Digital transformation leverages cloud technologies and modern processes to enable businesses to operate faster and more efficiently. As a result, applications are increasingly moving out of data centers to cloud-backed networks to help businesses work smarter and more collaboratively. Once you drive your applications to the cloud, the service provider will henceforth manage your IT infrastructure, thus relieving you of the complexities of managing your own IT assets. As a result, your employees get to work from anywhere, accessing data on devices of their choice. Digitalization of your business operations ensures seamless IT infrastructure management from one place. When you move your workloads into cloud-backed virtualized networks, it is imperative to adopt new technologies to secure your data. 

Read more: All You Need to Know About Dashboards and Data Security

Why is securing solutions essential for digital transformation?

Your remote employees use their personal devices to access various apps in the cloud, including multiple collaboration tools, to access data on your corporate network to get their work done. This calls for the adoption of enhanced security measures across your network to safeguard your data. Embracing security transformation is essential for successful digital transformation.

So, what is security transformation?

Security transformation refers to the integration of security, combining all aspects of digital technologies to operate your business securely once you embrace digitalization. Integration of security protocols would radically change how security is architected, deployed, and operated to safeguard your data. Therefore, it is crucial for you to choose the right digital workplace solution that suits your business, with capabilities to integrate additional security patches for added security. 

A few tips to secure your solutions to shore up your digital strategies 

1. Ensure password protection rules are in place. 

Strong passwords protect your data against breaches and cyber attacks. Ask your employees to update their passwords mandatorily. They should be taught to create strong passwords and remember them too. 

2. Consolidate all tools on your digital workplace solution to get a single view of your network.  

Creating a single view of your IT infrastructure by integrating tools from multiple vendors will offer control and visibility in one place. 

3. Implement regular security updates

As any connection to the Internet is susceptible to cyber attacks, you should always be prepared to defend against such threats by fortifying your IT assets with security patches and enhancements.

4. Install Virtual Private Network (VPN) for all connections

Networks are more susceptible to cyber attacks as they often have just the protection of generic security measures alone. Make sure your office locations have the added protection of VPN connections. Your employees who may connect through public wi-fi services should be instructed to use the VPN service mandatorily. 

5. Leverage the security features on your digital platform     

Optimize the existing security features on your digital workplace solution to safeguard your data. 

6. Build a multi-layered defense to fortify your current security

Integrate more security solutions, if necessary, to fortify your IT assets.  All your employees and partners who have access to your systems need to be educated on the added-on security protocols to protect your information assets and optimize your cyber security measures. 

Read more: Transform your Data Sharing Practices to Win Customer Trust?

Thus, it would be best if you had adequate measures in place to facilitate the secure operation of your business, to let it remain vigilant against potential cyber-attacks and resilient too, should such attacks happen. Analyze the value of your information assets to assess the potential threats that may occur to them clearly. Your partners and other external players who have access to your critical data should be asked to submit security and audit reports regularly to keep track of the efficacy of your security measures. If you are looking for a smart digital workplace solution that can be scaled up to safeguard your valuable data, InfinCE would be your answer. 

How does InfinCE help boost digital security?

InfinCE can help secure your valuable information assets in a number of ways by offering:

1. Private business infrastructure custom-built to meet your end-to-end needs for improved security 
2. Data security options from multiple vendors, 
3. Scalable private virtual servers that prevent data sharing with third-party software vendors
4. Secure access controls through encrypted keys and strong passwords
5. Seamless and centralized IT management of your processes through a single log-in credentials
6. Secure file sharing through password protection and select edit access to further protect data from unauthorized access. 

Not just that. Get in touch with our experts or take an InfinCE test drive to know more. 

The work from home approach has become the norm in the business world in the post-COVID-19 era. A recent survey by Gartner found that more than 85% of the companies worldwide allow their employees to work from home partially or fully. This has led to high demand for project management software solutions, which allow teams to collaborate with remote employees at different locations at any time of the day.

Even though these innovative software applications offer myriads of benefits, they are not immune to potential cyberattacks. Therefore, unless organizations implement a robust and comprehensive cybersecurity strategy, it will be impossible to safeguard their confidential business data.

Data Privacy Threats in Working from Home vs. Working from Office

Every business gathers, generates, and stores an enormous amount of data as a part of its day-to-day operations. For example, they could be collecting case-sensitive data from their staff, suppliers, and partners. All of these would be managed within the project management suite to facilitate remote working. In addition to that, it would have highly confidential information about the business processes and operations as well to provide easy access to the relevant data for different teams and help them perform their jobs efficiently. That means any kind of data leakage could lead to serious problems for the company.

While working from the office, there are fewer threats to data privacy as all employees use the company network that would have all the necessary security measures implemented. However, while working from home, the data is accessed from different devices over different networks. Therefore, individual users may not have the layer of security that a business network would have.

From ransomware that steals login credentials to cross-site scripting to Denial of Service (DOS), the devices of employees working from homes are vulnerable to several active and passive forms of cyber-attacks. So, as long as the project management software framework used for collecting, generating, and storing the data remains vulnerable, it will be practically impossible to protect the data.

Read more: It’s Time To Go Beyond Traditional Project Management Software!

What Happens When Critical Data is Lost?

The repercussions of data loss are always adverse. In addition to the data breach fines that you may have to pay if the customer moves to court, not protecting your sensitive business information will indeed affect the organization’s reputation. This, in turn, will lead to a loss of trust in your brand, and you can even lose long-standing customers, not to mention the risk of distrust among your employees.

1. Legal Consequences

Organizations that fail to protect the data of their customers face serious legal actions as well. Depending on the geographical location where your company is registered, you will be subject to state or federal data privacy violation laws. In severe cases, there could be an order for investigation at the Attorney General level.

2. Fines

Data privacy of consumers is of paramount importance. In most countries, people are entitled to a hefty amount of compensation if their private data is lost. Therefore, it is essential to realize the gravity of fines that you will be legally bound to pay as remuneration if there happens to be any data breach.

3. Goodwill of Business

The goodwill of your company cannot be measured in monetary terms. It is worth years of your hard work and consolidated efforts. A mere incident of a cyberattack can damage your reputation in the industry. It does not take much time for the news about a cyberattack to spread, hitting your current customer base and your potential target audience.

Read more: How Can Organizations Profit More from Collaboration Software?

How to Safeguard Against a Potential Data Privacy Violation Issue

It is not easy to track the safety of your data all the time. Nonetheless, it is not rocket science either. If you are willing to take the right steps at the right time, you have a hundred percent assurance and guarantee for the safety of your crucial and confidential data. Here are a few steps for that:

1. Keep an Eye on the Changing Technology

Computing infrastructure keeps changing from time to time. When a new infrastructure that offers increased data safety gets introduced, enterprises that are up to date will adapt to it. However, those who do not keep track of upcoming tech changes will lag, becoming victims to potential cyberattacks and data breaches. Therefore, it is essential to track the changes around data privacy and project management solutions to ensure you evade all potential risks.

2. Stay Up to Date About Data Privacy Regulations

The local and federal governments may change the policies and regulations regarding data privacy periodically. Therefore, you also need to keep track of the regulations and educate your team members about the changes. This helps you remain more vigilant about potential cyberattacks as well as the consequences you may have to deal with if you fall victim to any data loss.

3. Use Advanced Project Management Software

Using an advanced project management software suite like InfinCE ensures that your business data is not vulnerable to cybercriminals. InfinCE secures your business data behind advanced firewalls on its virtual private servers. It also allows you to manage access controls with high-end encryption and passwords.

If you fall prey to cyberattacks and data theft, it is not just about the loss of reputation but can lead to legal setbacks as well. Therefore, it is very important to ensure the safety of all kinds of data your business is handling in the project management software. InfinCE delivers unparalleled data privacy to ensure just that. Besides, the integration of a software solution like InfinCE also allows transforming your digital workplace into a synchronized atmosphere where communication between various departments across your business would be made easier.

Read more: All You Need to Know About Dashboards and Data Security

Benefits of Integrating Advanced Project Management Software

Employing an advanced project management system like InfinCE helps your business in many ways. It acts as a single interface for everyone in your business – the HR manager, employees, board of directors, and IT managers. In addition to that, you will benefit from the possibilities of scaling up your business operations seamlessly through it. InfinCE offers a complete suite of collaboration apps for conducting meetings, video conferences, live chats, and more. It also saves you from juggling between multiple applications for team collaboration.

InfinCE provides you with a reliable and secure project management platform where you get access to a centralized interface to manage and control all your business information. This saves a lot of time and resources for running various independent services and ensures absolute data security, which is crucial in this remote work culture of today. Know more about how InfinCE can help you enhance your project management capabilities. Contact our experts today, or just Request a Free Demo!

A lot of discussions go around data security. When confidential information is shared across multiple channels to several recipients, there is always the risk of data leakage. As Big Data and the Internet of Things have become more of a requirement than a choice today, everyone must keep an eye on data security and be prepared for any kind of breach. It does not necessarily have to be a complicated process; the evolution in technology has paved the way to do that without any hassle. One such simple solution is using business dashboards.

A business dashboard can offer effective layers of security to integrate with your existing measures to enhance data security. Apart from that, a reliable on-premise business dashboard can also provide many other advanced features alongside improving data security. InfinCE allows you to customize your business dashboard to have a superior overall experience. You can easily integrate the additional security layer with your current firewall to boost data security.

Read more: 5 Ways InfinCE Communication Boards Can Boost Your Workplace Productivity

What is a Secure Business Dashboard?

Ensuring data security is vital for all businesses, irrespective of the industry they belong to. Any kind of data breach can lead to serious consequences, and sometimes, be irreparable for both the organization and its clients. On a further level, it affects the organization’s reputation and can even lead to legal proceedings. This calls for implementing advanced security measures to ensure reliable protection against cyber threats.

A secure business dashboard acts as an extra layer of security combined with user-friendly tools to report or display security threats whenever they pop up. It can help employees in your organization to identify threats and take proactive steps to thwart any risk of data loss. 

There are different types and volumes of data that a business handles on a daily basis. This could range from confidential information of their clients and customers to financial information, business policies, passwords, and more. All these are susceptible to malicious attacks if not secured properly. A customized business dashboard can help you to have independent and streamlined protocols for every type of data. This includes securing internally and externally shared information as well as sensitive business data.

As you have to use varying degrees of security permissions and protocols for each category of data, it can be difficult to check them from time to time. Similar challenges emerge when you deal with data that has to be shared externally and internally. With the InfinCE business dashboard, all these challenges can be tackled effectively by monitoring all the security measures in the system. Even when there is a human error while changing the security permission for any category of data, it will not expose your data to any sort of security threats because the data remains protected at the back-end.

Read more: Why Should Modern Enterprises Rely on Private Cloud Platforms?

Basic Data Security vs. Business Dashboard Protection While Using Excel Spreadsheets

Most businesses use Excel spreadsheets to store important information. It is possible to set up a password and protect the data stored in it from minimal threats. Anyone with basic computer knowledge can activate password protection on Excel spreadsheets by navigating the settings. However, such measures alone will not protect it from cybercriminals.

Depending on the nature of the information stored in it or whether you want to share it across different channels, it is important to look for advanced security measures. This is where a business dashboard steps in. By using a highly advanced and innovative business dashboard like InfinCE, you can secure your sensitive data with an additional layer of security, which protects it from all sorts of cyber threats.

How to Stay Alert to Prevent Data Threats

Vulnerabilities and security threats are common for every business today. Staying alert is the only way to take timely action and prevent data loss. Even if you have implemented the most advanced layer of security, it is important to watch out for possible threats and vulnerabilities. Cybercriminals keep trying to penetrate business firewalls by using different methods. That is why you should take the right measures to stay alert all the time.

Likewise, it is also important to be prepared for the worst-case scenarios. Even if you do not foresee any imminent threat, it is always wiser to be ready and know how to act instantly if your security policy fails to provide the necessary data protection. Implementing the most secured and advanced business dashboard can always help. With InfinCE, you can even customize your security policies and integrate more advanced ones from time to time.

Read more: Shifting to a Digital Workplace? Here’s What You Need To Know!

Setting Secure User Permissions with InfinCE

Another great advantage of the InfinCE business dashboard is that it lets you decide how to share data with your employees and/or clients. You can also assign the required degree of permissions and access to data to each user. This is not possible with traditional data storage and sharing methods like Excel spreadsheets. You get very limited options to customize the permissions for the users on Excel spreadsheets. Therefore, you would have to share the password with the users to help them access the protected file. This can be very risky when digitally sharing sensitive business information.

There is no further step to ensure that the passwords for Excel spreadsheets are not exploited by cybercriminals. That is why you need to optimize the security of your data using a secure and reliable business dashboard. When you share the file over the InfinCE business dashboard, you get to decide who can access the file. You can even modify what information in the file is visible to different users that have access to it. In other words, you can integrate multiple permissions in the same file to ensure improved data security.

Read more: 5 Ways InfinCE Can Save On Your Enterprise IT Budget

InfinCE Security Risk Tracker

Security risk tracker is another user-friendly feature you get in the InfinCE business dashboard. Its main benefit is that it compiles all the security risks it encountered over the past and presents them in clear visualization in the dashboard tile. This way, the concerned security personnel can pull it up on a regular basis and determine how to respond to them or modify their security policies around the threats.

In today’s day-to-day business operations, ensuring data security is becoming a serious concern. InfinCE business dashboard lets you have full command over your data and allows you to respond effectively to all types of threats. Besides ensuring high-end data security, it also allows you to monitor every looming cyber threat so that you will have a full picture of the risk landscape. What’s more, you can even streamline business management and make more intelligent decisions by having a unified dashboard, which eventually will help to drive organizational excellence. Sign Up with InfinCE today or just contact our experts to know more!

The 5 small business digital trends that cannot be ignored in 2019

The digital transformation wave is gripping all industrial sectors as we speak. But is it really only meant for the big names in the market? Can financial muscle determine the progress a business can make in the digital space? The answer is simply NO! The best thing about the new age digital paradigm is that it opens up possibilities in digital innovation for industries of any size be it small, medium or large enterprises. A lot of thought has come up from revolutionary leaders in the market that focus on empowering small businesses to achieve high levels of success in their business operations. These thoughts have now transformed into the most happening trends in the small business sector and key players are constantly looking at ways to realize value by following and implementing these trends.

Now comes the crucial question. How can small businesses gain knowledge about the right or in fact the best digital trends that suit their operational model? Well, we have it covered in this blog. It’s barely past the first quarter of 2019, and if you are a small business entrepreneur, then we have compiled a list of the top 5 digital trends that your small business needs to onboard in 2019, to achieve success and remain competitive in the highly crowded market.

Let’s begin the exploration:

1. Subscribe to intelligence

Yes, we are talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) here but in a more suitable way for small businesses. Today, nearly all top AI-powered technology services are available on a subscription basis for businesses of all sizes to pick and choose based on their needs and preferences. The same AI technology that powers tech giants like Google and Facebook could be used to boost autonomous offerings in your small business as well. This is a big boost for your business sales prospects as well. Studies have shown that the presence of an AI element can boost sales of companies as< 49%< of consumers will be confident in spending money more frequently in business with AI enablement.

All departments of a small business from customer service to human resources, operations and logistics can embrace the power of AI and ML to enable sustainable growth. When insights about customers are made available through tools, small businesses can use them to make business decisions faster and with more accuracy. On the operations side, AI can help small companies hire smarter with faster candidate resume profiling for relevant skill matching through machine learning. The possibilities when AI is enabled are many for small businesses.

1. Personalized marketing

Gone are the days, when fancy advertising and celebrity endorsements formed the crux of marketing for businesses. Today, a small business can creatively outperform a larger brand in the same industry for marketing excellence. By marketing, we do not simply imply great visual representations and ads, but how technology can be a crucial component in bolstering marketing efforts for small businesses. With marketing automation, it has been proven that there is a 12.2 % reduction in marketing overhead and this will positively impact lead generation as well.

In fact, four out of five users of marketing automation witnessed an overwhelmingly positive increase in leads generated. In addition to the numbers, the quality of leads that are generated through targeted and highly personalized marketing tools available today, are significantly higher as well. By diving deep into insights derived from AI enabled marketing tools, small businesses can create high impact campaigns that have more chances of conversion. As for target user segmentation, today’s marketing automation tools help to identify leads that have higher chances of conversion based on past preferences and behavior. It also saves time and money of marketers who would have otherwise spend hours or even days to send thousands of emails to folks who have very minimal chances of doing business with the organization.

Related Reading: Simple Ways to Create a Small Business Website in 2019

1. Workforce Management

A small business often has restrictions on the physical work infrastructure they can offer for employees. But today, the lack of dedicated physical office space is never a constraint on measuring the success of your business. Thanks to advancements in digital tools, it is possible to have a workforce managing your business operations from literally anywhere in the world. You only need to provide a working space for employees that must absolutely be located in an office environment to run your office. Others can simply connect to your business remotely and there are tons of collaborative and management tools available to ensure that a remote workforce operates as efficiently as an in-house team.

Additionally, if your business requires executives to be deployed at filed locations or at customer premises to carry out tasks, then there are tools that assist them to deliver more valuable services. In fact, Gartner estimates that by 2020,75% of field service organizations with more than 50 users will utilize the capabilities of a mobile app to deliver customer delight. Thus, managing a workforce becomes quite seamless with a host of digital tools available for small businesses to help them empower their workforce to work better and more productively.

1. Digital Payments

You may argue that almost all businesses small or large offer convenient payment modes for customers, it is a known fact that this convenience is limited to cash or card in most cases. The customer of today, however, expects more than just a card swiping option to pay for his or her purchases. This is where small businesses need to invest in building or incorporating world-class payment infrastructure to help serve customer needs better. This includes digital wallets, NFC enabled smart payments on smartphones and wearable devices and much more.

While the physical infrastructure and complexity for such smart payment solutions are less, there is a considerably high level of technical prowess involved in facilitating the solution seamlessly. Sensitive financial data of customers has to be managed securely as any event of a breach will likely result in lawsuits and tarnished reputation which may be difficult to recover. Moreover, this sensitive financial data may at times be shared with your businesses vendors as well for settlement of invoices, etc. More the number of stakeholders, greater is the security assurance needed for the digital payment infrastructure. This trend will be crucial when a small business starts to grow global ambitions as today’s technology allows you to scale rapidly with virtual platforms like e-commerce sites and partners.

Related Reading: INFINCE – A One Stop Technology Solution for Small Business

1. Data Privacy

We already covered a portion of this in the payment trends section but considering the rapid scale in which consumer data is generated and consumed by businesses, data privacy is a trend and force to reckon with. Today, every single piece of information be it past interactions of a customer with your business or their preferences in investing or their personal and social media interests are all acquired and analyzed for arriving at business decisions. While this is a good thing for business, several users have repeatedly voiced their concerns on the growing trend of sensitive customer data becoming exposed to fraudulent and inappropriate proceedings. Increasing compliance requirements like GDPR and other international privacy laws will impact the way in which small businesses operate using consumer data.

As a business owner, you need to ensure that the digital systems and business processes that handle sensitive customer information have strict guidelines for privacy preservation as fines for any mishaps could literally throw your business out of operations. Data privacy policies and tools needed to safeguard customer data are an important asset for all businesses irrespective of their business domain and geography.

If you are a small business owner, then the 5 trends that we covered in this blog are of prime importance. They can very well define the future of how your business will perform in a highly competitive market. With the vast array of digital tools available to support various facets of your business, it is quite natural to get confused about where to start investing and exploring. This is where INFINCE comes to the rescue. With cloud-based integrated solutions, INFINCE can bring together the robustness of suite solution for enhanced productivity and efficiency.

INFINCE – Build Your Team & Collaborate