technical-tips

[technical-tips]

4 Top Technology Trends 2022

Keeping a tab of the latest technology trends is the only way companies can stay ahead of the curve and retain their competitive edge. In this article we will look at the top 4 technology trends that are expected to dominate in 2022. 

 Top Tech Trends of 2022

1. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

AI that has already become mainstream through applications such as image and speech recognition, navigation apps, personal assistants, and more is likely to become entrenched in applications spanning more industries and functions. AI’s ability to quickly parse through unimaginable amounts of data to draw out relevant insights and deeply inform business decisions, understand customer behavior patterns, predict demand and more are likely to change the face of how businesses gain their competitive edge and optimize resource utilization. AI will find extensive application in industries and businesses that require real-time insights from analyzing multiple sources of data such as autonomous vehicles.  AI will drive revenues for businesses and enhance personalized experiences for customers. The global AI market is expected to reach $190 billion by 2025. According to Forrester, AI, machine learning, and automation are likely to create 9 percent of new U.S. jobs by 2025. With AI growing increasingly commonplace, companies can also expect intensified pressure on regulation. This is a critical requirement for AI applications such as creating and distributing deep fakes.

 2. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, is likely to gain predominance as automation spreads across different levels of organizations and different industries. RPA software can be used to automate core business processes such as interpreting applications, processing transactions, data collation, and even email responses. Automating all repetitive tasks and tasks that endanger human lives can make workflows smoother, reduce the scope of errors drastically and help organizations optimize resource usage to the maximum. Forrester Research thinks that RPA automation is likely to render more than 230 million knowledge workers (9% of the global workforce) redundant. However, McKinsey reports suggest that less than 5% of occupations lend themselves to full automation, while 60% can be partially automated. 

 3. Quantum Computing

Quantum computing that takes advantage of quantum phenomena such as superposition and quantum entanglement is likely to become more integrated in fields such as research applications for health and banking and finance for management of credit risk in high-frequency trading and fraud detection. The global quantum computing market revenue is expected to reach $2.5 billion by 2029. Quantum computers are now impossibly faster than regular computers and companies like Splunk, Honeywell, Microsoft, AWS, Google and others are now heavily invested in developments in the field. 

 4. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Extended Reality (ER) are likely to become more mainstream as the applications extend far beyond industries like gaming. The use of simulation software for training is likely to pick up pace across industries and even in niche application areas like training recruits for the army or training doctors for surgery. AR and VR is also likely to be applied in conjunction with other emerging technologies for applications in entertainment, education, marketing, experience enhancements in marketing, retail and theme parks and even injury rehabilitation.

[technical-tips]

3 Key Hybrid Cloud Security Challenges

With hybrid cloud becoming a fan favourite, most companies expect hybrid cloud to deliver just the right mix of flexibility, cost savings, performance, and scalability necessary to improve on its existing competitive edge. Gartner estimates that 90% of organizations are likely to deploy hybrid infrastructure management capabilities by 2020. However, the promise of hybrid-cloud architectures remains beset by concerns about data protection, security, and compliance. In this article we will look at the three key challenges with hybrid-cloud security and how they can be managed by your team. 

 Hybrid Cloud Security Challenges

1. Compliance and Governance

Companies in highly regulated industries have been iffy about cloud computing for a long time. Many only used it to conduct nonessential tasks and processes. However, cloud security has improved by leaps and bounds since it was introduced. However, companies in industries such as healthcare, financial, government, and other regulated sectors continue to face significant challenges in hybrid infrastructure. The main problem stems not from difficulties in meeting compliance requirements or specific regulations, as one would expect, but from companies having to manually check if compliance and regulatory security requirements are being met. As can be expected, the process proves tedious, time-consuming, complex, and leaves room for a high scope of errors with complicated cloud deployments leveraging heterogeneous cloud and on-premise systems. Many times manual configuration changes may simply not be detected, so processes remain not repeatable, shareable, and reproducible. This makes passing security audits - a near impossibility. Finding innovative ways to automate using open-source tools for the scanning and remediation of security controls could be the way forward to ensure visibility and transparency. This will also allow the tasks to be scalable from containers to individual systems to the hybrid infrastructure itself. How do you spell

  2. Data Leakage

Data corruption, leakage, unauthorized access or deletion all possess risks of data loss, apart from data loss itself. With hybrid cloud, a highly secure private cloud could be maliciously or erroneously shared to the public cloud. As ensuring the integrity and security of company and client data remains the responsibility of companies, they need to be highly vigilant about closely scrutinizing and reviewing the security protocols and data practices of their public cloud provider. They must also take pains to ensure that the same security systems must carry over from the on-premise database to the public cloud.

3. Visibility and Control

Growing levels of customization in sprawling infrastructures such as a combination of public and private clouds along with on-premise physical machines and virtualization exponentially increase the level of complexity and consequently, risk involved in such deployments. Such complexity makes it harder for companies to maintain comprehensive visibility and control over all the distributed systems. Administrators of such systems have an unenviable task of manually monitoring the network for security and compliance as well as managing patching and configuration manually. agile development and deployment becomes a near impossibility as without adequate visibility and control, everything from security to collaboration to the deployment of self-service systems is compromised. To secure the hybrid cloud, companies need to avoid manual processes and automate as much as possible with both infrastructure as code, and security as code. Automation ensures shareability, repeatability and an easier time to pass security audits. Centralized management and visibility through open tools is absolutely essential for such heterogeneous infrastructures.

[technical-tips]

Data Backup vs Disaster Recovery: What’s the Difference?

Data backup is a basic requirement for every business. What if, however, your data is accidentally deleted? Or what if it gets stolen or lost in a fire? And, when it comes to business operations, even losing 100 files will result in downtime and, more importantly, revenue loss. Data backup is essential to protect against these risks. But the question you need to ask yourself is whether you are looking for disaster recovery or just data backup. Professionals at IT Consulting Vancouver will clear up the confusion and assist you with an appropriate recovery plan.

This article explains all you need to know about backing up your data and creating a disaster recovery plan in case something goes wrong.

Why Do You Need a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan?

When it comes to backup and disaster recovery, there are many misconceptions and myths that surround the topic. Technical risks, human threats, and even natural disasters can all be considered threats. Many firms have certainly considered these concerns and may have put some safeguards in place, but any flaw in the plan might put the company's data at risk. One of the key reasons you need a backup and disaster recovery plan is this.

When your business is growing, you need to ensure that it continues to grow in the future. You can't rely on one person or a single piece of software for all your backup needs and disaster recovery requirements. It's essential that you have an ongoing backup plan so that when something goes wrong, there will be someone who knows what they are doing to restore data quickly and efficiently. Managed IT Service Vancouver offers secure backup and recovery services. 

What Is the Difference between Backup and Disaster Recovery?

The distinction between disaster recovery and backups is one of scope. Backup is an automated procedure that creates copies of data and stores them in another location for future use or as part of a backup plan to protect against the loss, theft, damage, and corruption. On the other hand disaster recovery is the process of restoring a system to its original state after it has been damaged by disaster or other problems and then restarting the system from that point in time when all services are restored back to normal operation and functionality with no loss of data.

A backup is essential to a company's operations, but a disaster recovery plan enhances security and provides total protection.

Building a complete disaster recovery plan

1. Make sure all important data is backed up.

It's possible that you won't need to back up all of the data on your file systems. Temporary files, for example, are unlikely to require backup. On the other hand, it is easy to ignore certain sorts of files that you should back up (for example, configuration files in the /etc. directory on a Linux operating system – which I would back up from my personal machine if I were more responsible).

2. Secure your data backups.

Data that has been backed up is useless if it has been damaged or contains data quality problems. Furthermore, attackers looking for sensitive data may find data backups to be a rich source of information. It's critical to protect your data backups from invasions for one or all of these reasons.

3. Calculate how often backups should be performed.

Continuous real-time backups of all your data are ideal, but they are rarely practical. Instead, most businesses estimate how often they should back up their data by assessing how much data latency they can accept without causing a significant disturbance to their operations.

4. Have a process in place for recovering data.

Backing up data is one thing; recovering it is quite another. You should have a plan in place for many circumstances. One in which your infrastructure is unaffected but your data is lost, and another in which you must set up entirely new infrastructure before recovering data. Disaster Recovery Backup Planning Vancouver uses as much automation as possible in both cases to ensure that you are back up and running as soon as possible.

However, you should include protections to guarantee that essential data is not lost or files get corrupted during backups.

[technical-tips]

The Seven Layers of Cybersecurity

A lot of people might think that you should just set up a firewall and use an antivirus to keep your network safe. In the early days of computers and the internet that might have been true, but nowadays there are a lot of different security systems.

There are seven layers of security between you and a potential risk - each with its own strict criteria, which help protect your safety at all times. IT Security Los Angeles offers the most up-to-date technology security services to keep your information protected.

Let's look at the 7 layers in more detail, including how they're vulnerable and what you can do to secure them.

1. Human Layer

When it comes to cyber security, people are unquestionably the weakest link in almost every way. According to reports, humans are responsible for up to 90% of all security breaches. It’s not so much that individuals are intentionally letting programmers into their frameworks; we fair happen to be the one region that's most effortlessly misused.

Education and training are the most effective ways to keep the human layer secure. Putting in place a regular education program to train employees on the benefits of good cyber security habits can significantly reduce the likelihood of a successful attack.

2. Endpoint Protection

Look for something more than standard, signature-based antivirus protection. Including machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities in your endpoint protection can assist you in detecting known and previously unknown malware that evades signatures entirely. This enables you to take a proactive rather than reactive approach to endpoint security by detecting malware within milliseconds and blocking it before it executes.

3. Email and Phishing Protection

Deep-learning capabilities are also required for email security. Email threats evolve on a daily basis. Stopping phishing attacks, detecting fraudulent email addresses impersonating trusted contacts, protecting sensitive data, and reducing spam can all be accomplished by using artificial intelligence to block zero-day malware and unwanted applications.

Go to IT Consulting Los Angeles for assistance in defending against not only what is happening now, but also what will happen tomorrow.

4. Network Layer

What people and devices can access once inside your system constitutes the majority of the network layer. The best security practice at this layer is to grant employees and devices access to only those parts of the network that are absolutely necessary for their jobs. The key reason for this is that in the event that something goes wrong, the harm will be limited. If no single person has access to everything, any successful hack will only compromise a tiny portion of the network.

This means that you can limit any damage caused by human mistakes, as well as the impact of any compromised equipment.

5. Mobile Management and Security

If productivity suffers as a result of mobile device protection, it's not worth it. Hunt for portable security that offers app control (with a whitelist and boycott of apps), audits content for noxious action secures against malware and ransomware, has anti-phishing capabilities, and gives web assurance and sifting.

6. Server Protection

Deep learning-based all-in-one server protection allows you to assess your security posture at any time while also stopping new attacks, blocking exploits, denying hackers, and preventing ransomware. For better, faster, smarter, and automatic security, your server protection should be able to transfer data between the server and firewalls.

7. Web Protection

With online protection that includes URL filtering, content scanning, and malware defense, you can avoid risky web browsing and keep track of your activity. This stops network users, whether on-site or off-site, from accessing malware-infected content or websites.

[technical-tips]

Ransomware: What to Do if Your Business Hit by an Attack

The average ransomware payment was $136,576 in second quarter of 2021. In addition, 95% of companies have experienced a ransomware or malware attack within the last year. The last couple of years has been difficult because of all the ransomware attacks. It's a headache for IT decision-makers - What to do if your company gets attacked by ransomware? It should come as no surprise that these cyber-attacks can take your company's data and wreak terrible financial havoc. To protect your computer and your company's network from this type of cyber-attack you need to remain vigilant and take precautions.

We know that ransomware attacks are a major concern for most businesses and that’s why Managed IT Service Houston helps you out when it comes to prevention & recovery.

Here are some effective tips from Houston IT consulting company on what you should do if your computer is infected with a malware like ransomware.

1. Turn off the power supply to your core switch.

It will block ransomware from propagating, and it will prevent the ransomware from connecting to its back-end servers on the internet. If you have, for example, life-saving equipment on your network, it might not be a good idea to turn your Wi-Fi off. But if you have landlines, which are connected by wires then they would stop working if you turned off Wi-Fi.

2. Find out who “patient zero” is to possibly determine the source of the attack.

Take a look at the properties of one of the infected files to see who is listed as the owner. It is essential that you identify the source of the infection, but this can be very challenging. In companies with many employees, it can be near impossible to find where you need to focus your attention. Here are some ideas:

1.      Who is the owner of the new files (instructions for decryption)?

2.      Which permissions did you need to modify the encrypted files? Do you have those permissions?

3.      View open files on the shares to find the infected users.

You can limit the damage from ransomware if you identify patient zero and act quickly- it’s possible for an organization to have whole shares encrypted before anyone notices. Take precautionary steps by turning off any potentially infected machines and disconnecting them from the network.

3. Identify the Infection

The next step is to figure out the variant so that you can plan for your situation. After the infection, your antivirus and other software won’t be effective in preventing an attack from coming in. It's possible that they won't be of use, but we do it this way.

Before you do anything, just open up the share that has been infected and search for a text file. These files are keys to working through this infection. By searching the web for content in these files, you can usually determine the variant.

Variants of ransomware have been created to address different needs. Some variants have decryption tools. If you anticipate that your business might be extorted, then it is worth investing in protection against these types of attacks.

Other variants may not have even encrypted the files, but are still demanding the ransom. Identifying which variant it is should only take a few minutes. You need to act quickly.

4. Create a Windows firewall rule

Windows Firewall is a great ally when it comes to protecting your system from malware. You can use custom firewalls rules to prevent certain computers from talking to each other by blocking the ports being used for this type of malware.

5. Revert a server to a prior backup state

You can make damaged servers look new by using a backup to recover the system. But backup files are just backup files and won't help you recover the other info on your server like settings, configurations, and more. Recover the entire server from a good date to get everything back. Having a constant and well-maintained backup system is a key boon of backup solutions Houston.

6. Inform your IT department or your Managed IT Service Provider of the attack

Please notify your IT department or Managed IT Service provider if you're aware that you've been hacked and know this to be the case. Doing these steps could be disruptive. However, staying compliant is vital for business success. A ransomware attack on your business will have terrible consequences and the consequences of not complying might be more severe too.

[technical-tips]

How to turn off private browsing

Private browsing is referred to as In-Private Browsing in Internet Explorer, Incognito Mode in Chrome, and Private Browsing in Firefox. In most browsers, there is a plugin called Turn Off Private Browsing that lets you turn off private browsing. It's not actually necessary to disable private browsing and it's not recommended either. For some, the need to disable private browsing in the browser can be addressed by using Private Browsing Mode.

Turning off private browsing means that no one will be able to see what you are browsing on the Internet, including who you're talking to on social media. Turning off private browsing means that no one will be able to see what you are browsing on the Internet, including who you're talking to on social media. In short, it is designed to protect you from online tracking.

This post will give you instructions on how to turn Private Browsing off in Firefox, In-Private Browsing in Internet Explorer, Incognito Mode in Chrome browser on a Windows computer.

Disable Private Browsing in Firefox

There is a setting in your Firefox browser called "Private Browsing". You need to change your browser's tracking options so that it doesn't save your internet browsing history.

In any Firefox window, click on the three vertical lines in the upper right-hand corner of your screen.

Navigate to "Options" or "Preferences," then select "Privacy & Security."

Scroll down and find the 'History' section below.

Choose the "Remember history" (from the drop-down menu.)

You will then be asked to restart Firefox. Click on “confirm”, & now web browser would be going to restart in the normal browsing mode. 

Disable Incognito Mode in Chrome browser

If you browse through Google Chrome's settings, you won't find any features to disable Incognito Mode. It would really come in handy if there were an option to lock its use with a password. Unfortunately, there’s no such option so you will have to use some workarounds on your Windows machine.

Use the Windows Key + R on your keyboard to open the registry editor. Type in ‘Regedit’ in the input field, then hit Enter.

The next step is to double-click HKEY LOCAL MACHINE in the menu on the left.

Click on Software, and then on Policies.

See a file called Google, If you don’t see Google file, open the policies folder and create a new folder. Inside it, rename the folder to Google.

When you open the Google folder, it should contain a folder titled Chrome. If you do not see this, you will have to create it too. Right-click on     Google, click New > Key from the menu and rename it to Chrome.

Click New >DWORD 32-bit Value (Press right-click on the Chrome folder), and rename it "IncognitoModeAvailability", no quotations.

Double-click "IncognitoModeAvailability", change the value to 1, and click     "OK".

Close the Registry Editor and restart your computer. After the restart, open Google Chrome. You will notice that the option New Incognito Window is not available anymore.

 Disable In-Private Browsing in Internet Explorer

If your Windows has Group Policy Editor, type gpedit in the Run box and hit Enter to open it. Navigate to the following setting:

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer > Privacy.

In RHS pane, double-click Turn off In-Private Browsing, select enabled. Click Apply.

If you do not have control over your company's computers, or if someone else has it set to private browse, your website can be compromised in a matter of seconds. If you do not have control over your company's computers, or if someone else has it set to private browse, your website can be compromised in a matter of seconds.