Directive Blogs

Tech can be a real pain for small businesses, especially if you don’t have a dedicated IT person handling everything. Most businesses have someone who sort of knows their way around tech, but for a small team, that’s a lot to put on one person. That’s where managed IT services come in. It’s used not just for its convenience but because it actually makes a business owner’s life easier in ways they might not even realize.

With remote work remaining popular, employees can benefit from flexibility and work-life balance, but at the cost of certain challenges on the business side. The big one is security, as your network ends up spread out across multiple locations rather than siloed in-house. Here are three rules you should consider when planning out how to approach remote work.

Unfortunately, crises happen, so the only responsible course is preparing your business to deal with them. Let’s walk through what modern crisis management should look like for businesses of all sizes, identifying the steps to address these risks and protect your operations.

One of the most asked questions we get is “How can you help us save money?” It’s the priority for anyone looking to outsource anything. So, naturally it has to be one of the first questions answered. In today’s blog, we’ll go through three ways that our brand of managed IT services functions to save our clients money.

Happy New Year! This time is usually dedicated to making plans and commitments to improve oneself over the coming months in the interest of the future. In the spirit of the holiday, let’s talk about how the right resolutions can help your career or your business’ use of technology.

Stuff happens, and this stuff can often be bad. That’s an inescapable part of life, especially if you’re trying to run a successful business. That said, the consequences of this bad stuff can usually be minimized—if not mitigated entirely—when you have a proper disaster recovery strategy.

Let’s review what goes into preparing this kind of strategy in the most effective way and what makes it so crucial.

Protecting your business isn’t just about having the right tools; it’s about making sure you and your team know how to stay safe online. Here are some key tips to help you get started:

Nowadays, software is super important for running a business. It helps with everything from managing schedules and paying employees to making and selling products. Basically, businesses need software to run smoothly.

Collaboration is as important as ever, if not more so, to businesses of any size… and with so much work today being done digitally, this collaboration needs to be reliable. Add in the fact that so many people work remotely as often as they do, and it should be clear that all businesses need a means of securely collaborating as part of their successful operations.

If there’s one thing that helps businesses establish consistent policies and strategy, it’s a good framework. You can use a framework for anything, including network security. Today, we want to walk you through the cybersecurity protection standards as they are outlined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology so you can better protect your business.

Cybersecurity has to be a big deal for any business that uses IT, and today, who doesn’t? When your employees don’t follow cybersecurity rules, it can put your business in danger, like getting hacked or losing money. The first step is to figure out why employees aren’t following the rules. This could happen because they don’t know the rules, haven’t been trained enough, or think the rules are too hard or take too much time. 

Over 25 percent of data breaches target small businesses, and the impact can be huge. To protect your business, you need the right technology and smart strategies. In today’s blog, we go through some key steps to help safeguard your business from digital threats.

“Toxic” is a buzzword that is often used nowadays, but when it is used to describe a business’ work environment, it needs to be treated with deadly seriousness.

If a workplace is a place people don’t like to be, many drawbacks will ultimately impact operations. Therefore, it is to your benefit to keep your business as positive a workplace as possible.

Let’s discuss how to tell if your company has a toxic workplace and, if so, how to resolve it.

Moving is already difficult, but when you factor in your business’ IT, it becomes twice as frustrating and time-consuming. You can make it easier by preparing for the job ahead of time. Today, we want to cover what you can do to prepare for a business IT move well ahead of the scheduled date.

The concept of a four-day workweek has started to gain significant traction among businesses of all sizes. There's a subtle distinction between the traditional four-day workweek and the compressed workweek, however. Today, we will discuss the compressed workweek and what it means for employees.

Remote work has proven incredibly useful over the past few years despite many employers having various concerns about its implementation. While these concerns vary, one prevalent one is how remote operations impact cybersecurity.

If you’re utilizing remote operations to any degree and aren’t concerned about cybersecurity, you must adjust this mindset and correct your approach.

There are plenty of risks that today’s businesses regularly deal with, particularly in terms of cybersecurity. This year, a panel of experts shared some human risk management insights at the Cybsafe Impact 2024 USA conference. Let’s review some of the topics they touched on.

It should come as no surprise that nowadays, a business’ information technology and security precautions are frequently tied closely together—and wisely so. Not only can today’s technology greatly augment the security a business can defend itself with, but advanced security is needed to protect the critical IT that modern businesses rely on to function.

This makes it critical that these two aspects of your business work together, so let’s go over some ways to ensure they can do so optimally.

Modern businesses—just like yours—cannot and should not operate without robust cybersecurity protections. This is a point we will emphasize at every opportunity. Let’s explore why security is so crucial and what steps you need to take to safeguard your business.

No matter your industry, size, or business model, satisfying your customers is crucial. Your business' survival depends on your ability to do this effectively.

To achieve this, it is essential to leverage every opportunity to deliver for your audience. One way to do this is through modern business technology, such as customer relationship management (CRM). Let's explore what a CRM is and why it's beneficial.