End Of The Year Tech Message From Beth Tinsman From Twin State

Hello everyone,

As we race to close out 2021, I have some key messages to share about tech and I’ll keep it fun and simple.

We stand near-50 strong and remain dedicated to enabling technology for our organizations, so they thrive in the community we have.  We continue to work in the optimization zone for your organization and ourselves to drive improvements and adapt to change.  

You may know us as your information systems manager, your digital web supporter, or your programming team – or in a combination. For three decades, we have remained focused on providing Jimmy-John fast customer service, and the biggest bang for your buck, in everything technology-related.

Not all the news is fun.  Every executive is concerned that work will grind to a halt from a security compromise. We’ve seen wave after wave, many times more than in past years.  The few days-old “Log4j” had us working this past weekend to ensure NONE of the websites nor the environments we handle for our treasured customers were impacted.

What can you do?  This year we have seen some new great products introduced to make security simpler and easier.  Here are the best-of-breed items we want to have you implement.  Our engineers will help you to select the best set for you. 

  • SentinelOne we recommend being adopted as an endpoint detection/remediation if you have a virus. SentinelOne works with your N-central Antivirus and Patch Management software to enable proactive automatic virus control actions. It will roll back ransomware at your device automatically and without delay.  It is a new and effective tool if an employee is infected.
  • Proofpoint for spam filtering to throw out the junk automatically.
  • Veeam with cloud connect for rock-solid backups needed for recovery from inadvertent or deliberate loss or damage to your organization’s information.
  • Qualsys or Rapid Fire Tools with vulnerability scanning to identify hidden problems or bad actors to your entire network in its entirety.
  • Multi-factor Authentication thru Fortigate, Duo, and physical devices such as Yubikeys to protect and lock down desktops, laptops, and remote access to the business network to only your real employees or approved business partners.
  • Next Generation Fortigate Firewalls with threat control (with its features set up) to block and report threats. 
  • Huntress and Rapid7 as intrusion detection and prevention products – these products work with your programs and data to automatically scan and notify if there is an effort or threat is knocking at your door coming from an employee’s workstation.
  • KnowBe4 to train employees in how to recognize the good, the bad, and the ugly.
  • BitLocker for hard drive encryption. 
  • Network Segmentation – which is set up and deployed by your engineer to make your network more challenging for the bad actors to traverse.

Again, your Twin State engineers and our operations support center will work with you to select the best set for your particular organization. Schedule here for a start to the discussion. We also will help you complete your insurance profile questionnaires.

Is it hard to get hardware? Yes, and we see a potentially little improvement to somewhat worsening situations as the microchip shortage, transportation logistics, and supply chain/port of entry processes continue to present delays in getting hardware products.  We will work with you, and the news here is your early planning and flexibility makes the process more pleasant.

Price increases, in general, are impacting our world, as software companies use subscription models to hike up prices. Microsoft has some news as well.  Effective March 1, they are increasing prices by approximately 15% for 6 key Commercial (not charitable/nonprofit) products.  There are no commensurate changes in features, and less support available than in the past.  

Here’s some more detailed information on what to expect from Microsoft.

Twin State Tech has worked to hold pricing changes to a minimum, although we will be passing on these increases where applicable and continuing to focus on careful cost management.  It is not a great subject but expect and budget for pricing changes and purchasing more security products to mitigate fraud and further automate intrusion detection and prevention.  We keep working to optimize our product set offered to the best of breed intended to make your organization run well.

References linked to:

https://www.tsts.com/blog/edr/

https://www.tsts.com/infrastructure-network-solutions/proofpoint/

https://www.tsts.com/infrastructure-network-solutions/backup-disaster-recovery/

https://www.tsts.com/infrastructure-network-solutions/backup-disaster-recovery/

https://www.tsts.com/infrastructure-network-solutions/duo-security/

https://www.tsts.com/security-awareness-training/

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2021/08/19/new-pricing-for-microsoft-365/

 

 

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