Tell me if you can relate to this statement: “My IT provider makes money when my business is struggling.” With the old way of managing technology, this is called the “break-fix” model, where the incentives of technology management are completely backwards. If your server crashes or your network grinds to a halt, the provider’s billable hours start to tick, and they start making money off your misfortune. This creates a conflict of interest and poses a question: “Why would a vendor work hard to prevent problems if those problems are their primary source of revenue?”
Accucom Blog
Running a small business is a lot like spinning plates while riding a unicycle. It’s exhilarating, but the moment one plate wobbles, the whole act is at risk. While many entrepreneurs worry about the big economic crash, the truth is that most businesses don't fail because of the economy—they fail because of internal operational leaks.
Towards the end of February of this year, LexisNexis Legal & Professional fell victim to a data breach in which the responsible party accessed the data analytics company’s Amazon Web Services infrastructure due to an unpatched application. While the data leak itself was (according to LexisNexis L&P, at least) relatively minimal, this breach presents an opportunity to reiterate the importance of an easy-to-overlook vulnerability that quietly causes problems for businesses of all sizes.
Firewalls used to be simple defensive tools that consisted of antivirus, web filtering, and intrusion protection, but they are far more complex (and far more powerful) these days. In fact, they can serve an entirely different purpose in addition to network security. You can transform a well-configured firewall into a growth lever to harness the vast amounts of data they collect and process for the good of your business.


