“Effective listening is more than simply avoiding the bad habit of interrupting others while they are speaking or finishing their sentences. It's being content to listen to the entire thought of someone rather than waiting impatiently for your chance to respond.”

~ Richard Carlson, Author of “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff”, MacMilian Publishing Company

Cyber Advisors has once again made the annual CRN MSP 500 list in 2021. CEO Shane Vinup states, “I am extremely proud of the Cyber Advisors team and we are delighted to be recognized by CRN as a top 500 provider in the country. I am also thrilled to be named to the Security 100 category again. We continue to invest in security for ourselves and our customers.” Cyber Advisors recently attained SOC 2 certification and have drastically expanded our security offerings over the last 3-5 years.

Cyber Advisors is proud to announce that we have achieved our SOC 2 certification. Cyber Advisors has always taken our security seriously, but we felt that it was vital that this be validated by an outside organization. Cyber Advisors provides managed services, project services (including robust security services) and an extensive list of hardware, software and cloud solutions to our clients. As a managed service provider (MSP), we are sought out to help entities create and maintain a strong security posture - we don't want to introduce more risk to our clients' environments.

In the past year, many companies have focused much of their efforts to make remote working a reality. Often times, we are asked to assist our customers with strategies pertaining to making WFH more efficient, secure, comfortable, and pleasant. Most of our customers tell us that half of their day or more can consist of Teams, Zoom, or other methods of virtually meeting face to face. When virtual meetings become your primary in-person meeting method, it is very important to make lasting impressions with applying some virtual meeting etiquette. Below are some of the standards that we see many customers put in place.

In the world of next generation and emerging technology, Edge networking is unquestionably a hot topic. With 70% of the worlds data created at a network edge, IT professionals are challenged with what platforms of technology are needing to be implemented on your network edge or branch locations.

Not only do we have to think about branches. What about a farmer sending GPS data to the cloud for more accurate planting and fertilization? The Edge is among us, and let the challenges of securing and delivering maximum WAN performance at the edge is key. SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) is the latest platform in delivering a secure edge.

Microsoft perhaps buying TikTok is all over the news currently.  I am by no means willing to weigh in on how politics has surrounded this potential transaction and I am probably not the one in our organization to discuss the security implications of having TikTok on your phone.  

2020 National Standard Top Workplaces

Cyber Advisors has been named a 2020 National Standard Top Workplace by the Star Tribune!

Business Continuity Planning

It has been an interesting last few months. A common theme that we are seeing with our clients is that the Covid-19 pandemic has made business owners really scrutinize business continuity.  Some were caught without any pandemic plan.  Others had the plan, but it was outdated.  A select few had a good plan in place and are now on the recovery quicker than most other businesses.

We’re taking a modern approach to Business Continuity Planning. Our strategic businesses leaders and engineers have vetted out a solution to help our clients streamline their Business Continuity Planning. Plan4Continuity Business Continuity Planning is a dynamic Cloud based continuity planning solution that creates a new plan or converts manual and outdated business continuity processes into intelligent, automated workflows that can accelerate business continuity planning.

MFA or multifactor authentication was important even before a large group of us moved to working remotely.  Now that we are there, we are being targeted even more.  Brute force attacks have increased significantly targeting RDP as people moved themselves to their home offices.  Very targeted phishing campaigns have also increased as bad actors are using the COVID-19 situation to take advantages of our vulnerable state.  One option we can use to help mitigate a portion of that risk is deploying multi-factor authentication.

A lot has happened so far in 2020. If you are like most companies, you have quickly deployed a remote workforce. As we pivot into our new normal, we are having a lot of conversations about their Business Continuity Plans (BCP). In many instances, they simply didn’t exist or they need some work.  Let’s explore that a bit below.

I’ve spoken with some companies that implemented their existing Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and it went relatively well for them. They had the right policies, procedures, and stake holders in place and things for the most part were rolled out as planned.