While alternate forms of communication such as Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business, Slack, and other options, grow in popularity, email remains and will not disappear  for any organization, and cybercriminals know this. In fact, most cyber-attacks start over email—a user is tricked into opening a malicious attachment, or into clicking a malicious link and divulging credentials.

With the first quarter of 2020 almost halfway done, growth strategies for the new year are well underway. For a manufacturer, this might mean launching new products or expanding to new markets. Either of those two strategies requires significant investment in time and money. 

If someone asked you, “what’s it like to work at [your company]?”, what would you reply? I suppose it depends on your role, how long you’ve worked there and the impression you want to relay, but it’s safe to assume that some aspect of your answer would include elements of culture.

“Culture” can seem like a fuzzy concept, but it’s definition does help pin to unpack it.

“Culture is the total way of life of particular groups of people. It includes everything that a group of people thinks, says, does and makes — its systems, attitudes and feelings. Culture is learned and transmitted from generation to generation.”

In this post we’re talking about an important subset of corporate culture; we’re analyzing and providing tips on how to shape “attitudes” and “behaviors” towards cybersecurity.

We know that in today’s digital workplace, flexibility is essential to retain our best employees, but this flexibility comes at a cost. Employees have more access to customer data and proprietary information from a variety of applications and devices that can also be  entry points for malicious attacks. What are you doing to protect against these internal threats?

Let's say you were in line at a deli and you overheard someone ask "hey, what the heck is a vulnerability assessment anyway?"

Would you feel an urge to chime in or strain to hear the reply? 

Okay, if it were me, I'd probably be more concerned about which sandwich to order but the point is that answers to that question vary widely.

Manufacturing has played a major role in Connecticut’s economy for many generations.

In fact, according to the CBIA, not only does manufacturing account for 11% of CT's GDP, but for every manufacturing job created, four other jobs generate as a result!

In our conversations with manufacturers, several challenges keep resurfacing that we want to address in this blog.

Challenges such as:

How can manufacturers attract more millennials?

What security changes, if any, do manufacturers need to consider with more millennials?

And, how are manufacturers creating work environments that increase millenial retention?

In this blog, we’ll share tips for all three of these important concerns.

Let’s dive in!

Some IT providers talk about ransomware but they’ve never been to war in a real case.

In this interview with Tom, he shares an example of a real situation a client was under, what happened during that stressful time and how we were able to climb out of it.

Cybersecurity breaches are a real threat. In fact, any business at some point will get breached, regardless of how good your cyber defense is, how big your company is or who you use for an IT provider. What matters is having a good defense plan, knowing what you are going to do to get your business back up and running, and especially how are you will communicate this news to your different stakeholders.

Technology is evolving at a pace that security experts are struggling to keep up with. As we mentioned in an earlier blog, IoT creates a huge risk for any business, especially those in manufacturing since the small devices are easily hacked. 

Increased vulnerability has lead the cybersecurity industry to a 3 million person shortage, which is expected to worsen by 28% for 2026.