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Employees don’t typically think of themselves as being on the “front lines” of digital security for a business. A quick audit of the staff for any small or medium-sized business would likely yield a wide range of “expertise” when it came to security knowledge.

Timing is everything.

How many times have you heard this phrase? If you take a moment to think about it, you can likely remember several times throughout your life (professional or personal) when timing made all the difference in the outcome.

Another saying that applies to what we’ll be talking about today goes something like “luck is when preparation meets opportunity”. Small and medium-sized business owners need to consider growth differently than other more well-established companies.

Last year we published a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style blog post highlighting how improvements in business technology (or lack thereof) can provide different outcomes for common problems around the office. In the post, we followed the adventures of a new IT manager attempting to solve several communication bottlenecks in the office by pitching different technology improvements.

The productivity boost and increased workplace happiness of employees able to work from home have been well-documented. Approximately 4 million Americans are now working from home full-time and the benefits are being realized on the side of employers and employees.

The start of a new calendar year presents the opportunity to make improvements in many areas of their lives. The New Year’s Resolution gives individuals the chance to look ahead at what they want for themselves, for their families, and their businesses and come up with a plan to get there.

It’s nearly the end of 2018, and it seems like the year has gone by like a flash. If you’re like us, you might still be working on some of your New Year’s Resolutions from 2018 – that beach body can wait until spring of 2019 anyway.

But in between holiday parties and New Year’s celebrations, there is a good opportunity to reflect on the last 365 days and consider what has happened and what was learned.

Biting your fingernails.

Leaving the refrigerator door open.

Leaving car windows down during a storm.

These are all examples of bad habits. Almost everyone will admit to having some collection of bad habits, it’s part of the human condition.

Trying to curb these habits is also a healthy part of human nature, but bad habits don’t stop at personal hygiene or vehicle maintenance – there are plenty of technology-centric bad habits that can have disastrous consequences.

It’s nearly the end of the year! While many folks are considering winter vacations, and New Year’s Eve celebrations, business owners and managers have other things on their mind.

The end of the calendar year provides a time for reflection on the successes and failures of the previous 12 months and what might be able to be improved moving ahead.

Are you familiar with the term “jargon”? If you’ve ever been in a conversation with someone who knew A LOT about a subject and didn’t hold back a lot of industry terms, you’ve probably been the victim of a blast of jargon.

While a high frequency of jargon might give the impression that someone knows what they’re talking about, it’s not usually helpful for the other person in the conversation who doesn’t understand all the terminology.

We don’t claim to be fortune tellers. Unfortunately, there is no crystal ball in our conference room that helps us predict the future. But when it comes to assessing the IT infrastructure of a business, we can spot problems before they happen from a mile away.