Top Technology Topics in 2024

2024 will be another transformative year for new and evolving technologies to help businesses like yours become more efficient, more secure, and reduce costs. Adopting or even experimenting with artificial intelligence can help thousands of small and medium-sized businesses. Many technologies once considered ‘nice to have' have become ‘need to have’, like vulnerability assessments and security awareness training to enhance good cyber hygiene. Some technologies that have been around will find more traction and can reduce your costs, like transitioning emergency POTS lines (local telephone service) to a VoIP or wireless solution. Expect each of these, along with other technologies to evolve through the year, some of them significantly, as more and more uses are understood and customized to a specific use experience.

We are here to learn and understand your wants and needs and then determine the best solution for you. And because you are a current customer, our consultation is free. We have a vast array of communications, security, and overall technologies to help your business potentially reduce costs, be smarter, be faster, and improve your and your customer’s experiences.

This year, we will be following and sharing the industry’s top trends which will most likely be:

• Experimenting and implementing AI in all sizes of business.

• Evolution of cybersecurity, backup management, and business continuity.

• Leveraging 5G, mobile, and satellite services as costs reduce and function improves.

• Workforce management solutions to free up resources for more important activities.

• Many other existing, but still evolving technologies that help you every day.

Let us help navigate you towards implementing your next new technology. Pick up the telephone and call us today!

4 Ways to up your Cybersecurity

With technology advancing so fast, businesses are not only becoming more secure, but cyber-attacks are becoming more threatening. Cybersecurity for your business needs to be updated for it to prove itself effective consistently. Whether you have top-notch security or are interested in learning how to protect your business, here are four ways to up your Cybersecurity.

1.  Encrypt Data.

Every business has data that is sensitive and critical to the production and success of the company. Whether it is information on or for your customers and employees, you need to take your data encryption seriously. Cybersecurity experts can help you make sure your data is safe.

2.  Patch and Update.

Patching and updating your systems may be one of the easiest ways to limit and prevent cyber-attacks. Be sure always to use the latest versions of software installed on all your business's computers and technology.

3.  Run a Tight Ship.

Zero trust networks are always beneficial because they identify every network user and it verifies all devices before granting access. This means that only authorized users can gain access and information that is important to your business. It is also a better option to provide employees with devices they can use for their daily work tasks. Bringing their own devices can lead to unprotected systems getting hacked.

4.  Educate Your Employees.

Educating employees can be a tricky task if not done correctly. A majority of breaches take place due to employee error. However, it is not entirely their fault. Training employees on security-related measures can make a huge difference in the safety of your information and data. The training program you choose needs to be as comprehensive as possible and requires more than basic security tips.

Finding the right security providers does not have to be complicated. We are here to help you secure your business. For more information, please contact us with your questions.

Biggest Cybersecurity Challenges

As the Cloud and technology get more advanced, you are more likely to have threats knocking on your door to try to steal your information. Protecting your data is crucial. It is your job to understand what you are up against so you can defend yourself against attacks. With COVID-19 taking over in 2020 and 2021, no one could have predicted its impact on business, technology, and Cybersecurity.

Challenge I: Remote Work – Threats and Exploitation

Due to COVID-19, businesses had to go remote within a matter of weeks and had to adapt and update their infrastructure so employees could work from home. If your company rushed to migrate and shifted to remote work, you need to identify areas of weakness that can leave your company vulnerable to threats.

Challenge II: COVID-19 Phishing Schemes

People are feverishly researching COVID-19 information on the internet. Deep or even surface-level internet searching has brought on a significant number of phishing attacks. Cyber attackers' easiest targets have been the individuals who are working remotely and use their work devices to research COVID-19. Your company needs to thoroughly assess its infrastructure and make sure its departments can mitigate risks.

Challenge III: Ransomware Threats

Ransomware attacks are the most common threats in Cybersecurity. If a company experiences a ransomware attack, the cost of recovering from them is expensive. Many companies solely rely on VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) to facilitate access to their network, but in 2021, it is not enough to protect companies. Companies are now moving from VPNs and are moving to ZTNA (Zero-Trust Network Access), which has proved to be a more secure option.

If you have experienced any of these challenges or want to be proactive in protecting your company from Cybersecurity challenges, please reach out so we can accurately protect your business.

4 Ways to Up Your Cybersecurity

With technology advancing so fast, businesses are not only becoming more secure, but cyber-attacks are becoming more threatening. Cybersecurity for your business needs to be updated for it to prove itself effective consistently. Whether you have top-notch security or are interested in learning how to protect your business, here are four ways to up your Cybersecurity.

1. Encrypt Data

Every business has data that is sensitive and critical to the production and success of the company. Whether it is information on or for your customers and employees, you need to take your data encryption seriously. Cybersecurity experts can help you make sure your data is safe.

2. Patch and Update

Patching and updating your systems may be one of the easiest ways to limit and prevent cyber-attacks. Be sure always to use the latest versions of software installed on all your business's computers and technology.

3. Run a Tight Ship

Zero trust networks are always beneficial because they identify every network user and it verifies all devices before granting access. This means that only authorized users can gain access and information that is important to your business.

It is also a better option to provide employees with devices they can use for their daily work tasks. Bringing their own devices can lead to unprotected systems getting hacked.

4. Educate Your Employees

Educating employees can be a tricky task if not done correctly. A majority of breaches take place due to employee error. However, it is not entirely their fault. Training employees on security-related measures can make a huge difference in the safety of your information and data. The training program you choose needs to be as comprehensive as possible and requires more than basic security tips.

Finding the right security providers does not have to be complicated. We are here to help you secure your business. For more information, please feel free to contact us with your questions.

Alarming Cyber Attack Stats You Should Know

Yes, they are alarming, but they are good to know so you can beware of how easy it is to experience a cyberattack. Use these stats to keep an open mind and think about whether you and your business are secure. For starters, close to 30,000 websites are attacked every day, and about 94% of malware is spread through emails. Also, increased reliance on public cloud storage due to the pandemic has led to an increase in attacks targeting sensitive cloud workloads and data.

• At least 16 billion records have been exposed through data breaches since 2019.

• By 2023, cybercriminals will steal 22 billion records.

• Since the beginning of 2020, more than 3,300 new domain names containing the word “Zoom” have been registered. This has led to over 30% of them having activated an email server and processing phishing attacks.

• According to Barracuda, to save on expenses, 40% of global organizations cut their cybersecurity budgets during COVID-19.

• Microsoft is warning of an ongoing COVID-19 themed phishing campaign that installs the NetSupport Manager remote administration tool. The massive campaign is spreading via malicious Excel attachments in emails pretending to be from the Johns Hopkins Center.

We can help you with a short Risk Consultation to better understand how prepared you are to address these challenges in a practical, efficient way. Contact us today!

How to Protect your Customers' Credit Card Data

On the heels of Equifax's settlement with the Federal Trade Commission following its 2017 breach of over 145 million records, deemed the largest hack in US history, Capital One announced another large-scale breach exposing the financial data of over 100 million customers.

The hack was carried out by a former software engineer at Amazon Web Services, where Capital One stores its data. It's unknown if the hacker worked with Capital One at AWS or if her knowledge of AWS aided the hack in any way, but she managed to identify and breach a misconfigured firewall on a web application. This enabled her to obtain data, including 140,000 social security numbers, 80,000 bank account numbers, one million Canadian social insurance numbers and more.

This breach is expected to cost the company up to $150 million, and it should serve as a warning to companies across industries - especially those that operate contact centers - that insider threats can be just as costly as data breaches perpetrated by outsiders.

According to Verizon's recent 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report, insider threats are on the rise, and with the contact center industry's high employee turnover rates, there are so many opportunities for sensitive data to be mismanaged by negligent insiders or stolen by malicious ones.

While it's important to put trust in employees, it only takes one bad actor or disgruntled employee to carry out an insider threat. With 72 percent of contact centers accepting card payments by phone, it is imperative that companies ensure customer data is secured from these and all kinds of attacks. The risk of not doing so hurts a company's reputation and negatively impacts a company's revenue streams - as evidenced by a recent survey we conducted which found that 83 percent of US consumers will stop spending with a business for several months in the immediate aftermath of a security breach or a hack.

We have solutions what can help protect against insider threats. Let us help you with cloud-based PCI security solutions to prevent any payment card data from being visible or audible to contact center staff. Payments are routed directly to a secure platform where customers provide masked card details using their telephone keypad, while still maintaining contact with the customer service representative. By operating this way, the risk of insider fraud is eliminated.

Contact us to learn how we can help guard your company and customers against threats like this and more.

Would you like your Internet with or without malware?

Enterprise Traffic Protector (ETP) is now available to bundle with AT&T or third-party internet circuits.

This simple cyber-security tool provides customers a secure internet gateway, offers circuit-based pricing and installs in under two hours. ETP and the entire Akamai (ACDN) portfolio is available for today from Caisson Technologies.

Enterprise Traffic Protector (ETP) can be enabled in minutes and will immediately block threats, such as malware, ransomware, phishing and data exfiltration. Customers can also leverage ETP to ensure their employees, guests, or third parties aren’t misusing the Internet inappropriately. ETP is a perfect add-on to all renewals, upgrades and new circuits. Please reach out to us directly if you would like to order ETP or would like to learn more.

ETP is complementary to existing security solutions:

• No equipment to install, cloud-based model

• 24x7 support

• SLA for 100% DNS availability

ETP is an exciting addition to the AT&T Content Delivery Network portfolio, which includes:

• Industry Leading Cloud-Based DDoS Defense

• Industry Leading Cloud-Based Web Application Firewall

• Industry Leading Automation & Bot Management

• Fully Managed Security & DDoS Mitigation Protecting All Ports & Protocols

• Next-Generation Secure Remote Access

• Web & Mobile App Performance Improvement Products

• Industry Leading Media and Streaming Delivery Products

• And much more…

Again, if your business is looking to improve it’s cyber-security stance to meet today’s risks please give us a shout. We are happy to provide you with a free initial security consultation.

Caisson can help businesses tackle cyber security concerns by leveraging AlienVault®, an AT&T company

Security is top of mind for any business, large or small. Caisson can now help customers address these concerns with AlienVault® cyber security solutions.

Helping protect clients’ IT infrastructure against today’s emerging threats is more important than ever. AlienVault® Unified Security Management® (USM) platform is now available in the AT&T Alliance Channel, in collaboration with AlienVault. AlienVault® combines threat detection, incident response, and compliance in one product.

AlienVault® is an exciting addition to the AT&T Cybersecurity portfolio, which includes:
• Threat Management Solutions w/ 24/7 monitoring
• Firewall Security Solutions- premise & network
• DDoS Defense
• Mobile Security
• Netbond- highly secure connection to cloud solutions
• Security Incident & Event Management Solutions
• Web Security Solutions
• Email Security
• Vulnerability Scanning
• Cybersecurity Consulting
• IoT Security
• Security Education for employees

If your business needs help tackling cyber security give us a shout today, we can help.