Blue Ridge Technology

Cyber Attacks In today's interconnected, technology-driven world, it's imperative for businesses to maintain a vigilant stance towards cybersecurity. Cyber attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, targeting organizations of all sizes and sectors. With the rise of remote work and digital transformation, vulnerabilities have proliferated, requiring robust protective measures. But how concerned should you be about cyber attacks? Let's explore this critical issue in detail. The evolving landscape of cyber threats The nature of cyber threats has evolved significantly. Transitioning from simple malware and phishing attacks, cybercriminals now employ advanced tactics such as ransomware, zero-day exploits, and even state-sponsored attacks. The Verizon 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report highlighted that 82% of breaches involved human error, illustrating how crucial it is to educate employees about cybersecurity best practices. Types of cyber attacks Understanding the t...

[April blog 3] Security Vulnerabilities We all have some pretty intuitive feelings about keeping ourselves (and our stuff) safe. It’s why we have doors and locks: If you knew your storefront, office, or home was sitting with the front doors stuck wide open, you wouldn’t walk away, call it a night, or go on vacation, right? No, you’d do whatever needs to be done to secure your property. Sure, it’s possible everything will be fine — you aren’t guaranteed someone will break in. But the risk is too great, too obvious. Any of us would take the necessary precautions, even if it were pretty inconvenient to do so. But here’s the thing: as obvious as this sounds when we’re talking about buildings and real-world stuff, things get a little murkier in the digital world. The result is that many businesses and business leaders are sailing through life while their business’s digital infrastructure is frighteningly vulnerable — the equivalent of leaving the door unlocked, the safe open, and the keys i...

Device Storage Storage space. In just about every corner of our lives, it seems like more space is better. A bigger office is better, and so is a larger home. Garages across America are filled with stuff, not cars — and of course storage unit facilities are popping up just about everywhere. Why? Because all the stuff we own has to live somewhere. Either we need to trim down our amount of stuff, or we have to find adequate space to store it. Device storage is similar: the more (digital) stuff we accumulate, the more space we need. Deciding how much a business needs for various devices is in some ways a new complication, too. The Calculation Has Changed (Because Hardware Has Changed) A couple of decades ago, the question of storage space wasn’t as pressing. If you needed more storage space, you (or your IT tech) could open up your desktop tower and pop in a second hard drive, or replace the main hard drive with a much larger one. This was relatively easy to do. Fast-forward to today: man...

Phishing Attacks Are Increasing...Are Your Employees Educated On What To Look For? We’re frequently warning our customers and readers about the risks of phishing scams and attacks, and it looks like we won’t be stopping anytime soon. A new report in Infosecurity Magazine reveals that the rate at which business users clicked on phishing links was up in 2024, nearly triple the rate from 2023. That’s what we in the industry like to call, well, really bad news. Before we get into why things are getting worse instead of better (and what you should do to limit risk), let’s quickly review how these scams are built. The Anatomy of a Phishing Scam A phishing scam starts with a message of some sort: traditionally it was an email, but it could also be a text message, online ad, or even a search result (though this is less common than other methods). The message appears to come from a legitimate source (in recent business attacks, Microsoft 365 and Docusign were the top companies the scammers pos...

Return to Office for Remote Workers? Remote, hybrid, in-person—It’s time to check in and ask: How well is work working for your business? This month marks the fifth anniversary of COVID, which was officially declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Five years out, much of daily life has returned to how things were before the pandemic. But not everything: several large-scale changes seem like they’re here to stay. For many businesses like yours, the way we work is one of those lasting changes. Remote work existed before COVID (about 6.5% of private-sector jobs were primarily work from home in 2019), but not anywhere near the scale of today, where around 20% work from home at least some of the time. Even though some of this increase seems lasting, there’s plenty in the news about large companies demanding a return to office—and in some cases of employees quitting instead of coming back in. If the biggest companies in the world haven’t totally figured out what to do here, chances are our ...

Buying Used Technology...is it worth it? Keeping all the tech in your business current, fresh, and up to date can be a challenge. If your business is young or your margins are tight, replacing a fleet of tired, aging laptops might be a painful financial hit, too. One option that could save some money? Buying your upgraded tech used, rather than new. (But notice we said “could,” not “will” — more on this later.) Lots of people (and businesses) are doing it: secondhand electronics were a $93.7 billion industry in 2023. But should you? The truth is there are pros and cons to buying tech used, and if you do it the wrong way you might even open up your business to bigger digital threats. Why Go Used? Used Devices Are Cheaper The most obvious reason to buy used is saving money. It’s true that two years ago’s iPhones are cheaper than this year’s, and the same goes for business laptops, monitors, and just about anything else your business needs. Reality Check: You May Save Less Than You Think ...

Windows 11 Upgrade Hardware Requirements Windows 11 is a massive upgrade over Windows 10, and for most businesses, the answer to the question of “should we upgrade?” is an emphatic yes . We’ll get to why, but first we need to talk about why we can’t just say a blanket “yes”: in a few important situations, upgrading could create big problems. Here’s what you need to know. Windows 11 and Hardware Requirements Every new piece of software or operating system upgrade comes with some system requirements: you need this amount of storage, that amount of RAM, and a certain level of processor. Windows 11 is no different — except the requirements found with Windows 11 are more precise and exacting. Windows 11 has some very specific hardware requirements related to digital security. In fact, when Windows 11 was first released, you couldn’t even install it on machines that didn’t have certain hardware features. These days, there are ways to ignore these requirements and upgrade anyway, but watch ou...