All Posts By

Doug

Sep 24
1

Security awareness training, do we really need it?

By | Blog

I could fill this post with countless studies, statistics, and articles that should make the answer to this question obvious. However, I suspect most readers already know the answer, so I will spare those details. Rather, the question I would like to focus on in this post is; Why is security awareness training absent from so many companies’ priorities?

While there are many reasons the most common include the belief that a business is too small to be attacked, they lack the understanding of where to even start and they simply are not willing to allocate funds towards it.  Again, I could fill the rest of this post with information to dispel the believe that a company is too small to be a target. If you are curious, do a quick Internet search for “Is my business too small for a cyberattack?”. Happy reading!

For the remainder of this post I will focus on the other two reasons, getting started and funding.

Get started with making cybersecurity a topic of conversation at the highest level of your organization. Start with talking about the tips provided by the “National Institute of Standards and Technology”; Use strong passwords, backup your important information, use virus protection software, do not keep computers online when not in use, do not open email attachments from strangers, and use a firewall. Something is better than nothing.

While spending money to protect your business is wise, there are free resources available to you. First, phishingbox.com has a free Phishing Simulation which can be found at https://www.phishingbox.com/phishing-iq-test. This is a good way to test how well you do with identifying phishing attacks. Second, I recommend taking the Cybersecurity Challenge developed by the Michigan Small Business Development Center. If offers 8-well constructed tutorials covering various components of Cybersecurity. https://smallbusinessbigthreat.com/cyber101/

Next up: What is a Hosted PBX?

Click here for our previous post, “What the heck is the difference between a public, private and hybrid cloud?”

Oct 30
0

What is a Hosted PBX?

By | Blog

Let’s start with understanding what a PBX is. A Private Branch Exchange, which is what the acronym PBX stands for is more commonly known as your business telephone system. That desk phone at your workplace and the equipment it communicates with combined is your telephone system or PBX. It is the intelligence that provides your work voicemail, allows the buttons on your phone to do what they do, routes callers to your extension, and many other features. It is also the equipment that connects your phone with your phone service provider, enabling the ability to make and take calls to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). This is obviously a condensed explanation, but sufficient to serve the purpose of this post.

A Hosted PBX simply means the PBX functionality, or the brains of your PBX is hosted in the cloud by a service provider. Rather than your desk phone communicating with the PBX in your office, it communicates with a PBX in the cloud, via an IP network (like an internet connection, although there are other options.). A hosted PBX is often referred to by different names from VoIP PBX, Virtual PBX, Cloud PBX, Hosted VoIP, and many other variations.

While it is heavily debated whether a hosted PBX is less expensive than a traditional premise-based PBX, the benefits are not debatable. The most popular benefits include: outsourced system maintenance and upgrade, scaling up and down with ease, improved business continuity and disaster recovery, feature-rich for boosted productivity and eliminates the need and expense of having a datacenter like environment at the office.

Lastly, the success of Hosted PBX has introduced countless service providers offering their uniquely packaging and priced solutions tailored for their target demographics. Having options benefits consumers, however, it does require some vetting of service providers to determine which is best for your office environment. One size does not fit all.

Next up: What is a vulnerability scan?

Click here for our previous post, “Security awareness training, do we really need it?”

Jun 12
0

Worldwide security spending will reach $96 billion in 2018 – Gartner

By | Resource Center

Across the globe, companies are moving quickly towards virtualized environments to work smarter and faster, seeking the latest technology to help streamline workloads, offset costs and reduce overhead and capital expenditures. Advancements in technologies to meet these demands create large gaps in an organization’s overall IT strategy and more importantly, their security strategy.

Although the tools and solutions to prevent cyberattacks exist, there is still a very prevalent “it won’t happen to us” type of mentality when it comes to cybersecurity spending decisions. The unfortunate reality is that cyber threats don’t discriminate against the size, type or location of a business, and the need for security measures has never been greater than it is today.

Questions businesses should be asking themselves when it comes to security include:

  1. Are our employees, including executives, trained on cyber security?
  2. What pieces of technology or what services do most of the heavy lifting for our company when it comes to security?
  3. When was the last time we were audited?
  4. When was the last time we competed a security assessment?
  5. Do we have an incident response plan?
  6. Do we have any specific concerns, such as changing IT security and compliance regulations?
  7. Do we have a disaster recovery (DR) or business continuity (BC) strategy in place?
  8. What is the state of our company’s current cybersecurity strategy and plan?
  9. What is our process for selecting the security solution or tool to address cybersecurity challenges?

Call Stonebridge Innovations, LLC. for a free no obligation consultation and discover how we can help you harden your security.

May 27
0

Stonebridge Innovations, LLC. Partners with TBI to Provide Customers with Enhanced Technology Solutions

By | Uncategorized

Washington Township, Michigan March 30, 2018– Stonebridge Innovations, LLC. has announced a new partnership with TBI, one of the nation’s largest distributors of technology services. With this partnership, Stonebridge Innovations, LLC. gains access to TBI’s portfolio of more than 70 highly vetted, top technology service providers, and can now offer customers a comprehensive suite of technology solutions including internet, voice, data, mobility, and cloud capability.

Since 1991, TBI has earned a reputation as the premier distributor of technology services and one of the most respected companies in the industry. TBI maintains a broad portfolio of voice, internet, data, mobility, cloud, and managed services, accompanied by a second-to-none back-office sales and support organization that enables reselling partners to conduct more strategic sales engagements with their customers.

“This partnership is a natural fit for us,” said Doug Black, President at Stonebridge Innovations, LLC.. “I see it as the best way for me to bring my own business to the next level. With TBI, I can offer my customers the technology services that they have always needed but would have previously gone elsewhere to buy.” TBI works to train us and bring the right executives to the table to execute contracts that make the most sense for my customers.

TBI works with its national network of more than 2,000 partners, selling strategic business solutions to end-users within small, mid-market and enterprise businesses. TBI’s relationships with top industry carriers, allows for the most competitive pricing and trouble-free provisioning of solutions across verticals: retail/eCommerce, industrial, entertainment, insurance and finance, healthcare, government and educational sectors. TBI’s portfolio extends to its selling partners affording the ability to sell strategic, end-to-end solutions, ensuring customer success.

About Stonebridge Innovations, LLC.

Stonebridge Innovations, LLC. was established by Douglas Black, a 27-year veteran of the telecommunications industry. Mr. Black has served in many executive positions with successful technology companies overseeing the design, deployment and support of communication networks and the business services used by organizations around the country. As a repeat business owner himself, Mr. Black understands the challenges associated with running a business while keeping up with the fast pace of technology and the benefits that accompany it. For more information visit www.stonebridgeinnovations.com.

About TBI

TBI is the nation’s leading third-party technology distributor. Since 1991, it has assisted Systems Integrators, VARs, MSPs, IT consultants and more in advising and sourcing the right technology solutions. TBI serves as a partner’s advocate, ensuring the proper provisioning of cloud, Internet, data, mobility, voice, and managed services from best-in-class service providers to achieve clients’ desired business outcomes. Through training and marketing programs focused on the benefits of technology to the business, TBI empowers its partners to be the foremost authority to advise and source all of their clients’ technology needs. With the largest back-office in the industry, TBI partners are fully supported by certified solutions engineers, pre- and post-sales operations, and project managers. For more information, visit www.tbicom.com.

May 14
0

2018 Cloud Trends

By | News

More than 50% of IT spending will be cloud-based by 2018.

The size of one’s business has quickly become a good measure of how they will go about purchasing cloud applications. Whether your customer is an enterprise, mid-market or small business, there is a high likelihood they will be making some sort of cloud purchase based on the reality of today’s business environment.

As a supplier of technology solutions, it’s important to understand how and why these purchasing behaviors differ from one business size to another and one year to the next. And suggest solutions that will resonate more effectively with your current and potential customers in the coming year.

Enterprise

Hybrid cloud was the preferred strategy and private cloud adoption fell

The percentage of enterprises that have a strategy to use multiple clouds grew to 85 percent (vs. 82 percent in 2016) with a concurrent decrease in those planning for multiple private clouds (down from 11 percent to 7 percent). This is a major turnaround from 2017 when private cloud use was the preferred strategy of enterprise organizations. AWS has lead in this public cloud adoption, with companies running more virtual machines in Amazon than other public clouds.

Mid-Market

Increasingly reliant on externally-hosted technology solutions

Mid-sized companies tapped into the cloud more than then they ever had before, but still at a rate slower than larger and smaller counterparts. They rely heavily on externally-hosted technology solutions. By letting an external company handle strategic functions related to their technology solutions, they’re able to implement and use cloud-based solutions while still minimizing company risk, saving on headcount.

SMBs

Largest purchaser of public cloud offerings

SMBs are impatient to accelerate their business growth with more advanced IT solutions and have seen Cloud as a cost-effective way to do this. The use of SaaS has grown as SMBs introduce and become increasingly more reliant on new apps to facilitate their work environments, focusing on public cloud due to internal IT capability constraints.

Enterprise

We’ll see a shift in traffic to colocation and cloud service providers

We will see a large emigration of workloads from on-premises environments to the cloud. The main factors accounting for this shift amongst Enterprise businesses include the addition of new resources due to business growth, new IT initiatives and the purchase of additional services they previously didn’t have.

Larger moves to multi-cloud environments

With the 2017 shift from private to public cloud environments, there has been a corresponding increase in companies adopting a multi-cloud strategy with IDC estimating that 85% of enterprises will be multi-cloud enabled by 2018.

Increased cloud budget for PaaS

PaaS provides tools for specialized development needs and reduces operational expenses by eliminating the need for on-site applications and support. By using PaaS solutions, enterprise organizations will be able to adopt new tech solutions more quickly and scale on demand. This in turn will be assist them to meet goals quicker and drive innovation and growth.

Top IT priorities in the coming year involve the network: network security, wireless and WAN initiatives, network virtualization, increasing bandwidth and speeds and SDN/NFV.

Mid-Market

More reliant on customized cloud solutions

Mid-market has been the slowest to adopt cloud strategies and migration of workloads. Many reasons exist due to cost concerns, integration, data portability, compliance and security. But as the enterprise and small market space quickly adopts and implements, it’s high time for mid-sized companies to catch up.

Statistics reveal that cloud-related work has increased productivity and outcomes. Mid-market organizations will take advantage first by migrating some on-premise applications like email and therefore transition to Office 365. But cloud migration is the one area where mid-sized organizations can’t rely on a one-size-fits-all solution. This coming year, its predicted that we will see an increase in mid-market companies working towards more customized cloud solutions, hybrid strategies and even adopting multi-cloud environments.

Cloud for automation purposes

Mid-sized businesses will not be able to fully utilize AI, like their enterprise counterparts, but will be using cloud automation tools to reap benefits they have seen small businesses receive. From CRM operations to accounting tools that include integrated payments and bank feeds, to payroll/HR automation tools, automation SaaS tools will help these mid-market businesses operate more efficiently.

Increased focus on UCaaS and therefore Network

With the focus to cut costs and streamline internal IT resources or redirect them to other projects, we will see many mid-sized companies adopt cloud and UC services to understand more about their customers, engage and track them better. As companies within mid-market pursue more cloud projects, they will look to augment networks powering those initiatives, they will look to improve speeds and the customer experience

Top IT initiatives include: security and compliance solutions, mobility, voice and collaboration, social media and cloud computing.

SMBs

Cloud Computing is big this year

Cloud computing will increase from $67B in 2015 to over $160B by 2020. And analysts predict that by 2020 78% of all US small businesses will fully adopt cloud computing. SMBs continue to purchase more cloud automation as they combat some of their largest challenges including: budget constraints, mobile security and device management, excessive data, lack of skilled people, compliance and data protection/backup and recovery.

Utilization of customized, cheaper storage and cloud backup

The demand for more cloud storage options will undeniably result in the creation of more customized, accessible and cheaper storage options that SMBs will jump to employ. With most storage options only being financially accessible to enterprise or mid-market businesses, SMBs will be more than ready to make a purchasing decision on one of these newer, more accessible options. With fewer qualified resources SMBs will continue to make the shift to cloud/online backup and recovery to save on time and labor installing, monitoring and maintaining tapes offsite and software programs, manually.

Top IT priorities for SMBs in the coming year include: cloud computing, mobility solutions, collaboration, security and compliance, server virtualization and managed services.

May 07
0

Stonebridge Innovations, LLC. Partners with TBI to Provide Customers with Enhanced Technology Solutions

By | Uncategorized

Washington Township, Michigan March 30, 2018– Stonebridge Innovations, LLC. has announced a new partnership with TBI, one of the nation’s largest distributors of technology services. With this partnership, Stonebridge Innovations, LLC. gains access to TBI’s portfolio of more than 70 highly vetted, top technology service providers, and can now offer customers a comprehensive suite of technology solutions including internet, voice, data, mobility, and cloud capability.

Since 1991, TBI has earned a reputation as the premier distributor of technology services and one of the most respected companies in the industry. TBI maintains a broad portfolio of voice, internet, data, mobility, cloud, and managed services, accompanied by a second-to-none back-office sales and support organization that enables reselling partners to conduct more strategic sales engagements with their customers.

“This partnership is a natural fit for us,” said Doug Black, President at Stonebridge Innovations, LLC.. “I see it as the best way for me to bring my own business to the next level. With TBI, I can offer my customers the technology services that they have always needed but would have previously gone elsewhere to buy.” TBI works to train us and bring the right executives to the table to execute contracts that make the most sense for my customers.

TBI works with its national network of more than 2,000 partners, selling strategic business solutions to end-users within small, mid-market and enterprise businesses. TBI’s relationships with top industry carriers, allows for the most competitive pricing and trouble-free provisioning of solutions across verticals: retail/eCommerce, industrial, entertainment, insurance and finance, healthcare, government and educational sectors. TBI’s portfolio extends to its selling partners affording the ability to sell strategic, end-to-end solutions, ensuring customer success.

About Stonebridge Innovations, LLC.

Stonebridge Innovations, LLC. was established by Douglas Black, a 27-year veteran of the telecommunications industry. Mr. Black has served in many executive positions with successful technology companies overseeing the design, deployment and support of communication networks and the business services used by organizations around the country. As a repeat business owner himself, Mr. Black understands the challenges associated with running a business while keeping up with the fast pace of technology and the benefits that accompany it. For more information visit www.stonebridgeinnovations.com.

About TBI

TBI is the nation’s leading third-party technology distributor. Since 1991, it has assisted Systems Integrators, VARs, MSPs, IT consultants and more in advising and sourcing the right technology solutions. TBI serves as a partner’s advocate, ensuring the proper provisioning of cloud, Internet, data, mobility, voice, and managed services from best-in-class service providers to achieve clients’ desired business outcomes. Through training and marketing programs focused on the benefits of technology to the business, TBI empowers its partners to be the foremost authority to advise and source all of their clients’ technology needs. With the largest back-office in the industry, TBI partners are fully supported by certified solutions engineers, pre- and post-sales operations, and project managers. For more information, visit www.tbicom.com.