We all know that awful feeling when technology isn’t working as we expect, or worse yet, we suspect our security has been breached. It sparks anxiety, frustration and even impulsive decision making. But just how did we get to such an unpleasant place?
The massive Equifax data breaches have been circulating headlines around the world. What isn’t widely known is that at least two of the three breaches were caused by very simple security oversights.
Businesses rely on information technology to improve productivity, share information and reduce the time it takes to communicate. Despite how important information technology is to their success many small businesses tend to manage it poorly. For the most part this has to do with the depth of expertise and investment of time that is necessary to ensure that software, hardware, networks and telephony are maintained to promote maximum stability and security.
Open source software has been around for decades, but the modern open source movement has completely changed the software landscape. It used to be that a small business seeking to run an e-mail, web, file or voice-over-IP server, let alone workstations had to pay through the nose for proprietary solutions that while often were well supported, were so cost prohibitive that the financial overhead imposed significant margin compression.