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How Finance Companies are Navigating Digital Transformation

August 20, 2018 by The Christine Advantage dba TCS

Digital transformation is a central focus of organizations that recognize its potential for helping them reshape business processes and get ahead of their competition. From improvements in productivity to enhancements in customer experience and subscription-based cloud applications, there are many facets to the benefits that an enterprise can experience.

In the finance sector, digital transformation is allowing enterprises to streamline operations and expand processes without hiring additional personnel. A reportpublished by the Financial Executives Research Foundation and Robert Half compiled the results of 1,700 responses to a survey of financial leaders on their perceptions of how digital transformation impacts their roles and their broader organizations. The survey included participants from both public and private organizations across the United States and Canada.

Over half (59%) of American respondents said they’ll be able to keep their staff size stable thanks to digital transformation. This is thanks to the automation of a variety of processes, including data collection, invoicing, report generation, compliance, and storage for documents. Many of these companies also have plans to automate areas like forecasting and financial planning in the near future.

A shortage of technical talent: Digital transformation also impacts staffing. Retaining technical staff is critical as organizations move to automate their financial processes, and there’s a definite push to implement engagement measures and pursue strategies that capture what’s important to employees and subsequently offer those benefits.

The greatest demand tends to be among candidates that have skills related to data analytics, with 19% of respondents indicating that this is the area they are often struggling to fill. Employees with experience in deploying enterprise resource planning (ERP) are the second most sought after. Other skills that are highly valued by financial organizations are those related to collaboration and communications.

Interim staff fills the gap: It’s common for financial enterprises to hire outside talent for a range of tasks, from everyday filing to consultants that can advise on system architecture and the best applications of data analytics. In the United States, 33% of financial leaders indicate that they have used interim staff, while in Canada 41% rely on interim assistance. The most common areas where temporary help is utilized is in accounts receivable, accounts payable and general accounting.

Technology streamlines processes for financial enterprises through digital transformation, but these organizations have a persistent gap when it comes to skilled strategy and communication to effectively mobilize the data that results from better processes.

Connecting financial enterprises with the right tools for digital transformation helps them move forward, improving performance, agility and productivity. To learn more, contact us at TeleConsult.

Hybrid WAN Solves Network Challenges

August 6, 2018 by The Christine Advantage dba TCS

Enterprises are increasingly employing hybrid solutions for their IT environments, with both on-premise and cloud solutions combined to create an optimized solution. The hybrid concept is also influencing the wide area network (WAN), with disparate technologies coming together to solve some common network challenges.

The hybrid WAN uses a combination of links to service different types of data transmissions, favoring reliable connections like multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) for mission-critical data. Less-critical transmissions can be handled with public internet or another lower-cost option.

Optimizing with software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN): The effective management of the hybrid WAN requires an additional technology that can provide a central management console for the network. SD-WAN provides a virtual overlay that allows for business policy to be set so each type of data transmission can be assigned to a different connection pathway.

When a user opens an application, they don’t want to know what type of pathway their transmissions will access. The best SD-WAN solutions carry out these policies automatically and the user never has any information about how their email, video conference or voice call is being transmitted. They simply know that it’s been delivered successfully.

Remote deployment: One benefit of a software-defined approach to the hybrid WAN is the ability to reduce the costs and resources that come with travel out to a branch location. Worse yet, network administrators must often walk a non-technical staff member out at a branch location through a complex network troubleshooting session.

With SD-WAN, remote devices are connected to the network and then it can automatically be configured according to predetermined policies set up by the administrators.

A hybrid solution extends all the way to each end user’s device and applies to a wide variety of equipment including routers and security devices. In addition, SD-WAN can be applied in situations with existing equipment, allowing an enterprise to gradually integrate their networks into a hybrid WAN solution. The virtual overlay makes it possible to take into account the existing hardware and create a cohesive network environment.

With a hybrid WAN, network operators are able to use a combination of MPLS and internet connections to create the right mix of performance, reliability and cost. As networks increase the number of endpoints through branch expansion, Internet of Things (IoT), and increased data flows from cloud solutions, a WAN approach that allows for optimization of transmissions is appealing to enterprises.

Through hybrid WAN, enterprises also enjoy a security approach that allows for the segregation of network traffic based on application, user or transmission type, making it easier to identify and isolate a suspected breach.

Network operators also have access to detailed analytics providing insight into traffic, congestion and optimization, giving them the opportunity to switch from automated settings to a proactive management of traffic concerns.

Find out if hybrid WAN is right for your particular network environment when you contact us at TeleConsult. We’d like to hear more about your business and identify the right solutions for your network needs.

The Benefits of a Cloud Phone System for Small Businesses

July 23, 2018 by The Christine Advantage dba TCS

Starting a small business means wearing a lot of hats. Not only do you need to have a vision for your company, but you are also likely juggling different priorities in your budget. For a lot of small business owners, a phone system seems like a luxury, but using personal cell phones for business purposes can seem a bit unpolished to potential customers.

The cloud solution: One of the benefits of cloud technology is that it has acted as the great equalizer between big and small companies. Because it features a subscription-based pay model, even the smallest companies are able to purchase only the number of users they need, while still having access to the latest features that help them edge out the competition.

A cloud phone system is easy to access, in many cases only requiring that you download an app on your cell phone. It can assign a single phone number from your business that will then route calls to the appropriate person. You can set up other options such as the ability to have calls routed from your cell phone to an answering service if you don’t catch the call within a certain time frame.

The use of this type of cloud phone system can help mask the fact that you’re a small business, so that you don’t scare away potential clients that might interpret the use of a personal cell phone as evidence that you cannot handle their project. It can also prevent a customer from getting frustrated when they can’t figure out how to reach the right department in your company, or being confused when they are staring at a list of 12 contacts with 12 different numbers and don’t know where to start.

One of the benefits of using a cloud phone service is the analytics that churn from this type of technology. You can find out whether or not your calls really did increase after you invested in a billboard, or if there are certain times of the week or year when you tend to receive a lot of contact.

The cloud answering service: This is another tool that serves small businesses well. Investing in a cloud answering service helps you offer superior service, without needing to hire a full-time staff to handle calls. Working from a customized script, an answering service can serve as a seamless part of your organization so your customers never know that it’s not your own employees handling their call. Even better, agents have the ability to access online systems and work with your own customer relationship management solution or other applications.

An answering service can be helpful to small business owners that want to go on vacation or have certain times of the week where they engage their entire staff in a meeting and leave phones unattended.

To learn more about the wealth of technology that’s readily available for small businesses at an affordable price, contact us at TeleConsult. We can help you identify cloud tools that provide the best possible benefits to your company without adversely affecting your budget.

Cloud-Based Digital Transformation Solutions for Improving Business

July 9, 2018 by The Christine Advantage dba TCS

Without a scalable IT infrastructure, you’re not going to get everything you can out of your data. In this age of digital transformation, data is amassed quickly and is key to business processes at your organization. Cloud-based solutions can give you the scalability you need to improve workflows and improve how your business functions.

Going Off Site

Part of the power of the cloud is to eliminate the need for investing in more infrastructure and software. Rather than take up physical space at your location with expensive servers and software, which requires frequent updating, all of that is taken care of off-site by your cloud vendor.

The cloud is truly disrupting the way organizations spend on IT. According to experts, approximately a quarter of the IT market will be in the cloud by 2020.

Security Concerns

With digital transformation comes the threat of being compromised by enterprising cybercriminals. However, in order for a cloud-based provider to stay in business, they have to maintain their reputation as a safe and secure business partner.

Organizations that provide solutions in the cloud do everything they can to ensure your data will be safe. Cloud storage is becoming more common, and increasingly, the data is being encrypted so prying eyes can’t make any sense of it if they are able to access it.

The fact is, your data is probably safer in a cloud-based environment than it is on local servers. Many times, your employees are the gateway for cybercriminals getting access to your data. This is often due to weak passwords or clicking on a suspicious link in an email. However, with your data locked down tightly in the cloud, you can better remediate a breach and experience no loss of data.

Analyzing Threats

Thanks to powerful cloud-based tools, advanced threats can be analyzed and locked down, which is an important part of digital transformation. All suspicious files, which include digital communication, will be thoroughly analyzed.

Distributed networks need to be protected, especially as organizations see their workforce demand more mobile opportunities, which is another product of the digital transformation brought on by improved mobile technology.

At TeleConsult, our managed data centers will save your organization all the headaches associated with embracing digital transformation, and we can also save you time and money. We’ve provided small- to medium-size businesses with telecom and IT solutions for nearly two decades, and we can assist you as you take on evolving technology. Contact us today and we’ll further explain our value to your operation.

The Difference Between Failure and Success With Digital Transformation

June 18, 2018 by The Christine Advantage dba TCS

Digital transformation is shaping many of the strategies across enterprises for improving productivity, reducing costs, and organizing business processes, all with a focus on optimizing the customer experience. Companies recognize that remaining competitive comes down to engaging with customers for a personalized experience, and a digital transformation strategy will help them get there.

Until it doesn’t. All the promises of sales growth and dramatic cost savings often fall short of expectations when an enterprise’s digital strategy becomes clouded and then either stalls out or fails altogether. How can an organization avoid a disappointing digital transformation? Here are the key steps to success:

Know the why behind digital transformation. If an enterprise hasn’t clearly defined the why of its digital transformation, or if there is a failure to communicate it effectively across the organization, the strategy will likely fail. If the staff has the perception that they’re implementing technology simply to save money or grow revenue, there will be some major dragging of feet.

Instead, have a clear understanding of what digital transformation will do for the enterprise and get buy-in from staff. Digital transformation is about improving the customer experience and ensuring the company stays competitive.

Know how the enterprise is going to get there. A clear path for digital transformation doesn’t mean that it won’t ever change along the way, but it does help the team stay focused. Otherwise, line of business managers competing for resources can derail the strategy as they hear about new cloud solutions and push for their department to receive earliest attention.

Knowing how the enterprise is going to get there includes knowing what kind of transformation will yield the most momentum for the organization. The priority may be to roll out a better experience for customers, but the enterprise may need to get better control over the data first in order to know what will help predict customer buying patterns and the types of offerings that need to be prioritized to serve customers’ needs.

Likewise, there could be an operations department asking for Internet of Things (IoT) devices that monitor inventory or provide feedback on production efficiency, but IT knows that the network can’t handle the expected congestion. They’ll need to find a way to segment out IoT traffic before they deploy the devices.

Know when the enterprise has arrived. A good digital transformation strategy requires measurable goals on a set timeline. As an enterprise achieves milestones along the way, the company must be sure to celebrate the improved productivity or cost savings captured with these efforts. This also goes a long way to secure buy-in from the team for the long haul. Digital transformation can take years, so breaking it into shorter-term goals can help the team keep focused.

Successful digital transformation begins with understanding the why and the how, and it also starts with the right technology partner. Contact us at TeleConsult to help ensure your clients experience a digital transformation that meets their goals.

The Benefits of Penetration Testing

June 4, 2018 by The Christine Advantage dba TCS

When you set up your security strategy and execute its steps, your approach likely includes a variety of ways to keep intruders out, including firewalls, and training to prevent a misstep that invites them in with tactics like phishing. Once you’ve fully implemented your security measures, you need another step: penetration testing.

What is penetration testing? Penetration testing uses a mock offensive approach against your defenses to see if they hold. For comparison’s sake, imagine you have locks, a home security system, ample lighting, and cameras set up around your house. In order to see how effective those tools are, you invite an experienced, reformed breaking-and-entering expert to get into your home by whatever means necessary. Detecting the weak points in your home security is a lot like penetration testing in an enterprise’s security strategy.

The benefits of testing: There are several ways penetration testing helps tighten up your security:

You’ll get insight into where you should invest more resources in your security strategy. You may be pushing too much into a firewall, when end point security actually needs more attention.
You’ll learn more about your infrastructure and how each component interacts with the others. Penetration testing makes your inner workings more transparent and can help reveal misconceptions.
When you’re about to deploy a new system, you can use penetration testing to work out any security bugs before you go live.
Your security monitoring and team response can be objectively evaluated for their effectiveness.
There’s an opportunity to address any vulnerabilities in your security strategy at a relaxed pace, rather than in the panicked state that ensues after a breach.

If you have cloud and other third-party providers, it’s important to include them in your penetration testing. Given that a provider is storing or has access to critical data, penetration testing can help you see if that provider is meeting your standards for security.

Internal versus external testing: In many cases, companies use internal penetration testing to determine the effectiveness of their security, but there’s good reason to hire a third-party tester. While your internal testing team may know the system inside and out and be able to carefully detect and address threats, it’s still a good idea to use a third-party tester.

An outsider may detect vulnerabilities that someone who’s intimately familiar with the systems could miss. In addition, their familiarity with commonly overlooked weak spots they’ve identified across their work with many enterprises may help them quickly evaluate your system for those same vulnerabilities.

Penetration testing is just one aspect of a complete security solution. Contact us at TeleConsult to discuss your organization’s security and a range of solutions to help protect your data, network infrastructure and applications.

Maintaining Security in the BYOD Environment

May 21, 2018 by The Christine Advantage dba TCS

In today’s constant connectivity landscape of smartphones and tablets, most companies have opened the door to bring your own device (BYOD) policies. However, BYOD poses some security concerns, which need to be addressed in a comprehensive security strategy.

Employees today want flexibility in how they bring value to their employer. Technological advancements have helped them achieve this, to the extent that they are beginning to desire more options, such as remote working opportunities, flexible hours, and new possibilities for how they complete their work. How can organizations maintain a high level of security while also providing a flexible work environment?

Target Rich (for Hackers) Environment

In the BYOD environment, hackers have more options as well. They’re exploiting weaknesses that have become readily apparent in far too many organizations. There is no shortage of stories about systems that have been left completely open to attack, stolen data, and tarnished reputations.

For organizations that have not put a security plan together, it’s not a question of if they’ll be hit by a cyberattack, but when.

Taking Precautions

Employees should be educated about the essential elements of security where device protection is concerned. They need to know that clicking on something suspicious in an email is more than likely a phishing ploy by a cybercriminal who has laid a trap that can open up an entire system to vulnerability.

Employees are generally the biggest risk to a system, but the system itself must also have the tools to combat security risks. This includes tools that provide visibility into applications, which can monitor activity and flag anomalies.

Some companies operate under the false impression that because they have their own Security Operations Center, they’re covered. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. They’re still not able to have complete visibility into all BYOD devices.

By partnering with the right vendor, you can bring a better security strategy to your organization. Rather than create a workflow bottleneck and cause communication roadblocks, partnering with the right vendor can improve your processes while giving you the assurance you need that you’ll be safe from attack.

At TeleConsult, our cybersecurity solutions are constantly monitored and improved to keep up with evolving and complex cybercriminal advancements, which have created an industry unto themselves. Contact us today to talk about how we can customize solutions for you.

Are You Prepared in the Event Your Cloud Provider Goes Out of Business?

May 7, 2018 by The Christine Advantage dba TCS

The cloud technology market is still relatively new, and the industry is exploding with new providers offering solutions. As the market matures, it’s inevitable that some of these companies will not be able to survive in the face of competition. It’s important to be prepared in the event your provider is one of the unlucky companies that doesn’t make it.

The risk: Using any provider comes with a certain amount of risk, but with on-premise technology, you weren’t faced with a data retrieval scramble or the need to immediately replace software, because you owned it.

With a cloud provider, you may receive only a couple weeks’ notice that they’re closing shop and that you need to find another solution. This means a quick choice of another provider, plus data retrieval and all the complexity of network configurations and security planning.

Preventive medicine: As part of a comprehensive business continuity strategy, you need to have a contingency plan in place. It should include considerations such as the course of action to take if the provider were suddenly unable to operate, as well as the functions that are necessary to run your daily business processes.

When evaluating a cloud services provider, you should have conversations about their own business plan. Evaluate whether their company will be able to achieve long-term profitability and if their plans fit well with your own trajectory. You should also ask the hard questions, such as what their plan would be for your business continuity if their company experienced difficulties.

It’s important to note that some cloud providers operate with a proprietary file storage platform, meaning that it will not transfer to a new provider.

Make sure your contract with the provider includes information about what will happen in the event that your provider faces bankruptcy or default, or if they simply decide to no longer support a technology that your business uses.

Multiple providers: Many enterprises are avoiding much of this risk by partnering with two or more providers. This offers protection in case a provider goes out of business, because not only will you have a ready partner that can shoulder all business workloads, but your IT staff will already be familiar with the technology, taking many of the unknowns out of the equation. Having multiple cloud providers isn’t just a safety measure for the possibility of a provider going out of business. Doing so provides protection surrounding a variety of disaster recovery and business continuity objectives.

To begin working with a stable provider that will prioritize your business continuity, contact us at TeleConsult, where we will create a custom plan for your technology needs.

Don’t Leave Your Healthcare Data Open for Attack

April 16, 2018 by The Christine Advantage dba TCS

If you think hackers are only interested in heavyweights like Target and eBay, think again. Healthcare data is a prime target for cybercriminals looking to access information. One of the threats facing the healthcare industry (and others) is ransomware, which to many is ranked among the greatest threats out there. It’s estimated that there are around 4,000 ransomware attacks daily, and the reason so many are directed at healthcare facilities is because of the way they handle their files — just about everything a hacker wants can be found, which makes this industry a target for ransom.

Generally, hackers demand Bitcoin as payment as it can’t be traced. And providers are paying up, because if they don’t their medical data is lost to them, leaving them helpless and, in some cases, without the means to effectively treat their patients.

The Internet of Things (IoT) isn’t helping, either. In fact, many hackers find their way into a system through devices, such as radiological equipment, that are connected to the system via the internet. Hackers can go directly after the device infrastructure and get what they need to render the provider helpless.

Making Protection Count

So, how can you protect your system and your patients’ data? If you don’t have the processing power for a next generation firewall, you might be leaving yourself open to attack. Processing power is also what’s needed for today’s advanced security strategies, so you could be stuck with yesteryear’s strategies if you don’t find a way to upgrade.

Utilizing a regional security hub is one way to beef up your firewall for added protection. The perk is that you can maintain your existing appliances. However, this solution usually involves cloud-based firewall solutions.

It’s not likely that the use of IoT will decrease as we continue to technologically evolve. However, we can take a look at how we digitize and make sure we’re doing it safely, and that it only occurs if it benefits the patient and our ability to maintain the proper security protocols.

At TeleConsult, we are the cybersecurity experts that can protect your company network. We’re helping scale back the billions of dollars in remediation costs that too many organizations are paying today. It doesn’t matter the type or size of network you have or how you’re connected to everything around you — we can find the solutions that will offer the ultimate protection. Contact us today to learn more.

Identifying Security Risks in a Next Generation Firewall

April 2, 2018 by The Christine Advantage dba TCS

When security specialists run tests on a network protected by a next-generation firewall, they often discover weaknesses that all but invite hackers into the network to do a little digging. These tests are conducted using a sort of hacker’s playbook that contains a variety of known methods that hackers use to access a network and the vulnerable data traveling through it.

In many cases, enterprises using next-generation firewall tools are not getting the full benefit of the firewall because of configurations that are not up-to-date for the current network or because of legacy security approaches.

The benefits that a next-generation firewall offers are due to its ability to prevent a breach at the application and user level, rather than through ports and protocols. In general, these types of policies should be easier to administer, but mistakes still abound. Errors often occur when the security team employs auto-migration tools when they migrate an existing firewall policy. A breach test can help identify these problems and ensure that any potential weakness in security is addressed.

Many users also run into problems when they simply implement the firewall with vendor-supplied defaults. Like any other tool, the updated features are only helpful if you utilize them. In some situations, those features that make it “next generation” are never turned on.

Another common problem occurs when the security team doesn’t decrypt encrypted traffic, such as TLS, SSL, and SSH, because it can act as a blind spot. IT team members won’t spot the malware hidden in the traffic. While a next-generation firewall can prevent and detect this type of problem, the feature often isn’t utilized.

There is growing momentum to address these kinds of problems, whether it’s voluntary or not. For instance, to rank well in Google’s search engines, companies must comply with Google’s HTTPS encryption requirements.

Another growing area of concern surrounding firewall preparedness is the Internet of Things (IoT). Enterprises are launching fleets of devices that gather and transmit data via sensors, but security teams may not be taking the necessary precautions to protect their networks. These devices are exchanging heavy loads of data with the cloud, with many touch points along the way. In addition, the risk of loss or theft with these devices means that there needs to be a policy established in key areas, such as the length of the hibernation timer on a device.

Simply deploying a next-generation firewall won’t make your enterprise breach-proof. To learn more about security testing and the options available for security services, contact us at TeleConsult. We look forward to discussing network security with you.

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