What makes a hybrid work environment work? A strong team and the right mindset are a start, but for this model to be successful, businesses need to utilize the right technology and solutions to remain relevant in this new trend. The right technologies can help support your employees’ work experience, aid in recruiting, while also helping to maintain a competitive edge in today’s digital world. As companies are moving away from remote work and more towards a hybrid model, issues are arising when it comes to reliable technology. Do you understand the need to invest in solutions that not only will make your employee’s jobs easier, but also help to mainstream your business?
Let’s discuss how you can utilize technology solutions to enhance your hybrid work environment.
Collaboration Tools
Team collaboration tools are utilized by organizations to track progress on projects, regardless of location. These tools can include things like cloud storage, document synchronization, file-sharing, instant messaging and online whiteboards for collective comments. Some common tools that we recommend checking out are Clickup, Monday.com or Trello.
Communication Platforms
When you have employees in different locations, you’ll want to secure a platform that aids in communication. These platforms are imperative in sharing information or supporting groups when working on projects. Communication and collaboration should be just as smooth at home as in the office. Fortunately, there are many tools on the market that can allow for communication to be seamless and accessible. Keeping your team connected is imperative to avoid disruptions. Some common platforms to investigate are Slack or Microsoft Teams.
Security Software
Flexible work environments require a different approach to security like a VPN or virtual private network. A VPN will encrypt and protect data to ensure that employees are the ones that are able to access information on the go.
Video Conferencing Software
These types of collaboration tools can offer flexibility and connection when not everyone is located within the same area. Video conferencing allows employees to connect with one another to collaborate on projects, touch base and even perform reviews. Microsoft Teams, Google Hangout and Zoom are some common players in the video software industry.
Document Management
When supporting your hybrid workers at home, you’ll need a tool that allows your employees to share and store documents electronically, in one-centralized location. File-sharing tools can enable your team to access documents without backing up your inbox. With this in place, you can also control who has access to important documents. SharePoint is a common document management system that you can put in place.
Let Us Help You
Selecting solutions to help your business to succeed can be daunting if you don’t know where to start. Here at NetAssurity, we can do just that. If you’re ready to transition to a hybrid workplace model, you’ve come to the right place. With experts like us, you’ll be up and running in no time. Your employees will thank you—give us a call.
One of the most fundamental ways to remain competitive in today’s work climate is to ensure that your business is up to date with its tech. After all, outdated equipment and software can slow down your operations and decrease your company’s productivity and efficiency. Fortunately, there’s a tax incentive for buying new tech for your business while saving money.
Section 179 of the IRS tax code provides you with unbeatable end-of-the-year tax benefits. With this deduction, you can write off the full purchase price of qualifying equipment and software that was purchased or leased in the tax year. The U.S. government provided this deduction to ease tax burdens and encourage businesses to make the leap in investing in new tech.
In this blog, we’ll lay out three factors your business should consider when purchasing new office tech.
1. Your Overall Business Strategy
Firstly, it’s important to consider how the new tech you buy will fit into your overarching business strategy. What are the key priorities that are incorporated into this strategy? Is it to streamline operations? Improve workplace culture? Further profitability? Or perhaps a mix of all three?
Defining your priorities can help you build a better roadmap when buying new tech for your business. You can decide what operations can help you actually reach your goals. You can also get more specific about what features, integrations or software you need.
2. Your Level of Support
Purchasing and implementing new technological processes always comes with its challenges. You may face issues when adapting certain integrations or even installing the hardware itself. These challenges, if not addressed properly, could lead to further costly downtime.
To avoid delays, someone like a managed service provider can help you with the installation and implementation of new equipment and networks. You’ll have access to a level of expertise you may not have internally, saving you time, money and headaches.
3. Your Budget
Finally, the big question when buying new tech for your business will be your budget. You’ll have to consider factors like your current costs and your expected ROI from the new tech. But also think about this: down the line, your new technology could lead to an improved experience for your customers and, by extension, increased profits.
However, this is also where Section 179 comes in. Instead of having to write off equipment a little at a time through depreciation, you simply write off the entire purchase price of your new technology all at once. You can see further details on the official Section 179 website, including deduction limitations.
Benefit from End-of-the-Year Tax Benefits
If you were hesitant about making the jump when it comes to purchasing new tech, worry no more. There are tax deductions out there to help your business save costs while leveraging technology for your growth. Consult with a tax professional to see how Section 179 can help your specific business.
If you’d like to get advice on IT and tech strategies you can start utilizing in the new year, consult our IT experts. You can also get more information by checking out additional blogs in our resources section.
The 2022 tax season is almost here. Many businesses get nervous during this time, often wondering if they are taking advantage of tax deductions that can reduce their overall expenses. Luckily, technology tax deductions can help companies save big, including Section 179.
With the Section 179 tax deduction, businesses can deduct the full purchase price of qualifying equipment or software purchased or leased during the tax year. The only restrictions? Businesses must have purchased or leased the equipment between January 1st and December 31st of the tax year and have used the items more than 50% of the time for business purposes.
Let’s delve into the full benefits provided by Section 179.
1. Save Big Immediately
It’s a common theme — businesses purchase technological devices and wait for them to quit working before moving on to a new purchase. Doing so provides a plethora of issues, including slowed operations, decreased productivity and high costs to troubleshoot problems.
With the Section 179 tax code of technology tax deductions, businesses can instead invest in new technology at any time and write off the entire cost while filling out their taxes. There’s no need to wait for holiday sales at the end of the year to make an investment.
The following products qualify:
Purchased, financed or leased equipment
Workstations, laptops, tablets or smartphones
Servers, printers, routers and network security appliances
Off-the-shelf software
2. Remain Competitive
Technology is quick to evolve in today’s age. New hardware and software are released constantly, with cutting-edge features meant to help automate administrative processes and streamline operations.
By continuing to use outdated technology, you risk falling behind your competitors. They’ll be able to work more efficiently, productively and faster. On a broader scale, you risk losing customers to competitors, affecting your bottom line. You must keep up with technology to remain successful in a digital-first world.
3. Make Saving Easy
Another aspect of the tax season that stresses out businesses is how complicated they fear it will be. Fortunately, that’s not the case with Section 179. To take advantage of technology tax deductions like Section 179, all businesses have to do is fill out a form — in this case, Form 4562.
The only limit businesses must know about is the deduction amount which sits at $1,080,000 for the 2022 tax year. Moreover, the total amount of equipment you can purchase to qualify for this deduction Is $2,700,000. After this, the amount phases out dollar by dollar, or the deductible amount begins to decrease.
Stay Modern with Your Tech
Writing off technology purchases has never been easier for businesses. With technology tax deductions like Section 179, companies can improve their technology while enjoying better spending at any time of the year.
If you’d like to learn more about what technology best fits your company’s unique needs, consult our IT experts.
To learn more about other IT resources and strategies, check out additional blogs in our resources section.
The information provided in this blog is for educational purposes only. Consult your tax professional for information on how Section 179 may relate to your business.
Were you aware that most data breaches start with an email—specifically a phishing email? Just in 2022 alone, 62% of businesses faced a data breach of some kind. With cybercrimes increasing in frequency and criminals growing increasingly sophisticated with their techniques, training your team is no longer an option—it’s a necessity. Luckily, October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and it’s the ideal time for businesses to strengthen their cybersecurity awareness and training for their staff.
To improve your cybersecurity, we’ve put together some helpful tips on how you and your staff can better prepare yourselves for the unexpected.
Cybersecurity Awareness: What You Need to Know
Cybercrimes are on the rise, and these attacks can threaten confidential information and lure unsuspecting employees to click suspicious links. Human error is the easiest way for cyberthreats to occur. By adding that extra layer of protection—cybersecurity training prepares your staff to make smarter decisions when it comes to malicious threats lurking in the shadows.
95% of breaches are caused by human error. That’s an outstanding number that could have been prevented if your employees were properly trained to identify malicious threats. Knowledge is key when it comes to cybersecurity, and teaching your team what to look for can save your business time and money. Cybercriminals are going to rely heavily on your team’s lack of awareness because it’s easier to trick someone into giving their information if they aren’t aware of the malicious intent.
Training Tips
How can you ensure that your employees and your business are safe online?
Teach your employees how to identify a scam: Teaching your employees to spot scams will help them to determine what’s real and what’s fake. You can teach them to exercise caution when reading emails.
Teach and enforce password best practices: Strong passwords are critical to online security. A good password is at least 12 characters long and has a mix of upper and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. 50% of people use the same password for work and personal accounts. Make it long, unique and complex to avoid issues.
Teach your employees about protocols if a breach has occurred: Having a disaster recovery plan and putting it to use is essential in helping your staff understand what to expect in case a breach has occurred.
We Have You Covered
Neither you nor your employees want any harm to come to your business. By giving them the tools they need to fight off cyberthreats you can outmaneuver the hackers by using your greatest asset as a frontline defense—your team.
With NetAssurity, employees are trained to understand how to combat a cyberattack. They can recognize danger and learn how to better protect themselves with our educational programs. Don’t wait to give us a call. Bring cybersecurity awareness and training to your staff now. Let us help you prepare for the unexpected. Contact us today.
If you want to learn more about cybersecurity awareness and training, check out additional blogs in our resources section.
Every day, cybercriminals are getting more sophisticated with the cyberattacks they perform. As a result, many companies strive to improve their cyber readiness to prepare themselves for cyberthreats. In doing so, they can mitigate any financial, repetitional or service damage should a cyberattack occur.
The best way to become cyber ready is to understand the most common cyberattacks today. Once you know attack concepts and processes, you can develop a proper response plan to deal with incidents that you suspect are cybercrimes.
Here are several prominent cyberattacks to be aware of:
Phishing
Phishing is a very well-known cybersecurity threat, yet many individuals worldwide continue to fall for these fraudulent email scams. In fact, 83% of businesses reported experiencing a successful phishing attack in 2021. Nowadays, there are different types of phishing emails, including whaling. Here, hackers disguise themselves as senior executives and attack unsuspecting employees.
Still, regardless of the type, all phishing scams follow the same process: the cybercriminal attempts to get the receiver to share sensitive information or click on a link that installs malicious software on a computer. To avoid falling for this cyberattack, look for telltale signs, including a generic greeting that doesn’t use your name or a web URL that doesn’t start with “https.” If you feel an email is suspicious, it probably is.
Password Attack
Another attack to be aware of as part of your cyber readiness is a password attack. A cybercriminal will attempt to hack a user’s password using different schemes, such as a dictionary attack. This is when hackers enter many common words and their variations to try and guess a password.
To increase your cyber awareness of password attacks, you can use multi-factor authentication (MFA). For instance, you can require a user to submit a password and provide a code received by email or text to log in to a system. Layering the password-entering process will tighten your cybersecurity and make your business less vulnerable.
Ransomware
Lastly, there is ransomware. Here, cybercriminals will use malware to prevent users from accessing their system until they pay a ransom. Usually, there’s a tight deadline the user must meet, or they will lose complete control of their data.
As should be included in your entire cyber readiness journey, you can prevent ransomware by ensuring your systems are up-to-date and performing backups of all important data. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has a framework to follow when performing these system updates and backups. Following the NIST checklist is a great place to start.
To Conclude
While there are plenty of cyberattacks to be aware of, the ones listed above are attacks that businesses suffer from repeatedly. Optimizing your cyber readiness and following the NIST protocol are two important first steps to take in protecting your business.
To be extra prepared, you can receive a cyber risk assessment with NetAssurity. We’ll help you further understand what you need to do to be cyber ready in today’s world.
If you want to learn more about cyber readiness, check out additional blogs in our resources section.
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