What are the real benefits of cloud for small businesses?

by RITO Technologies | Dec 10, 2021 | New Normal

What are the real benefits of cloud for small businesses?

“Fifty-four percent of small business owners said improving operations with technology was one of their key goals for 2022,” says Timmis from Xero in a recent article released on ITWeb.

He continues to say, many small company owners are not confident in knowing the right technology when it comes to managing their business. Giving more reason why it is so important to consider your technology on an ongoing basis and outsource areas within your business where necessary to help you and your business operate at its optimum.

Let’s kick off with some of the key benefits of using cloud in your business

Flexibility

If your current IT solutions are forcing you to commit too much of your attention to computer and data-storage issues, then you aren’t going to be able to concentrate on reaching business goals and satisfying customers. On the other hand, by relying on an outside organisation to take care of all IT hosting and infrastructure, you’ll have more time to devote toward the aspects of your business that directly affect your bottom line. The cloud offers businesses more flexibility overall versus hosting on a local server.

2. Security

Many organisations have security concerns when it comes to adopting a cloud-computing solution. When files, programs, and other data aren’t kept securely onsite, how can you know that they are being protected? If you can remotely access your data, then what’s stopping a cybercriminal from doing the same thing? Well, quite a bit. The best cloud computing security solutions provide data security by design. They have security protocols and policies such as strong access controls and data encryption to prevent unauthorised entities from accessing confidential information. Cloud security solutions include 24/7 monitoring of the application and cloud-based assets. This helps organisations to have continuous visibility both in and on their business.

3. Mobility

Cloud computing allows mobile access to corporate data via smartphones and devices, which, considering over 2.6 billion smartphones are being used globally today, it is a great way to ensure that no one is ever left out of the loop. Staff with busy schedules, or who live a long way away from the corporate office, can use this feature to keep instantly up to date with clients and co-workers.

Through the cloud, you can offer conveniently accessible information to sales staff who travel, freelance employees, or remote employees, for better work-life balance. Therefore, it’s not surprising to see that organisations with employee satisfaction listed as a priority are up to 24% more likely to expand cloud usage.

Cloud adoption has surged in recent years, from 13% of SMEs using it in 2017, to 61% in 2020.
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4. Scalability and Performance

Cloud technology is designed to be scaled to meet your business’s changing IT requirements. As a company grows, it is inevitable that more storage space and bandwidth will be required to cope with increasing traffic to the website. Cloud servers can be deployed automatically to help businesses scale up and down and ensure optimum performance under heavy loads. Cloud technology also improves website speed and minimises downtime.

5. Insight

As we move ever further into the digital age, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the adage “knowledge is power” has taken on the more modern and accurate form: “Data is money.” Hidden within the millions of bits of data that surround your customer transactions and business process are nuggets of invaluable, actionable information just waiting to be identified and acted upon. Of course, sifting through that data to find these kernels can be very difficult, unless you have access to the right cloud-computing solution.

Many cloud-based storage solutions offer integrated cloud analytics for a bird’s-eye view of your data. With your information stored in the cloud, you can easily implement tracking mechanisms and build customised reports to analyse information organisation wide. From those insights, you can increase efficiencies and build action plans to meet organisational goals.

How can your IT partner help you?

We can provide you and your team with the required cloud solutions
We can also help you encrypt data to always ensure the confidentiality of your data
We can help you with the necessary security measures to protect your data from any outside sources or attempted cyber-attacks.
We are here to support you 24/7

To be prepared takes a clear action plan, backed by a good IT strategy. Rito-Technologies is an IT business partner who maximises business output through technology. They enable their clients to be secure with their IT Strategic Planning, which is guaranteed to increase your accessibility, productivity, and levels of communication with the right level of technology for business and potential customers.

For more information about our IT Strategic Planning or Technology Management Services, please get in touch with us at info@rito-tech.co.za and we will gladly assist you.

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The benefits of a professional hosting partner

by RITO Technologies | Nov 13, 2021 | New Normal

The benefits of a professional hosting partner

Times have changed, gone are the days of only relying on word-of-mouth, now you need to be online to be found. Thus, owning a website is no longer an option, but rather a must. Website costs can be a heavy expense and finding the right partner for your specific needs is also difficult because of the number of options available.

There are also several concerns regarding reliability, support and even security issues as websites can be hacked if the required security measures are not put in place. You also want hosting that will give your website and emails sufficient capacity with the best performance at the most affordable price. Therefore, going with a professional is a much better option for your business.

The benefits of a professional hosting partner

1. Email and Domain

To build brand loyalty, every web hosting service provider provides at least one domain name to their clients. If you use free web hosting providers, your reputation may be tarnished as free web hosting services might use a subdomain that promotes their services instead of yours.

There is also a limit on the number of email accounts you can choose from. In the case of professional web hosting services, you can determine multiple email accounts as well as a specific domain name.

2. Design and Style

When using free website services, you are also restricted in the selection of designs and templates available to you. This also makes your website look unprofessional.

On the other side, a professionally hosted web service allows you to get access to unlimited options and other related technologies to improve the functionality of your website.

3. Improved Security

By using professional web hosting services, you can enjoy stronger security privileges with the help of more advanced tools and the availability of professional system engineers who are responsible for the security concerns.

Some of the important security measures used by professional web services include virus scanning, security audits, spam filtering and OS updates. Moreover, these can fix all the security related loopholes and prevent your server from external attacks.

4. Data Recovery

This is one of the best advantages of hiring a professional web hosting service. It is always important for you to keep your data secure with regular backups, because losing your data means starting over or impacting your online reputation.

Professional web hosting always ensures that your data is properly backed up and can be retrieved whenever you need it.

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How to choose your hosting professional?

Available storage
Depending on the purpose of your website, you will need a smaller or a larger storage space for your files. The best option is to hire a service that best meets your needs.

Technical Support
There is nothing more disappointing on the internet than clicking on a link and failing to open the site. So, be sure to check if the hosting service you have chosen offers the best levels of service.

Loading speed
Google prioritises the pages that load faster, trying to always offer the best experience to visitors. So, you need to be aware of that before launching your site!

Security of your data
Entrusting the hosting of your website to a company is not a simple task. Therefore, you need to make sure that the provider you choose can really guarantee your users’ protection, ensuring a system of data redundancy and constant backups.

Hosting options
There are several hosting options and services available, so it is important to understand what you need and then make a decision based on their hosting packages available and if you may require any value-added services which may also come in hand.

Reviews and testimonials
Lastly, do your research and see if they have any reviews or positive client testimonials about their services.

Book a free assessment

To be prepared takes a clear action plan, backed by a good IT strategy. Rito-Technologies is an IT business partner who maximises business output through technology. They enable their clients to be secure with their IT Strategic Planning, which is guaranteed to increase your accessibility, productivity, and levels of communication with the right level of technology for business and potential customers.

For more information about our IT Strategic Planning or our cyber security planning, please get in touch with us at info@rito-tech.co.za and we will gladly assist you.

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What does it take to be POPI Compliant?

by RITO Technologies | Oct 28, 2021 | New Normal

What does it take to be POPI Compliant?

The POPI Act continues to raise alarm bells for several SMEs, so we wanted to share with you some of the key steps to becoming POPI compliant.

What is the POPI Act (‘POPIA’)?

The POPI Act is a comprehensive privacy law that is mandatory for all businesses within the private and public sector that process personal information in South Africa. It seeks to protect and regulate the processing of personal information, falling into the broader Constitutional right to privacy.

The POPI Act requires businesses to regulate how information is organised, stored, secured, and discarded. This ensures that the business can maintain the integrity and confidentiality of its clients’ and employees’ personal information by preventing loss, damage, and unauthorised access to the personal data. The Act therefore guarantees that personal information will be used in a responsible and ethical manner by businesses from the time it is collected until the time it is destroyed.

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Steps to becoming POPI compliant

Work out whether your business needs to comply with POPI or not, and if so, how

If your business is based in South Africa, then yes – POPI affects you. But, unlike GDPR, POPI is not applicable extraterritorially. If your headquarters are in South Africa or you process personal information and data in South Africa, then you need to comply with POPI.

It’s important to understand, however, that different businesses will have to meet different requirements. SMEs are subject to different requirements than large-scale enterprises, your existing security framework and data protection mechanisms may also already tick some of the boxes required.

Up-skill yourself and your team

Ensuring you and your team understand the requirements of POPI will empower you to make decisions and act in the best interests of your business and your clients while complying with POPI. Ensure there is adequate staff training and education around how to store customer information effectively and securely and what is and is not allowed to be shared.

Figure out who your “POPI person” will be

Every business needs an Information Officer. It may seem like overkill, but it’s not. Your data (and your clients’ data is valuable). By appointing an information officer, you’re not only acknowledging this but also ensuring you are taking responsibility for it. Of course, you need to make sure you empower and up-skill the person you select to make decisions regarding information security. You may want to engage a professional cybersecurity partner to help in this regard.

Work out the specific steps your company needs to take to comply

This might seem scary, but practice makes perfect. And help is available. If you’re unsure of how to start, choose an IT partner that understands your business and sector to help you along the journey.

For example, you should only store the most up to date information of your current employees and customers. Once a staff member has resigned or a customer is no longer on your books, their information is no longer necessary for you to keep.

Nail the basics

There are some basics you can implement that will go a long way in helping you to cover your POPI basics, such as encrypting data (including emails, customer databases and contact info of external people) and engaging a cybersecurity expert to train your employees on how to handle personal information and secure any breaches.

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How your IT partner can help you

We can provide you and your team with the necessary POPI training
We can also help you encrypt data to ensure the confidentiality of your customers information
Lastly, we can help you with the necessary security measures to protect your data from any outside sources or attempted cyber-attacks.

To be prepared takes a clear action plan, backed by a good IT strategy. Rito-Technologies is an IT business partner who maximises business output through technology. They enable their clients to be secure with their IT Strategic Planning, which is guaranteed to increase your accessibility, productivity, and levels of communication with the right level of technology for business and potential customers.

For more information about our IT Strategic Planning or our POPI solutions, please get in touch with us at info@rito-tech.co.za and we will gladly assist you.

If you enjoyed reading this blog and would like to receive future blogs, please register here now.

Back to Basics

by RITO Technologies | Sep 22, 2021 | New Normal

Back to basics with IT support

IT is imperative in the modern business environment, but not everyone has basic IT support. Whether from lack of availability or less capital to invest, some organisations lose out when it comes to a dedicated IT support team, whether it is on-site or remote support.

Why IT Support is Essential

Cybersecurity threats continue to grow. A significant increase in the number of reported incidents has occurred since March of this year. Hackers believe more vulnerabilities are exposed as people move from a secure office network to a remote location without adequate security.

Downtime is also costly, but with properly monitored systems, equipment failures can be identified and replaced before they fail and or if they do fail, your data or information is securely backed up.

Finding the right IT service and support provider can go a long way to protecting your digital assets and helping your bottom line. Knowing that your system is being monitored can bring you peace of mind.

Book a free assessment to see if you are ready to outsource your IT support?

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But when do you outsource?

If any of these look familiar to you, then it is time to start outsourcing your IT support:

You’ve noticed a decrease in company efficiency
Security problems are higher in frequency and are difficult to resolve
Your bottom line is getting hurt from the various problems your business is encountering
You don’t have enough IT staff to cover all issues, and your experts are handling small problems
Customer support is not resolving problems fast enough or at all
You don’t have an effective recovery plan in case of lost data
You don’t have the financial resources to invest in new cybersecurity infrastructure, which is hampering company performance

The advantages to outsourcing

Cost Savings and Control
One of the most surprising benefits to IT outsourcing is that it can actually save you money! In-house IT teams can be very expensive to hire and train and may not be used efficiently, as the IT workload can be quite variable. Outsourcing your IT to a managed service provider gives you the support you need when you need it, and you only pay for the services you use. Ultimately, this can save your business money and help you budget more effectively.

Increased Efficiency
A managed service provider knows how to help your business run more efficiently. By helping you redesign workflows, automate tasks, and upgrade equipment, you can have state-of-the-art technology to help you run more efficiently and keep up with your peers and competitors.

Experts and Experience
An in-house IT team only sees the problems that have already arisen in your business. When you use IT outsourcing, you are hiring experts that see a wide variety of IT problems every day.
This means when a new problem arises, they already know how to fix it for you quickly and at lower costs. The IT professionals at a managed service provider are constantly undergoing training in the latest technology to provide you the best service available.

Support your Business Goals
Your company has limited resources. When you are forced to spend time and energy making IT decisions on complex systems, you are being taken away from the goals of your business. IT outsourcing allows you to focus on what you want for your business, while your managed service provider supplies the IT support you need to get it.

Security Enhancements
Cyber security is an extremely important topic. Your network has vulnerabilities you must protect against. IT outsourcing allows you to tap into the extensive knowledge of experts trained in this topic to provide you with security solutions that will work for your business. Your managed service provider can help keep your software and security up to date for your protection.

Maintain Compliance
Today, many industries have compliance standards that must be met. Without additional support, it can be easy to fall out of compliance, which can cost your business significantly. IT outsourcing lets you focus on doing the work, while your managed service provider helps you implement strategies to maintain compliance for your industry regulations.

Be Competitive
If you have a small- or medium-sized business, you simply do not have the same range of resources that larger corporations enjoy. However, IT outsourcing lets you have the same level of expertise, equipment, and support as these larger companies. This allows you to keep up with the bigger companies, while providing the excellent customer experience your clients expect.

Book a free assessment to see if you are ready to outsource your IT support?

Book a free assessment

To be prepared takes a clear action plan, backed by a good IT strategy. Rito-Technologies is an IT business partner who maximises business output through technology. They enable their clients to be secure with their IT Strategic Planning, which is guaranteed to increase your accessibility, productivity, and levels of communication with the right level of technology for business and potential customers.

For more information about our IT Strategic Planning or our IT support solutions, please get in touch with us at info@rito-tech.co.za and we will gladly assist you.

If you enjoyed reading this blog and would like to receive future blogs, please register here now.

Cybersecurity continues to progress

by RITO Technologies | Aug 23, 2021 | New Normal

Cybersecurity continues to progress

Cybersecurity:

the practice of protecting critical systems and sensitive information from digital attacks from inside or outside an organisation, continues to progress at the same rate as other technologies because of the constant emergence of new threats.

Malicious hackers attempting to gain unauthorised access to data would not give up quickly, and they will continue to find ways to avoid even the most stringent protection measures.

Scaling up your security

Cyber-attacks are increasing in frequency, sophistication, and impact, with perpetrators continually refining their efforts to compromise systems, networks, and information.

Many companies need security management as a service because if your organisation gets breached, the losses you’ll incur go beyond money. Indeed, you can recover financially, but it’s harder to recover from the reputational loss. Since 60% of small companies that suffer attacks end up collapsing within six months, you can’t afford to ignore cybersecurity.

Likewise, clients will only consider your products and services if the security of the data they share with you is guaranteed.

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The different types of threats to be aware of:

Malware: The term “malware” refers to malicious software variants—such as worms, viruses, Trojans, and spyware—that provide unauthorised access or cause damage to a computer. Malware attacks are increasingly “fileless” and designed to get around familiar detection methods, such as antivirus tools, that scan for malicious file attachments.
Ransomware: A type of malware that locks down files, data, or systems, and threatens to erase or destroy the data – or make private or sensitive data to the public – unless a ransom is paid to the cybercriminals who launched the attack. Recent ransomware attacks have targeted state and local governments, which are easier to breach than organisations and under pressure to pay ransoms to restore applications and websites on which citizens rely.
Phishing / social engineering: Phishing is a form of social engineering that tricks users into providing their sensitive information. In phishing scams, emails or text messages appear to be from a legitimate company asking for sensitive information, such as credit card data or login information.
Insider threats: Current or former employees, business partners, contractors, or anyone who has had access to systems or networks in the past can be considered an insider threat if they abuse their access permissions. Insider threats can be invisible to traditional security solutions like firewalls and intrusion detection systems, which focus on external threats.
Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks: A DDoS attack attempts to crash a server, website, or network by overloading it with traffic, usually from multiple coordinated systems. DDoS attacks overwhelm enterprise networks via the simple network management protocol (SNMP), used for modems, printers, switches, routers, and servers.

Book a free assessment

To be prepared takes a clear action plan, backed by a good IT strategy. Rito-Technologies is an IT business partner who maximises business output through technology. They enable their clients to be secure with their IT Strategic Planning, which is guaranteed to increase your accessibility, productivity, and levels of communication with the right level of technology for business and potential customers.

For more information about our IT Strategic Planning or our cyber security planning, please get in touch with us at info@rito-tech.co.za and we will gladly assist you.

If you enjoyed reading this blog and would like to receive future blogs, please register here now.

How safe is your back-up?

by RITO Technologies | Jul 29, 2021 | New Normal

How safe is your back-up?

Computers use drives to store your data.

The constant reading and writing of data will eventually lead to drive failure, due to mechanical failure or drive degradation, usually without warning.

There are also other situations which may result in data loss, such as power failures, system or file corruption, viruses, ransomware, or malware attacks. It is therefore important to store a copy of your data somewhere else – as a safety net or form of redundancy.

5 Benefits why you need a back-up:

1. Client Relationship: Saved information improves client relationship management, which leads to increased marketing and sales. Additionally, saved client information builds trust and value of a company.

2. Archiving: Backed up information streamlines the development of archives. Archived files lead to comparative studies of the past and present to devise a more effective plan.

3. Competitive Gain: Saved company data can be a competitive advantage because there are many businesses that fail backup important information.

4. Improved Productivity: With existing backed up files, companies improve productivity by reducing wasted time.

5. No Wasted Time: Data backup reduces ‘wasted time’ by preventing repetitions. Thus, employees do not have to rewrite reports.

Where should your back-up data go?

There are a number of choices to consider based on the data that is being back up, including the size of the backups, setup complexity, portability and security requirements, budget, and whether it must be an on-site or offsite backup.

1. External hard drives– One of the most common storage mediums, external drives, are easy to setup, relatively cheap, provide multiple storage size options, are portable and are usually large enough to store a lot of data. But also have the risk of being damaged or stolen.

2. USB flash drives–They are good for transporting data between locations efficiently. However, they are also prone to being lost or stolen, have a low storage capacity, and certain higher-end models are more expensive.

3. Disc media (CD/DVD-Rom)– Burnable disc media is a dying storage medium, although there are still some people who use them. They are cheap, portable, and can be used for offsite storage. However, they have limited storage capacity, a short shelf life and are considerably slower than hard/flash drives.

4. Cloud Backup– Storing your data in the cloud is the latest trend in backup technology. Data stored on cloud services are always accessible from any internet-connected device. Cloud storage is offsite, so it keeps your data safe from disasters.

5. FTP/FTPS/SFTP– Like cloud storage, FTP is an offsite storage solution and may be a solid and reliable option to consider if available.

Data backups are among the most important infrastructure components in any organisation because they help guard against data loss. Backups provide a way of restoring deleted files or recovering a file when it is accidentally overwritten.

To be prepared takes a clear action plan, backed by a good IT strategy.

Rito-Technologies is an IT business partner who maximises business output through technology. They enable their clients to be secure with their IT Strategic Planning, which is guaranteed to increase your accessibility, productivity, and levels of communication with the right level of technology for business and potential customers.

For more information about our IT Strategic Planning or our back-up solutions, please get in touch with us at info@rito-tech.co.za and we will gladly assist you.

If you enjoyed reading this blog and would like to receive future blogs, please register here now.