HUB TechMinutes

As business owners, with so much talk about cybersecurity and all of the threats that face us, we tend to put a lot of faith in the security investments we make. I say we, because an IT company has to be as protected, if not more, than their most demanding client. I’m going to talk shop a little bit about security, and some major concerns that I have in regard to all of our businesses.

Businesses today should be accepting card-based payments, regardless of their size. In addition to the convenience it offers to customers, it’s the most secure means you have of being paid. To protect consumers and their personal and financial information, many card providers have adopted a unified regulation that applies to businesses that accept these payments. Let’s review this regulation and how it impacts the average small-to-medium-sized business.

Many businesses looking to consolidate their tools are turning to cloud services and software suites that offer a centralized collection of solutions—such as the G Suite, as offered by Google. While G Suite offers Google Drive as a means of organizing your work resources and documents, different files can sometimes be saved in different places. This week, our tip is going to cover how you can work around this fact with a feature called Workspaces.

The small business owner has to do a lot. In fact, the smaller the business, the more he/she has to do. One thing that many small business owners do is make technology decisions. By acting like the organization's CIO or CTO (short for Chief Information Officer or Chief Technology Officer, respectively), the small business owner needs to understand what his/her organization’s technology needs are. Or, he/she needs to outsource that role. 

There is a saying that you hear a lot in business: Plan for the worst, hope for the best. This is typically related to data redundancy, cybersecurity, or one of any other proactive steps a business should take to control the continuity of their business. What happens when you plan for the worst, but the best comes to fruition? What happens when your business consistently meets demand, prospers without issue, and grows quickly? Today, we will take a look at some issues the small business owner has to deal with when his/her business isn’t so small anymore.