The Datamax Thinking Blog

IT service partners often fail for one (or all) of these reasons: data loss, poor communication / customer service, downtime, and security breach. How's your partner doing?

Not every service partner will meet your expectations.

I know, I know; not a particularly shocking or unexpected revelation. We've all been disappointed in business services, whether it was the company that built your deck or the one that attempted to manage your network.

Sometimes you choose the wrong company. 

Do You Have Any Clue What You Need? Digital Copiers, Document Management, and Managed Networks

“Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, “What road do I take?”
The cat asked, “Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know,” Alice answered.
“Then,” said the cat, “it really doesn’t matter, does it?” 
― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

If you've spent any time on our website, you know we place a high value on assessments – we offer one on just about every page!

What we also hear is that not everyone is entirely clear on the ramifications of HIPAA non-compliance. 

In 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) established significant requirements to safeguard the health information of patients.  These requirements dictate the when, how, and with whom as it relates to the sharing of Protected Health Information (PHI).

Based on what we see and hear in the Document Management and Document Workflow arena, Healthcare Providers are quite focused on the application of HIPAA guidelines within their practices and clinics today. 

61% of data breaches within companies of less than 500 employees involve paper records.*

Are you counting how much paper and how many employees are in your office right now?

Imagine your law firm in the news – not because you’ve just won a high profile case, but because you’ve experienced a data breach. Worse, that data breach was caused by something simple – like mistakenly throwing away older case files into the dumpster or one of your lawyers losing his briefcase in Starbucks, with client information written on his two legal pads inside that briefcase.

81% of the respondents reported that negligent employees or other insiders have been responsible for at least one unintentional data breach within their organizations over the past two years. - The Human Factor in Data Protection Study¹

While companies will always be fearful of the malicious ‘bad apple’ employee, numerous studies have shown that most internal security breaches are accidental or unintentional; mostly a result of clever phishing tactics. Phishing is a scam featuring a malicious program posing as legitimate – an email seemingly sent by someone in your contacts, but the actual address is unfamiliar. Inadvertently, a well-meaning employee could succumb to such a scam by not realizing that something isn’t right. By properly identifying these causes, companies can not only inform employees of the risks, but can also reduce their exposure to these cyber-attacks. If employers take the time to educate employees on how to identify these threats, small business with limited resources can drastically reduce their own exposure at little to no additional cost.

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” – Walt Kelly

Any device that can access your network is a potential security loophole. Close it.

Look around your office. How many printers, scanners, copiers, computers, laptops, webcams, tablets, and smartphones do you see? Every one of them is a ripe target for hackers.