Velocity Technology Partners Blog

An unsecured wireless network leaves your entire business vulnerable to data interception and unauthorized access. When guests, customers, and employees all share the same network connection, a security breach on a single device can expose your core business computers.

Protecting your network does not require advanced technical expertise, per se, but it does demand a few foundational adjustments to your office internet router's configuration.

When a business first starts to gain traction, the initial scaling phase feels exhilarating. Revenue is climbing, you’re adding new clients, and your headcount is expanding. On the surface, everything looks like a massive success, but behind the scenes, a quiet danger begins to brew.

To keep up with rapid growth, various departments might start adopting new software tools on the fly—tools that don’t talk to each other. Before you know it, your business is built on systems that require double data entry, custom spreadsheet workarounds, and fragile third-party automations.

If you open any business publication or scroll through LinkedIn, you are bombarded with the message that every company must migrate entirely to the cloud. It is often portrayed as a seamless environment where technical problems disappear.

Let’s skip the traditional marketing slop. There are already plenty of self-proclaimed tech gurus filling the internet with generic jargon to maximize operational velocity. It is exhausting, and it does not help a business owner trying to run a company on a Tuesday morning.

Without experience running a business, the intricacies of accepting credit card payments probably wouldn’t occur to the average person. However, there is a complex maze of requirements, rules, and standards that a business must meet before it may do so. These are what make up the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. Let’s go over what this standard demands and what you need to do to ensure compliance is achieved… plus, why compliance is so critical in the first place.

We’ve all seen the Hollywood version of a hacker. It’s usually a lone genius in a dark room, typing furiously into a glowing green screen, shouting "I'm in!" right before they bypass a mainframe.

It makes for great television. However, in the real world, this representation is completely wrong. Today's cybercriminal doesn't look like a movie villain. They look a lot more like a mid-level corporate executive. 

Security is about more than million-dollar firewalls; often, it’s about the small, daily habits that keep small issues from escalating into major problems. Today, the lines between personal and professional lives are blurrier than ever, and a compromised personal device could also mean access to an entire corporate network.

A small business is a complex machine, even in its simplest form. One cog that’s not operating at the appropriate capacity can create operational problems that lead to bigger, more expensive issues later down the road. While businesses worry about the economy and ensuing financial issues, the reality is that your business is far more likely to fail due to operational inefficiencies.

We typically hear one specific misconception more than any other: Why would a hacker care about my small operation when they could go after a Fortune 500 company?

The reality is much grimmer. Cybercriminals don't just target small businesses; they prefer them. Small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) often serve as soft targets with weaker defensive perimeters and fewer dedicated security resources. For a hacker, it’s the difference between trying to crack a bank vault and walking through an unlocked screen door.

In its current form, Artificial Intelligence is a bit like a highly gifted but incredibly literal intern. If you don't provide a crystal-clear roadmap, it will happily lead you down a "digital rabbit hole," burning through your team's billable hours and patience.

In its current state, artificial intelligence takes whatever you tell it very literally. As such, it is very easy to misdirect it into digital rabbit holes… which is the last thing you want, when time is very much money to your business. This is precisely why it is so crucial that we become adept at properly prompting the AI models we use. Too many hallucinations (responses that share inaccurate or unreliable information) simply waste time and money, but the better the prompt, the less prone the AI will be to hallucinate.

Let’s go over some of the best practices to keep in mind as you draft your prompts.

Miscommunication is something that plagues even the best, most organized organizations. Small businesses might be more tight-knit than your traditional enterprise, but humans are prone to miscommunication, and can be a major problem. We can help your business improve the way that it communicates and collaborates, and it all starts by considering how you can eliminate miscommunication in your office.

How much value does your company get from its technological assets? This might seem like a simple question, but it doesn’t have a simple answer. You can implement the latest and greatest solutions, but you don’t necessarily gain value from them, or as much as similar organizations in your field. With businesses aiming to cut costs and secure a profitable future, how can you make sure that IT is providing value to your organization?

In order for small businesses to remain competitive in this economy, there has to be the opportunity for them to participate as a viable competitor. This is the goal of a United States bill that has passed through the House of Representatives and is moving forward to be voted on by the Senate.

Vince Lombardi, one of the most successful head coaches in NFL history, once said “If you are five minutes early, you are already ten minutes late.” Although it wasn’t its intended use, this quotation can easily apply to technology. The tech industry is constantly changing, improving, and innovating. Adapting to changes is something all businesses must do to thrive, small and medium businesses included.

When you mention the term 'disaster recovery,' most people think about the big ground-shattering events like earthquakes, fires, floods, tropical storms, etc. While these natural events are certainly disasters and devastating in their own right, smaller things can constitute as a disaster for your business, and they aren't seasonal.

Saving a little on your technology can go a long ways, but cutting too many corners can lead to additional problems and expensive downtime. Here are a few ways you can cut costs without creating long term issues.