Tag: information technology

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Microsoft 365: Stay Updated or Lose Connectivity and Support

Microsoft Office is a staple of business software, setting the standard for productivity applications across the globe. Unfortunately, popularity often means “target” and the bad guys out there are gunning for your system, looking for vulnerabilities they can exploit. This is among the reasons to make sure your Office applications are staying up-to-date with the latest fixes and security features. The easiest way to do this is to turn on automatic updating for Windows via Microsoft Update so that your system gets Office updates for earlier versions of Office you might have installed, such as Office 2010 or an Office volume license install.

Security updates aren’t the only reasons to keep your systems up to date. Sometimes an update addresses compatibility with other applications or services. In recent days, Microsoft has reminded businesses of the roadmap for Microsoft 365 services where certain versions of the Office and Microsoft 365 applications will stop communicating with the Office 365 and Microsoft 365 services.

Microsoft Outlook for Windows

Effective as of November 1, 2021, older versions of Outlook for Windows (starting with Outlook 2007), will be unable to connect with Office 365 and Microsoft 365 services, including hosted Exchange mailboxes. Versions that are only a little bit out of date might work, but are likely to experience connectivity issues with the back-end services. Here’s the list of retired versions of Outlook for Windows:

  • Office 2007 All Versions
  • Office 2010 All Versions
  • Office 2013 Versions prior to 15.0.4971.1000 of Office 2013 (Service Pack 1 with the October 2017 Update)
  • Office 2016 MSI Versions prior to 16.0.4600.1000 of Office 2016 (With the November 2017 Update, KB 4051890)
  • Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise;(formerly Office 365 ProPlus) 1705 and older
  • Microsoft 365 Apps for business(formerly Office 365 Business) 1705 and older

OneDrive sync on Windows

Microsoft is now aligning the OneDrive sync on Windows systems with the Windows operating system support lifecycle policy.  In short, OneDrive sync on Windows will only be supported on supported versions of Windows beginning in January 1, 2022, If your version of Windows is no longer being supported, then the OneDrive sync on those machines will no longer receive updates or fixes of any sort.

  • Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 will be supported until January 10, 2023
  • Windows 8 reached end of support on January 12, 2016

If you are running the OneDrive sync app on Windows 8.1, you will no longer receive feature updates but will receive security fixes until January 10, 2023.

If you are running the OneDrive sync app on Windows 7 (and are participating in the Extended Security Update (ESU) program), you will continue to receive critical and important security updates until January 10, 2023. Extended Security Updates don’t include new features, customer-requested non-security updates, or design change requests.

If you are running the OneDrive sync app on Windows 8, you will no longer receive updates or fixes of any kind, as Windows 8 is no longer supported.

Businesses concerned with keeping their systems up and running should take care to ensure that PCs and servers are updated with current, supported operating systems and application software. Ignoring PC updates and Windows upgrades can create unnecessary disruption and leads to lost productivity and lost profits. For PCs, Windows 10 or 11 is the OS to be running. For Windows servers, Server 2019 is the most current version.

Mendelson Consulting’s NOOBEH Cloud Services team knows how important it is to keep your core operating software and applications current, compatible and supported. That’s why we only deploy modern servers and current operating systems on the Microsoft Cloud platform, ensuring our hosted clients have the foundation they need to keep workers performing and operations running.

jm bunny feetMake Sense?

J

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Direct-to-Consumer Causing Manufacturing Logistics Issues

Manufacturers have traditionally been positioned as a link in the long chain of supply. Somewhere between raw materials and finished products is where the manufacturer exists, transforming the materials into products that can be resold via distributors and wholesalers.

The supply chain was linear and relatively predictable, but that is all changing. With the introduction of broad internet connectivity, web-based services, large e-commerce platforms and increasingly innovative and competitive new logistics players, the supply chain is becoming a spiderweb of connectivity and communication, with linear approaches out the window and, to some extent, predictability along with it.

The economy we have today is an environment where customers demand more direct and personal approaches, and producers are being forced to find ways to accommodate. With the huge e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Alibaba, along with more direct-to-consumer channels, manufacturers are being turned into direct-to-consumer suppliers. Acting as drop shippers for the seller, the manufacturer isn’t shipping bulk or volume to distributors or wholesalers but smaller shipments direct to the consumer.

Many retail stores have now become more fulfillment locations than the place where the customer buys. This is causing tremendous change in logistics tools and approaches because the size of shipments is becoming smaller while the number of deliveries – and delivery locations – is only increasing.

Customers can go right to the brand’s website and buy direct, driving increased focus on building brand value and improving the overall customer experience. With the demand from consumers for flexibility in how and where they buy, retailers have shifted their approaches to bring e-commerce into the brick-and-mortar stores. This is where online and offline sales channels come together, creating pressure in ordering and fulfillment systems to offer the flexibility and experience consumers want.

While this converged channel model requires businesses to make new and continued investments in e-commerce and digital solutions to enable the flow of orders and information, it also delivers several potential benefits to the business, including the ability to better manage growing customer expectations, better compete in the digital marketplace, and address disruptions in the supply chain by having alternative options.

Delivering the goods has always been an operational challenge, with success often measured in performance and cost. Today’s marketplace requires more agility and flexibility, which means the role of supply chain managers is more strategic than ever. Simple logistics now has a direct impact on the customer’s decision to buy now, as well as buying again later.

jm bunny feetMake Sense?

J

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Cybersecurity Terms Every Business Owner Should Know, and Zombies are Bad

The world of cybersecurity constantly changes, making ongoing education the key to understanding the threats businesses face and how to possibly deal with them.

Cybersecurity is often defined as a set of techniques for protecting an organization’s digital infrastructure – the networks, systems, and applications – from being compromised by attackers and other threat actors. Cybersecurity is comprised of the efforts to design, implement, and maintain security for any organization network which is connected to the Internet.

Cybersecurity is made up of the technology, people, and processes which create strategies to protect sensitive data, ensure business continuity, and safeguard against financial loss.

To understand what cybersecurity entails, it is important to have a basic understanding of the relevant terminology.

Starting with a few that are frequently misused, here are some cybersecurity terms to add to your business vocabulary.

Data are the bits and bytes. When multiple bits and bytes are combined, they make up information. Knowledge is required to turn information into action.

A threat is the possibility that something bad that might happen, while a risk includes the probability of the bad thing happening and the possible result.

Risk Management is the process of responding to the possibility that something bad might happen. Traditionally, there are four options for managing risk in the business: accept it, transfer it to someone else, avoid it altogether, or mitigate it (reduce the severity).  To manage cybersecurity risk, many businesses establish requirements or controls to identify activities, processes, practices, or capabilities an organization may have. Controls may or may not be mandatory, but requirements generally are.

Information Security, or Information Assurance, is the protection of facts, news, knowledge, or data in any form. Information Assurance is an important aspect of preserving business resources and is often combined with cybersecurity, although it isn’t squarely in that area. Where cyber addresses digital, information security must also address non-digital such as paper, human knowledge or memorized, stone tablets, pictures, and signals or whatever.

Authentication is the process of proving an individual is who they say they are (claiming an identity and then proving it), whereas authorization is the use of access controls to determines and enforces what authenticated users are permitted to do within a computer system. Access Controls are the means and mechanisms of managing access to and use of resources by users.

Audits, in cybersecurity, are usually performed after a security incident. In general, an audit is an official inspection of some type. An assessment is often more like a health check for gauging capability or status. Audits may be performed internally or by outside entities. Compliance is meeting a requirement, whether internal or external. Sometimes these are regulatory requirements where a certification or attestation of some type is shown. Both audits and assessments may be required to be compliant with certain standards or designations.

A cyberattack is any attempt to violate the security perimeter of a logical environment. This could be a single computer system, a local or wide-area network, a cloud server, etc. – whatever is within your “perimeter” and is interconnected with your systems, regardless of location in the physical world. Cyberespionage, on the other hand, is the unlawful and unethical act of violating the privacy and security of an organization for the purposes of leaking data or disclosing internal, confidential, or private information.

And then there’s malware (malicious software), which includes any code that is written for the specific purpose of causing harm, disclosing information or in some other way violating the security or stability of a system. The malware category includes lots of different types of terrible and potentially damaging programs including virus, worm, Trojan horse, logic bomb, backdoor, Remote Access Trojan (RAT), rootkit, ransomware, and spyware/adware and more.

To better-secure your systems, multi-factor or two-factor authentication is suggested. Multi-(multiple) factor and two-factor authentication are a means of verifying a “claimed” identity using two or more types of proof (authentication factors). The password is typically the initial proof provided, and the other factor/method might be SMS to your phone or possibly an authenticator app.

For example: You claim that the email address is your identity, and you verify that by entering your password. That is one “factor” that proves your identity. But if your password gets hacked or revealed, it would be good to have another layer of protection on that login. Two is better than one in this case; MFA (multi-factor) and 2FA (two-factor) authentication is considered stronger than any single factor authentication and requires another method (factor) of identification to prove your identity.

Finally, there are zombies. Yes, Zombies. This is a term that relates to the concept of a malicious network of “bots” (a botnet). Botnets are made up of poor, innocent computers that are compromised by malicious code so that they can run remote control or other agents. The agents give the attackers the ability to use the system’s resources to do nefarious things, like perform illicit or criminal actions. The zombie can be the system that hosts the malware agent of the botnet, or it could be the malware agent itself. Either way, zombies are bad.

Security is an essential consideration for every business, and the Internet and the interconnected design of today’s technology has made things so much more complicated. The most important thing is to be aware of the threat and how that landscape is changing, and to educate team members so that everyone in the company participates in keeping the system, and the business, protected.

jm bunny feetMake Sense?

J

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Considering Cybersecurity as Cloud Work Expands

When the pandemic forced many business users to move to remote work, it also forced the network security “boundary” to expand greatly and with great speed. Companies quickly adapted their tools and work so that it could be done somewhat effectively even as the employee working environment changed.  But new security models to match with new working models have not as quickly been adopted.

Business cloud workloads grew, by some estimates, as much as 20% just in the first 6 months of 2020. Yet many of those businesses electing to bring cloud working models to their business also made of the mistake of not expanding their security as they expanded the cloud network. This leaves systems and information vulnerable. Phishing, ransomware, credential theft and web app attacks have increased, catching businesses in their vulnerable states.

“In April to June of 2020 alone, security incidents increased by 188%.”

Even more than on-premises systems, it was the external cloud-based data and applications that were under attack because so many companies expanded their use of cloud services without enhanced security as part of the plan. Any expansion to include the cloud as network also significantly increases security risks. One report found that 35% of businesses made their cloud storage openly accessible to the public, allowing anyone to access it via the internet.

Don’t let your critical information be exposed or put at risk. When you begin using a cloud service, make sure to also address security for the new working mode or it could lead to lost or leaked information or a system breach.

Mendelson Consulting and NOOBEH cloud services take security very seriously. We help our clients keep their applications and data working properly and have a focus on methods to keep information safe regardless of what cloud you work on.

jm bunny feetMake Sense?

J

1 ( https://duo.com/blog/growing-security-safely-in-canada )

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Building A Solid Foundation for Business Cybersecurity

The cybersecurity threat landscape has changed dramatically in the last few years. No longer primarily a big-business concern, cybersecurity has become a key focus of businesses small and large. Attacks on SMBs are on the rise, perhaps because they represent a plentiful and often easy target. And the cost of damage and disruption to business just keeps going up.

Cybersecurity is not a problem you can simply throw a bunch of money and tools at to fix.

No matter how much great software or fancy systems you implement, the people will always be a big part of the equation. The root cause of over half the data breaches reported is a result of negligent employees or contractors.

That means that nearly half of all attacks are being executed through phishing or social engineering. The only tool you can apply to this problem is education. Efforts should be focused on security awareness and training workers to be more cautious to the point of almost being paranoid. Better to be safe than sorry in this case.

Training workers to be more careful as they work with emails, documents and websites is part of it, but there is much more to making sure the business is addressing the entire cybersecurity issue. NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) offers a wide variety of information and guides that businesses can use to learn more about and implement cybersecurity practices. Among these resources is the Cybersecurity Framework.

According to NIST, “the Framework focuses on using business drivers to guide cybersecurity activities and considering cybersecurity risks as part of the organization’s risk management processes.” It is a highly useful tool in helping the business align and prioritize activities with business requirements, risk tolerances and resources. The standard framework includes elements that are consistent and common across sectors and critical infrastructure, so it can be oriented to any business.

Even if the business is not prepared to delve into the details of a comprehensive cybersecurity policy and guideline, a basic outline and approach cannot be avoided without asking for disaster.

Putting this squarely into the Risk Management category, there is an ongoing process of identifying, assessing, and responding to risk situations or conditions. To manage the risk, businesses need to consider the likelihood that an event will occur and what the potential impact is as a result.

Knowing the acceptable level of risk for reaching the business objective is the risk tolerance. If a business understands its risk tolerance, the company can prioritize cybersecurity activities and make informed decisions about cybersecurity expenditures.

There are five key functions to consider as it relates to cybersecurity risk: Identification, Protection, Detection, Response and Recovery. How the business addresses each of these in the context of the systems and activities is essentially the business’s cybersecurity posture, a high-level and somewhat strategic view of the organization’s management of cybersecurity risk.

The key to building a solid foundation for  business cybersecurity practice is to establish a platform where all the business applications and data can be identified and access secured.

User desktops, productivity applications, operational software and business data can be hosted on private cloud servers, allowing the business to fully-manage data and application access. The server-based model reduces or eliminates the need to sync data to devices, and remote desktops keep user environments secure, patched and up-to-date.

Our consultants can’t write your cybersecurity policies or determine your risk tolerance, but we can help implement a solution that improves fault tolerance, resilience, and recovery.

Make Sense?

J

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For Accounting Professionals: Private Hosted Solutions and Helping Clients Cope with the New Normal

Accounting professionals have an opportunity right now to help their business clients through the difficulties presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. With work-from-home mandates and increasingly fluid reporting requirements to support grants, loans and loan forgiveness, business owners need all the support and good advice they can get.

The global pandemic is changing the landscape of business worldwide. Many small businesses in the US have either closed or are on the brink, looking for ways to keep the doors open and employees paid. Supply chains are strained, distribution has slowed, and workers are being asked to work from home if possible.

These are challenging times, but the guidance and support you can provide to your business clients can be just what they need to help keep the doors open and workers producing. Remote access, cloud hosted applications and data, and real-time accounting support and management reporting are the weapons you and your clients will use to fight the conditions that are currently working against you both.

Help your clients deploy cloud hosting services for their entire business.

Running applications and storing data on an in-house network increases the cost and complexity of supporting a remote or mobile workforce, for you and for your clients.

Remote access and supporting work from home requires that users have the means to communicate with each other and to collaborate on the work. Tools to support communication and collaboration are critical when the workforce is distributed, operating from a variety of locations and with whatever device is available. Yet business owners, operators and managers may find that collaboration apps and other online tools don’t provide access to the applications and data required to do all their work.

To address the problem of working on client data, some accountants may install the client software and copy the data to their own in-house networks. This creates a situation where the accountant is paying for computing resources, space and management of client applications and data in addition to their own. This increases the cost of internal operations for the accounting firm and can impact internal system performance while also reducing overall productivity.

More to the point, this model only supports doing after-the-fact work for the client, which results in the data and reporting being outdated and far less useful to the client in supporting daily decision-making. This model also does nothing to help the firm with their own possible work-from-home needs even as IT support and on-site service becomes more limited.

Accounting professionals wanting to provide services to clients proactively rather than reactively must have real time access to the same applications and data that the client uses. The old fallback to remote control solutions is one approach, yet it is not really an optimum solution to the problem.

Remote control, like PCAnywhere, GoToMyPC or LogMeIn expose the professional to more of the client computing environment than is necessary, introducing risk and the potential for blame if something goes wrong. And remote-control solutions are single user, reducing productivity because the client can’t use their system while the accountant controls the computer. RC solutions also rely on the availability and function of the on-premises systems. If the on-prem systems aren’t turned on, up and running and accessible, then the remote user can’t connect.

It may be that online or web-based applications are an option, but for many businesses they aren’t really a viable solution. QuickBooks Online is simplified software and is not appropriate or usable for many businesses. The QBO subscription model is per-company, limiting options and reducing cost-efficiency for businesses with multiple entities. And QBO doesn’t address other business needs, such as working with documents and reports, and it can’t provide any access or support for other business applications. Even the ability to backup and preserve data is very limited without specialized services and tools.

Shared hosting service might be closer to the right answer, yet shared hosting is generally only useful for very small organizations and supports only core QuickBooks functions, so it can be as restrictive QBO. Shared infrastructure used by the shared hosting platforms can also introduce significant risk to every business on the platform because ransomware and malware can easily move through connected file systems and servers.

Compare shared services to a public pool where it is very easy to transmit from one person to another; in these networks an intrusion can end up spreading malware to the entire network and platform, resulting in days or even weeks of outages. Unfortunately, disaster recovery is often limited to recovery of the provider hosting platform and does not always include recovery of all customer data.

The best solution for business is private, managed cloud hosting service delivered on a trusted and proven platform like Microsoft Azure.

Hosting service that takes advantage of the Microsoft Azure cloud  platform allows the business to centralize access to all their important applications and data, making it possible to provide complete application functionality for all users no matter where they are located.

Using the Azure platforms means that security, fault tolerance, scalability and agility are designed into the solution rather than being extras from the hosting provider. Microsoft-managed datacenters and Microsoft-managed hardware means the experts in systems and security are handling the big stuff while the service provider focuses on what the client needs.

The virtualization technology enables the agility to meet changing business needs, scaling systems up or down if necessary. Massively scalable platform allows services to be right sized now without concern for future resource requirements (no buying ahead based on possible future needs). There are no arbitrary limitations placed on the applications or services the business needs to run on the cloud platform, and no fees for running more apps.

Making all the applications and data available to workers, when and where they need them, is the key to promoting higher levels of productivity while delivering the data management needs to support daily decision-making.

Now that you have access, provide pro-active support and help business owners and managers make the right decisions.

Better data and reporting to support business and finance management is more important than ever, especially when having the right information can mean the difference between keeping the doors open and closing shop for good. Whether the goal is to shore up finances to keep employees on staff or to create a cushion to help weather supply chain disruptions, businesses owners need quality financial and performance data in order to make the right decisions for the company.

Once the accounting professional has real-time access to client systems, they can work cooperatively in the data to ensure that the right information is available when it is needed. As business owners seek to take advantage of grants and loan programs available due to the pandemic, the financial and other performance data becomes even more essential in terms of developing qualification and eventually forgivability of the loan.

With timely access, proper reporting tools and regular support and oversight, business owners benefit from a closer working relationship with their accounting professionals. The additional support and proactive service is more necessary now than ever. For the accounting pro, an elevated relationship with client is being developed, where the services provided become more meaningful and the value of those services more evident.

Make sense?

J