service provider in Alberta can offer services that rival global giants? The secret sauce is cloud computing.

It’s not some mystical entity in the sky but a transformative technology reshaping how we manage, process, and store data. This article will delve into the role of cloud computing in modern IT services. So, are you ready to demystify the cloud and understand how it’s powering our digital transformation?

Let’s dive in! Continue reading →

When Things Go Wrong: How to Build a Solid Troubleshooting Protocol

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woman stressed sitting a laptop

Did you know there are about 15 to 50 errors per 1000 lines of delivered code? As a result, it’s becoming more crucial to have proper troubleshooting procedures in place.

Customer service usually fails because your representatives aren’t ready to solve every problem. Therefore, businesses need to create customer service protocols to prevent failures when things go wrong.

Troubleshooting refers to the method used to solve problems. Companies should establish a troubleshooting protocol for both customer service and employees.

Without practical solutions, customers will start looking elsewhere for their needs. Keep reading to learn how to build a solid troubleshooting process. Continue reading →

How to Implement a Data Protection Strategy: A Guide

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Did you know the cybersecurity consulting industry is worth $15 billion?

Ensuring data privacy for your business is one of the most prominent challenges organizations face nowadays, but it’s also one of the easiest to implement a plan for. You can’t permanently eliminate the risk of internal or external threats, but you can create a data protection strategy that helps keep everyone involved protected.

Read on to learn how to do precisely that.

Why Is Having a Data Protection Strategy Important?

Having a reliable way to protect the data that your business encounters is essential to building trust with your customers. When you have a solid plan, you demonstrate trustworthiness, transparency, and integrity. Those three components are vital to building a solid rapport with your clientele.

An essential part of creating a strategy is the components needed to ensure its success.

1. Explore Your Business’s Data Map

The first step to developing a data protection strategy is mapping how data travels to and from your business system.

That means determining where your current data exists, who has access to it, and who holds control of that access. You may have one person who handles this data or an entire department, but mapping out the process will simplify your entire data map, meaning consistency on your end.

2. Identify Risks

Once you’ve mapped out your business’s data, the next step is to evaluate potential risks.

As you go through this process, you will likely notice inefficiencies and weaknesses in your overall data structure. Identifying them allows you to understand your system’s vulnerabilities and then take steps to respond to those threats.

This can be done through data loss prevention, tightening up data access management, encryption protocols, and learning to anticipate potential threats.

3. Know Your Priorities

Next, what are your priorities? Look at your company’s weakest links and move those to the top of this list.

Having a decent idea of what your company’s security requirements look like is also essential. This will depend on the sort of data your business stores and processes, which will differ from industry to industry.

Some areas might have regulations you must follow, so it’s essential to conduct thorough research or hire a professional to help you with this step. If you have a legal department, you can also turn to them for help.

4. Start With Privacy

Once you have all the necessary components, you will bring them all together to create your company’s privacy policy. This policy will likely affect your company’s overall objectives, operations, and plans. So it’s vital to ensure it embodies the voice and culture your company aims to have.

A few basic things you should include are:

  • Basic data privacy principles
  • Common procedures
  • Definition of roles and their different responsibilities

How your company goes about these procedures will depend on its day-to-day tasks, but it should at least include some standard practices that your employees regularly carry out.

5. Get Organized

Separating sensitive data into different tiers within your digital infrastructure is a great way to start creating your privacy policy. This can help you optimize some processes based on security clearance or urgency. It’s wise to figure out which data poses the highest risk for mishandling and then work your way down to organize it.

It’s also crucial to figure out which teams are going to have access to the most sensitive data as soon as possible so they can be educated on the process and also so they can be given a chance to help create the process. This isn’t essential, but it’s something you might find effective throughout the creation process.

6. Initiate Data Protection

Once you know the parties involved in your data protection plan, the next step is educating them on the plan itself.

You can hire or appoint an internal team to educate staff or bring in an outside professional to get the job done for you. While most of your employees will only need an understanding of the basics, some teams like your IT staff, cyber security team, legal, HR, and auditors will need specialist training that might be best suited for an expert.

7. Monitoring and Compliance

Once you have your data protection strategy in place, it’s time to take steps to ensure that your data remains protected. That means continuous monitoring for compliance risks and chances of improvement.

If your business carries out annual risk assessments, including data privacy in this plan is a great idea. Continuous monitoring is essential for ensuring internal and external compliance, and it helps you remain trustworthy in the eye of your clients.

This can be done through an occasional re-evaluation of who has access to sensitive data and regular security checks to ensure no holes are left unplugged.

Ready to Implement Your Own Data Protection Strategy?

Now that we’ve walked you through the process, are you ready to build your data protection strategy? However, ensuring you have the best technology at your disposal is essential. That’s where we come in.

At Hemi IT Solutions, our biggest priority is helping you stay connected and productive throughout the workday; that effort shows in every step of our process.

Let Hemi IT Solutions help you set up a Data Protection Strategy!

Cloud Data Protection: How Does It Work and Why Do You Need It?

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You’re working and need to open up some files to review and share. But there’s one issue. The file is gone. It takes almost an hour to realize that the file you were looking for was in a different folder.

This makes you realize that you need to find a better way to organize and ensure the safety of your data. Who knows how many files could be lost or stolen? Human error is always bound to happen.

By 2025, the cloud industry is expected to be valued at $800 billion. That’s where cloud data protection comes in. Cloud security can improve workflow and efficiency for your company.

But how does it work? Why do you need it? Read on if you’d like to know more about it.

What Is Cloud Data Protection?

As data protection is part of a much more significant concept of the cloud, you must first be able to identify that a cloud service with a provider is a need. The more prominent subject is cloud computing, where servers are built to store tons of data.

These servers can be on-site (owned by your business), partnered with a third-party organization, or hybrid.

On-site requires lots of spending on hardware, IT teams, managing expenses – all the company’s functions. If using a third party, that cloud service provider will take care of everything mentioned earlier. With a hybrid route, your company gets the benefit of transferring data to more locations, thus having more flexibility and security – but with a much higher expense.

Now that you know the basics of cloud computing, cloud data protection comes in.

IT support specialists are the backbone of cloud data protection. They’re in charge of constantly maintaining and updating software and security. However, with that comes costs, which you don’t have to worry about if you’re utilizing a third-party cloud service.

The protection includes data backup, traffic monitoring, and other layers of security like firewalls and encrypted files.

Services Offered

There are multiple data protection services suited for your needs. Cloud data protection is excellent whether your business focuses on streaming services, selling software, or needing better organization.

Here is what cloud service providers can offer:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Great for organizing your company data, IaaS is the “starter” for renting servers, networking, and storage. Here’s where you can learn more about server infrastructure.

Platform as a Service (PaaS): Platforms offer tools that can assist your company in researching and developing products and testing them out. AI can also provide excellent data analysis tools.

Software as a Service (SaaS): This is used for companies that want to provide software to customers. It can be like selling an operating system or Dropbox’s feature of transferring files with ease.

Cloud data protection is provided for all these services and can be constantly monitored. This is how it can benefit your business.

How It Works

Files and other data are stored in physical warehouses, on-site or with a third-party cloud service. For third-party services, these warehouses will contain servers where all the files go through the internet – but don’t worry, it’s highly secure and off-limits to many people.

This also deters cybercriminals from stealing information from your business.

Your company will have to contact a cloud service to determine what you need to start this. You build that partner relationship and utilize each other’s services.

Why Use Cloud Data Protection?

Cloud data provides excellent security. However, it’s also affordable and flexible for your company. It can also help you get more organized, significantly benefiting your business.

Cheaper

Maintaining your servers, networks, and IT specialists can cost a lot of money. Servers can easily foot over $100,000 in bills from setup and maintenance.

You can reduce the costs by hiring a third-party servicer. They can handle all the expenses related to hardware and IT specialists.

Flexible

Cloud data services offer a wide array of flexibility for your business. Depending on the size of your company, you can choose to pay for what fits your needs when you need to grow or reduce.

For example, if you need more storage because your company is expanding, you must contact your cloud servicer. They can help you through the process and let you pay for what you need.

Organized

Cloud data protection offers ways to keep your company organized. Monitoring your files and data means knowing who has permission to access them and who isn’t allowed the privilege. That also means you will quickly identify when a cybercriminal is trying to break in.

If that happens, the system can notify the cloud servicer, and their IT specialists will ensure to lock the cybercriminal out of the system.

Since security and organizing data synergize together, it enables your company to work in a fast and timely manner without negative pressure, thus saving you time and money.

Other Benefits

Another plus is the ability to budget for more in the future since you will save so much by switching to a cloud service. Instead of spending that $100,000+ on hardware and data, you can use that money to focus on other aspects of your business, such as focusing on developing more products rather than maintaining servers.

Time equals money. In addition to saving money, your company saves time because of the speeds the cloud can provide. It also gives you more time to work on other critical operations like data analysis and research.

Cloud Data Protection and the Future

We expect about 70% of companies to switch over to the cloud by 2023. This means that more budgets will be placed on cloud protection.

Data protection will surely be a top priority if most data is in the cloud, like storage getting cheaper as the years go by; security can also become more affordable as it grows, and it becomes easier to protect your data.

Exploring Your Options

By learning about cloud data protection, we can conclude how it works and why you need it. Data is secured in off-site locations away from people, making it harder to steal.

Cloud data protection offers benefits like cheaper costs and flexibility. It also improves the speeds at which data can be stored and transferred, improving security.

Do you need to need to switch to the cloud and have your data protected?