RiverTrail Technology Blog

When it comes to onboarding, every business owner knows that the first days, weeks, and months are the most critical. They set the standard for what the employee can expect during their tenure with your business. But more than that, employers today have security standards to worry about, as well as indoctrinating new hires into what is hopefully a security-first company culture.

Most employees look at multi-factor authentication as an inconvenience, despite knowing that it’s in the company’s best interest to use it. However, the innovation of SIM swapping has left one of the most common methods of MFA, SMS authentication, in a precarious situation. With these types of hacks, cybercriminals don’t need access to your phone; all they need to do is trick customer service into porting your phone number to a new device in their possession.

Small businesses often bleed over $10,000 annually by making common-sense tech decisions that lack a long-term vision. Most leaders treat IT like office plumbing. That is, something you only notice when it leaks. But tech shouldn’t just be a utility bill to minimize; it’s a competitive engine. If you aren't using your infrastructure to outpace the competition, you’re likely just paying to fall behind.

How many tools on your infrastructure don’t play well with others? Do you just look for the next quick fix rather than build out a system of interconnected apps that all work in tandem to support your business efforts? If you don’t put in considerable effort in this regard, it could negatively impact your operations and create tech debt that’s hard to recover from.

What if you decided to turn to an AI program for assistance with something—let’s say a client proposal—only to discover, in the middle of signing the contract, that the AI had made up and included a half-off discount on the very thing that brought you most of your profit?

While hopefully hypothetical, this scenario can easily happen. So, while AI can be and often is a serious asset to business productivity, this is only the case when you are also paying attention. Let’s consider a few shortcomings that you avoid with the help of your human employees running interference. 

How much of your workday is spent driving your business forward versus simply keeping it from stalling? If you are frequently sidelined by minor technical interruptions, your company is paying a steep price for your time.

As a leader, your value lies in high-level strategy, networking, and closing the deals that define your future. Every moment you spend navigating a technical glitch is a moment of lost opportunity.

In IT, there is a painful proverb we live by: A backup isn’t a backup until a restore has been successful.

Many business owners and even some junior sysadmins fall into the set-it-and-forget-it trap. They see the green checkmark in their backup software and sleep soundly. As an IT expert who has performed countless digital autopsies on failed systems, I can tell you that a green checkmark is often a liar.

Did you know that most businesses are only one hard drive failure or disaster away from permanently ceasing to exist? While we wish this were hyperbole, the fact of the matter is that not all businesses take data backup and business continuity as seriously as they should. At its core, you can boil down data backup to three key pillars, and with the help of a qualified professional, it’s not nearly as challenging as you’d expect.

Bad habits can have detrimental effects on your overall life. For example, if every night at four in the morning, you snuck into the kitchen to eat a few spoonfuls of uncooked Pillsbury Cookie Dough right out of the tube from the back of the refrigerator, you’d probably be doing more harm than good to your health without really getting that much enjoyment out of the act. Cybersecurity bad habits might save you a few seconds of time each day, but they can come back to bite you.

Ignoring cybersecurity best practices is about as useful as getting good at hiding that Pillsbury Cookie Dough wrapper in the bottom of the trash so nobody realizes it’s gone.

All joking aside, you are personally responsible for your own cybersecurity, and keeping yourself safe online, whether that be at home with your personal accounts, or at work, is extremely important. It doesn’t take a lot of effort either, it just takes good habits.

Let’s go over a few things you can do to save yourself from a lot of headaches down the road.

Depending on the size and complexity of your organization, managing technology can easily become a full-time job. If you are only calling a technician when you are dealing with a computer issue, then you might be sitting on a ticking time bomb. Whether you have internal staff responsible for managing your IT, or you rely on a third-party, you’ll want to make sure the following tasks are getting done.