Racksquared Updates and Insights

Working remotely isn't a new phenomenon, but what is new is everyone working remotely. With that sharp increase in remote workers comes several challenges. In a business-as-usual environment, the decision to begin a work-from-home program would take weeks or even months of planning. Once the plan was developed, the concept would be tested and slowly rolled out while leadership managed and monitored how it was changing the business.

This methodical, planned approach completely shifted with the pandemic. In March 2020, many companies took "work from home" from concept to production in a matter of days. This was done out of necessity, and it is likely that in the haste of immediate action, lots of details were missed. Now that work from home is a reality, here are three things that should be top of mind.

According to OWL Labs’s “State of Remote Work 2019” survey 30% of all full time employee are working from home up from 18% in 2018. What is unknown is how many companies have the capacity for larger amounts of people working remotely in the event of a disaster.

Disasters come in many shapes and size and as IT leaders, we have been tasked with developing disaster recovery (DR) plans that will minimize the risk for our companies. Through the years, this has meant getting good backups, making systems more resilient and reducing recovery time objectives. The focus on hardware and data has created systems that are very reliable but what many of these DR plans fail to consider is “how will my employees work if they are no longer able to go to the office?”.

“Ransomware damages are predicted to cost the world $11.5 billion in 2019, and $20 billion in 2021” according to ”Cyber Security Ventures 2019 Official Annual Cybercrime Report”. They go on to say that they predict that “a company will fall victim every 14 seconds by 2019, and every 11 seconds by 2021”. What many don’t realize is that these threats aren’t focused solely on large enterprises that can pay big ransoms, but instead take broad aim and seek to collect smaller ransoms from lots of companies. This focus on small to medium sized companies by hackers is often due to the fact that they have fewer security resources than their larger counterparts.

Is your business prepared in the event of a cyber threat? Worse yet, would you know how to react if something catastrophic were to happen to your company’s data. It’s a scary thought, however it’s important to have a plan in place to protect your business’s information. Thankfully, there are specific steps and custom IT solutions that you can implement to ensure your company’s data is as safe as possible. To get started, explore the 3 helpful tips below to better guard your data this year.

Picture this: you walk into the office on Monday morning after enjoying a great weekend, and login to your company’s computer system. Instantly, you can tell something is wrong. Several of the files you frequently use for your job are gone!

Although it’s normal to feel a sense of panic when this happens, try to remain calm. Data disaster recovery, while overwhelming, doesn’t have to mean the end of the world for your business. In the event of a cyber threat, an internal mishap with your business’s data, or a natural disaster, there are several steps you can take to get your company back on track and operating smoothly again.

If your business is ready to take data security more seriously this year, implementing cloud backup is a great place to start. There are several important benefits of cloud services. When you back up your information in the cloud, you’re ensuring that your company’s documents, contracts, spreadsheets and more are protected if the original copy gets misplaced at the office. You’re also protecting yourself if documents are destroyed in the event of a natural disaster such as flooding or a fire.

Moving your data to the cloud doesn’t have to be an overwhelming process. Discover three easy steps to get started today.

If you’re considering outsourcing some of your company’s IT responsibilities, we understand that the process of finding the ideal proactive data center partner can seem a little daunting. You may be wondering which specific elements to look for in a data center partner, or how to get started in your search. The good news is that we can help.

As a business, it can be challenging to predict where a company's infrastructure will be five years down the road. That's why many companies are choosing to partner with a colocation provider.

In today’s modern world, digital innovations are enabling healthcare organizations across the globe to reduce cost, boost competitiveness, while also allowing quick access to data in real-time. With the introduction of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, we’ve seen a complete shift in the past decade with more and more healthcare organizations investing in technology and services to protect their company’s data.

IT systems these days are so critical to the success of any business, but even with the conveniences afforded by technological advancements, many companies don’t have a disaster recovery plan in place should they experience unplanned downtime. According to the State of Global Disaster Recovery Preparedness Annual Report, 57% of IT professionals surveyed have had at least one system outage in the past three months and 60% of companies don’t have a fully documented disaster recovery plan. Organizations need to prepare for everything from natural disasters to cyber-attacks.