Benefits of managed cloud services

Although transitioning to the cloud does not automatically guarantee data security, it can present your business with cost-effective and high-performance solutions that can augment your IT capabilities. Here are the 5 benefits of incorporating managed cloud services into your business.

Improve your system reliability

The beauty of cloud infrastructures is that redundancies rarely occur. For instance, your cloud host could lose some infrastructure, but because of system upgrades, it just rolls over to the next, keeping your business up and running. The cloud architecture guarantees your system’s reliability.

In contrast, the performance of the system is contingent upon the operational requirements of your business, allowing scalable adjustments as needed. However, such efficiency is only attainable depending on your contracted vendor for managed cyber security services. Thus, ensure you hire qualified and expert service providers.

Save on operational costs

With managed cloud services, you can save on operational costs and expenditures. Additionally, with time, they depreciate from wear and tear. For instance, you can lose your hard drive to theft. If such occurrences happen, they may result in downtime or extra costs for replacing the physical infrastructure. 

With managed cloud services, all the costs related to monitoring your systems are consolidated into monthly or annual fees. That arrangement makes predicting your cloud management costs easy.  

Cybersecurity support

Cybersecurity protects your cloud computing systems, software, and network from cyber threats. If your systems are under attack, you might experience severe losses that can cripple your business. Thus, you can benefit significantly from the extra expertise of your service providers.  

Here are some of the cybersecurity support services that can benefit your business:

• Network security: Most cyber-attacks occur over the network. These can include data loss, unauthorized access, and control. Network security is designed to block such threats. Service providers can install network analytics, such as threat hunters, to clean the network for potential threats.   
• Cloud security: As your cloud computing practices increase, you should prioritize cloud security. It involves cloud security solutions, controls, and policies to control cloud operations.   
• Endpoint security: You can secure your employee devices and gadgets against threats or hackers’ infiltration. The endpoint security guarantees end-user security on work equipment like laptops and desktops.   
• Internet of Things (IoT) security: Surfing the internet can expose your organization to frequent cyber-attacks. Thus, IoT security protects your devices from hackers and fraudsters.   

Hackers work day and night to improve their skills to tamper with business systems. Thus, it’s essential to have a cyber security strategy for your cloud services. 

Provision of corporate data security

The most significant concern with cloud services is the risk of exposing corporate data to hackers. If your clientele becomes aware of any security incidents, it could result in reputational damage and loss of trust. Hence, prioritizing robust data security measures is crucial for the success of your business.

Managed cloud services ensure strict monitoring of your network and systems. Your service providers can trace cyber threats early enough to take precautions. As a precautionary measure in the event of a security breach, it is possible to set up a backup data center to function as a contingency plan, such strict measures ensure you don’t lose vital data. 

Other data center practices include:

• Biometric access controls  
• Multi-layered security protocols  
• Minimum security standards  
• Zoned cards  

Note that even with all the security controls, it’s best to upgrade your cloud services periodically. Otherwise, your system can become outdated, thus exposing you to cyber attacks.

Managing disaster recovery

Cyberattacks can bring your business to a halt, but you can bounce back and take your business right on track. In such cases, managed cloud services are excellent disaster recovery strategies. 

Most service providers provide backup plans, facilitating business continuity and reducing downtime. It ensures you recover your data as soon as possible, and it helps contain the effects of the attack. Fortunately, once you manage to retrieve your data, you can resume business.

Conclusion

By embracing managed cloud services, you can position your business in a higher position in today’s rapidly changing business environment and set it up for innovation and expansion.

Utilize these 4 e-commerce growth strategies to boost your business

As the landscape of online commerce continues to rapidly evolve, businesses must remain proactive in staying ahead of their competitors by implementing strategic measures aimed at driving sales growth. 

From optimizing the customer experience to leveraging data-driven insights, these strategies are designed to empower businesses to enhance their online sales and stay ahead in the competitive e-commerce market. We will now examine these e-commerce growth strategies in detail to uncover their potential to positively impact your e-commerce enterprise.

Generate creative content

The best way to attract and interact with potential customers is through eCommerce content marketing. You can make sure your audience is receiving new and relevant content by promoting and coming up with creative and original content. 

You can use videos, blog posts, newsletters, or pop-up messages to grow your email list. In fact, using an email pop up has become a very popular and unique way to market your brand. They help you receive immediate feedback from your customers and achieve substantial lead generation.

The most difficult part about email pop-ups is getting users to notice your content. If you want to try and use email marketing pop-ups, make sure that your design is effective. An appealing design can draw attention to your visitors without being overly distracting.

Influencer marketing

When it comes to identifying the ideal influencer, conducting thorough research is crucial to ensure alignment with your brand values and campaign objectives. Identifying an influencer who aligns with your brand values and can make meaningful contributions to your marketing endeavors is of paramount importance.

It’s a good idea to define the traits you are looking for in influencers, such as authenticity, knowledgeability, and motivation. Once you’ve compiled a list of influencers that you’re interested in working with, you can start reaching out to them and offer a valuable collaboration. However, you must first create a budget and ensure that you’re always well within it. You can start to slow with this type of marketing and only expand if you see the desired results.

Having an SEO strategy

SEO is a crucial part of any eCommerce business as it will increase your chances of ranking high on Google. This means that your website’s click-through rates will increase. Implementing this strategy can result in higher click-through rates for your website, preventing it from getting lost among the multitude of other websites and helping to safeguard against the potential loss of sales.

Use SEO-friendly content techniques to provide top-quality content, speed up your site, add keywords, and use a few other tricks that can help you boost your sales.

Affiliate marketing

Achieving success in the competitive domain of e-commerce can be a challenging effort. To make it, eCommerce owners need to put their utmost efforts into reaching more people and increasing their chances of success. Affiliate marketing allows you to gain access to other marketers’ audiences and quickly up your sales.

An example of this type of sale is when customers click on an affiliate link, pay and receive the affiliate products, and don’t return them after purchasing. In order to effectively leverage affiliate marketing, it is crucial to possess the skills to identify and engage the most suitable affiliate marketers for your e-commerce store, persuading them to establish partnerships with your business.

Conclusion

Through strategic website optimization for seamless customer experiences, data-driven decision-making targeted digital marketing investments, and staying abreast of technological advancements, businesses can position themselves for growth and success in the fiercely competitive e-commerce market. 

By implementing these growth strategies, businesses can drive revenue growth, elevate customer satisfaction, and attain their sales objectives in the competitive online retail landscape.

What is a cybersecurity risk

Cybersecurity risk is the chance of getting exposed to cybercriminals. It’s about losing crucial assets and sensitive data because of a cyberattack or data breach inside a company’s network segmentation. 

Cybersecurity risks that can occur to a company come in many forms, such as phishing, malware, zero-day exploits, social engineering attacks, password theft, ransomware, trojans, SQL injection, crypto-jacking, and many more.

Ideally, you can prevent these attacks from exploiting your IT infrastructure by hiring AT-NET’s IT support services and managed IT servicesin Chicago. This is one of the best ways to protect the data and the company. 

Other ways to mitigate cybersecurity risks for your company

Besides hiring an IT support service to protect your company online, there are other steps that you can apply to ensure that you avoid losing data and other critical resources. Below are some examples.

Conduct a cybersecurity risk assessment

A cybersecurity risk assessment is about assessing the capability of an organization to secure its data and data systems from cyberattacks. It aims to recognize, evaluate, and focus more on information and information systems risks.

Performing a comprehensive cybersecurity risk assessment enables organizations to pinpoint and prioritize areas that require enhancements in their cybersecurity practices. It also allows them to share their cyber risks with stakeholders and conduct appropriate actions on how to allot resources to limit those risks.

Likewise, the following are examples of steps to conducting this assessment:

• Determine the value of each data

Given that many companies face budget constraints for assessments, concentrating on the most vital business assets is crucial. To save money and time, set a standard for identifying the value of an asset or unstructured data.

Once you officially integrate the standard into your company’s information risk management policy, employ it to categorize each asset as critical, minor, or major. Similarly, there are questions that you can consider in identifying the value of an asset or data. How significant is the data to your competitor? and are there legal or financial consequences tied to losing or exposing this data?

Ultimately, it’s also best to determine risks, assess impacts, and define risk tolerance levels to know which assets or data have the most value.

• Identify and prioritize assets

It’s crucial to determine what assets to secure. Thus, you must specify all physical and logical assets involved in this assessment and develop an inventory related to them. 

Note that identifying assets doesn’t just revolve around determining those most crucial to your company and most likely to be exploited by cybercriminals. These critical assets are also more likely used by cyber attackers as pivot points, meaning they’re exploited so that these attackers can move from one compromised system to another system within a company. Thus, you must also prioritize other assets.

Set network access controls

Today’s NAC solutions are robust and flexible, with policy-based enforcement that enables extremely granular but still scalable levels of access control. Many companies can use NAC security for wireless and wired networks.

If your company wants to conduct proper NAC, below are some issues that it can address adequately:

• Secures your company from unauthorized intruders
• Visibility and asset management
• Powerful endpoint security
• Accurate user identification

Applying NAC solutions is one of the best ways to mitigate cybersecurity risks that can happen to any company.

Regularly monitor network traffic

Network traffic monitoring encompasses keeping tabs on connected devices, monitoring the information they access, and measuring bandwidth consumption.

To start with this type of monitoring, you can implement the following steps immediately:

• Select the right data source
• Choose the correct network points to monitor
• Monitor historical traffic metadata

Eventually, monitoring network traffic helps run your network how it should be. It can also prevent hackers from exploiting your systems and data.

Conclusion

In today’s digital world, cybersecurity risks are a real threat to all businesses. Therefore, companies must take proactive steps to prevent such threats and mitigate their associated risks.

This article has provided some practical tips that can help organizations strengthen their cybersecurity posture. By implementing these tips, companies can be better prepared to protect their digital assets and defend against cybercriminals.