Get Set for the New Year with Our Top 5 2017 Tech Resolutions

No matter where you live or what you do, the New Year serves as an inspiring moment. Want to commit yourself to achieving a personal goal or change the way you approach your career? The first few days of January are a great time to do it.

But as historian and teacher Joseph M. Marshall III says, “Success is rarely the result of one fell swoop, but more often the culmination of many small victories.” Very few of us have the ability to radically alter our lives in one calendar day—and even if we could, sustaining such transformations can be just as difficult.

If you’d rather make subtle improvements to your daily routine in the name of boosting efficiency, productivity, and security, CMIT Solutions can help. Below, we’ve compiled our top five tech resolutions for 2017, all of which are relatively easy to implement—and essential if you want to maintain online privacy and enhance cybersecurity. Happy New Year!

1) Back up your data (sooner rather than later). In this digital age, we all accumulate virtual tons of data. Beyond family photos, funny videos, and music, though, consider the critical information needed to run your business. Regular, remote, and redundant backup preserves and protects that data, keeping you and your employees safe no matter what happens. Don’t wait for a data disaster to strike to spring into backup action (and give some serious thought to protecting your business with a rock-solid disaster recovery and business continuity plan while you’re at it). 

2) Safeguard your passwords. In 2016, 63% of confirmed data breaches were caused by weak, default, or stolen passwords, and easily available hacking software is capable of testing billions of password combinations each minute. So it’s imperative to create long, complicated, randomly generated passwords; use different passwords for different accounts; deploy secure password management solutions; and enable two-factor authentication.

3) Elevate your cybersecurity awareness. This can be as involved as working with an IT provider to deploy multi-layered network security solutions, but it can also be as simple as avoiding unsecured public Wi-Fi networks, combatting ransomware by recognizing and avoiding malicious links or illicit attachments, and steering clear of malware by NOT clicking on nasty “malvertising” exploits.

4) Don’t always believe the hype. Whether it’s the allure of a fancy new smartphone or the promise of an updated operating system, upgrade with caution. Apple’s much-lauded iPhone 7 arrived last fall without an earphone jack and with numerous other issues. And although Windows 10 has received mostly positive reviews, it can still present problems for businesses running legacy software (not to mention those pushy “recommended” upgrade prompts and data-tracking concerns). Moving to new devices, apps, software, and hardware isn’t always a bad thing, and it can be done carefully and considerately. This is why our fifth and final tech resolution for 2017 is so important…

5) Work with a trusted IT partner to develop short-term and long-term tech strategies. As a business owner, what’s most important? Proactive maintenance and monitoring that takes a 24/7 approach to prevent downtime? Reliable help desk support that keeps your employees focused on their jobs, not bogged down in IT problems? Data encryption and compliance that satisfies stringent industry and government regulations? Or simply the purchase and implementation of new hardware to bring your office up to speed? Whatever the problem, whatever the desired outcome, whatever the budget, and whatever the timeline, CMIT Solutions has dedicated itself to helping businesses develop a comprehensive approach to technology that helps them succeed.

If you’re ready to kick 2017 off with a new IT direction, contact CMIT Solutions today. We work hard to understand your business goals, listen to your concerns, discover the best plan of action for your company, and improve your productivity and profitability. We worry about IT so you don’t have to—and that’s one New Year’s resolution we always keep.

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