Monthly Archives: June 2025

Disaster Preparedness Keeps Your Company Running

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With the hurricane and wildfire season already underway, as well as security incidents year-round, it’s never too soon to have a plan in place. Even the briefest power outage can be a problem, with network downtime costing thousands per minute. Read on to learn about the need for a disaster preparedness plan for your business.

 

Cost of Failing to Plan 

 

Natural disasters, as well as man-made cyber attacks, cause downtime, which is costly for your company–in more ways than one. First, it makes you unable to serve customers and perhaps unable to work at all. Who knows how much revenue you might have earned if you could get the network back up and running in a short time? Downtime, whether from an outage or just a decrease in network quality (a “brownout”) can cost an organization an average $600,000. Your company’s reputation can also suffer, if you are not available for business, or because of lost/compromised data. You may be subject to fines for non-compliance with data-protection regulations. How, then, can you afford not to have a clear and tested plan?

 

How to Develop a Plan

 

A Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) plan is a vital part of protecting your company from the consequences of a disaster, either natural (fire, hurricane or earthquake) or man-made (a security incident such as a ransomware attack). But how to get started, when the process may seem overwhelming? A good first step is to audit your network to discover how it’s doing currently. What network holes need patching up, and where are the bottlenecks? Do you currently have redundancy/failover to keep traffic moving? Also, what hazards and risks are most relevant to your location? Does any on-premise equipment have needed cooling mechanisms? Is every staff member prepared to handle a possible phishing email, a key avenue through which attacks can occur? All these questions, and more, are ones to consider.

 

Testing Your Plan

 

Once you have a plan in place, testing it will show if any weaknesses exist. You can also determine how well the plan works, and discover issues you haven’t anticipated. For example, can you recover backed up data quickly? This makes a difference in ability to comply with data regulations and hence maintain stakeholder trust. 

 

With natural and man-made threats ever present, it’s never too soon or too late to put a BC/DR plan in place. For further assistance, contact your trusted technology advisor today.

The Two Sides of Artificial Intelligence

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No question about it, artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay. Both generative forms of AI – for content generation, augmentation and automation, are commonly used for productivity. If your company is using AI, you can be sure cyber criminals are, too. Read on to learn about safe and effective use of artificial intelligence, including using it to beat bad actors at their game.

The Two “Sides” of Artificial Intelligence

 

Like most technology and technological tools, AI can be used for legitimate purposes by businesses, or unlawful and harmful aims like injecting malicious code or developing sophisticated social engineering attacks by cyber criminals.

 

On the “good” side, AI is helpful to businesses in content generation and process automation, and sentiment can be positive. According to a recent Telarus article, Gartner predicts that spending on generative AI is expected to top $600 billion in 2025, an increase of more than 75% from last year. The article also cites McKinsey, with that firm expecting more than 92% of executives increasing investment over the next three years. Not only are executives expressing confidence, but 72% of workers see AI bringing value to their work and 70% believing that gaining AI skills will improve marketability. Worries about AI replacing humans have ebbed, but other concerns remain. 

 

Of course, executives and other workers are not the only ones leveraging AI– so are bad actors. Increasingly, cyber attacks involving AI include sophisticated phishing schemes that can trick even vigilant email recipients. Exploiting vulnerabilities in platforms and models to introduce malicious code and attacks such as WormGPT and FraudGPT to steal money and set up fraudulent accounts, are additional dangers, according to a Telarus article about the recent RSAC conference. The same automation capability of artificial intelligence can be used to launch attacks, as well. 

Using Artificial Intelligence to Fight Cyberattacks

 

Interestingly, the very technology cybercriminals use in order to create more sophisticated attacks can also defend against these attacks. Businesses can use AI to help with cybersecurity in these ways:

 

  • Threat Detection and Response: AI can analyze vast amounts of security data in logs and network traffic to identify unusual behavior that might signal an attack.

 

  • Patching endpoints: even small to medium-size businesses have endpoints to protect, and AI can help identify which ones are vulnerable, and automate patching, even stopping incidents before they start.

 

  • Email Security: Machine learning algorithms can find suspicious emails that signal possible phishing schemes. 

 

Artificial intelligence is growing more popular with businesses and bad actors alike. To learn how to develop a plan for using AI in cybersecurity efforts, contact your trusted technology advisor today.