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Businesses today need to have a robust and secure wireless network, but building one isn’t always that easy. Since there are a lot of machines that use your business’ Wi-Fi—from core machines that are essential to your business’ productivity, to IoT devices that your employees or customers bring onto the network—it is important to understand how best to structure your wireless networks to meet the demands that are put on them.

Business Wireless is More than Just Wi-Fi

There are some big differences between the wireless network that a business uses and one that you would use in your home. Considering the data that is transmitted, this probably isn’t much of a surprise, but that doesn’t mean that every business is doing what they can to treat their wireless network as the foundational piece of technology that it is. In fact, a lot of organizations may look at their wireless network as just a secondary network that gets little-to-no attention.

This puts your business at RISK.

Even if you haven’t experienced a data breach, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t active threat actors out there targeting you. Today, most employees enjoy the benefits of having a smartphone and they expect that they will be able to use their company’s Wi-Fi for the hours they are at work. In fact, they don’t just expect to be able to use company Wi-Fi, they expect that Wi-Fi to be a secure channel to use to not put their personal devices at risk. This can be tricky to set up, but you can create a secure and reliable wireless network to the benefit of all.

Let’s look at four actions you can take that will help you build a better wireless network for your business:

Isolate Guests from Employees

One of the best ways to ensure that you can control the use of your wireless networks is to create what are called virtual networks. A virtual network or VLAN is just a partition of your available wireless network that has different security and access controls. Some organizations choose to make guest Wi-Fi insecure i.e. no password, so that people can easily access it. That’s fine to do, but you will want to ensure that network doesn’t touch any other networks in your business. For most businesses creating virtual networks for employees and another for guests, each with their own set of security guidelines, is a great way to keep congestion down and have better transparency for your whole wireless network.

All Hardware Should Be Secure

One of the easiest ways to start securing your wireless network is to ensure that the hardware that fuels it is in a secure location. This can be under lock and key or simply in a place where there isn’t foot traffic. Many businesses use commercial Access Point (AP) technology rather than your over-the-counter router, which provides better coverage so that the hardware can be placed in a ceiling, but your main networking and firewall hardware should be in a locked cabinet and out of major thoroughfares which will go a long way toward keeping people’s mitts off it.

Contain Your Signal

Most businesses want to have total coverage of their wireless network through their location. This seems reasonable. If the wireless signal carries much past that however, it can make it possible for people to access Wi-Fi on the street, which can be a major risk. You will want to be sure to manage your signal strength from your access points (or routers) by reducing the signal strength or placing them in places where you feel comfortable letting your wireless network reach to. We always recommend a wireless survey before installing any new wireless solution.

Update Software

Many people don’t know that firewalls and access points have their own operating systems and like any active software, developers are working to patch vulnerabilities and further support the software all the time. You will want to make sure that the firmware is always up to date in your wireless and security gear. While it may not make your wireless network impenetrable, it will go a long way to keeping vulnerabilities at bay. When you let Rainspace manage your networks we include firmware management, so you never have to worry about this.

Advanced Options

Sometimes you need a more seamless and integrated solution. For instance you may want to setup a wireless network to use single sign on with your existing directory service, that could be Active Directory, Office 365, or Azure AD. We have many options to provide advanced, secure, and integrated wired and wireless access for all users and across your locations

At Rainspace, we feature some of the best IT consultants in Huntsville. We can help you obtain the technologies and implement the strategies to keep your whole computing environment secure. To learn more about how we can help, give us a call today at 8778136800 or use our contact form to tell us a bit about what you need.

We all know that there are many nuances to managing and maintaining technology in an effective and efficient way, but who exactly oversees these tasks at your organization? Do you have a dedicated IT resource that you can trust to get the work done, or do you rely on your other employees to stay afloat? If it’s the latter, we have some bad news for you, as well as a silver lining to it all.

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Who Manages Your Technology?

Businesses with limited resources often resort to piling additional tasks on their existing employees. It is expected, for some reason, that even your average employee has a baseline knowledge of technology, especially in today’s age of connectivity, but this is a dangerous mindset to fall into. It is assumed that this baseline is enough to handle most of the routine IT maintenance, but the process is much more complex than it might first appear, and the more complex your infrastructure, the more likely an untrained employee could cause irreparable damage when they think they are doing good.

Furthermore, employees whose responsibilities lie elsewhere may let their poorly functioning technology get in the way of doing their actual jobs. This is especially the case when their technology is causing their productivity to sink, which in turn bleeds out into other areas of their workday. It’s better to just let professionals handle IT maintenance for your business rather than the rest of your workforce.

The problem that many small businesses encounter is that they don’t have the budget to hire in-person, full-time technicians who can handle all the issues that a modern business might encounter; and when technology does not get the maintenance it needs, even on an irregular basis like with your current employees, even more could go wrong.

Thus, businesses are stuck in a predicament; do they forgo technology maintenance entirely, or do they pull employees away from their real jobs to make sure they have the technology to do those jobs? Actually, there is one more option available to you, so let’s explore that.

The Good News

Thankfully, even businesses with limited resources can take advantage of professional IT resources, and it’s all thanks to the ability to outsource most of the IT support. In today’s modern computing environment, most maintenance and management can be done remotely without an on-site visit, meaning that getting the technology help you need has never been easier.

Rainspace wants to help your business overcome the challenges of technology maintenance by providing managed IT services that help your team focus on what they do best: their actual, real jobs, not taking subpar care of their technology. To learn more, reach out to us:

Phone: 1877-813-6800

Email: info@rainspace.com

Web: https://www.rainspace.com/contact-form

The cloud has given businesses loads of modern ways to approach operations and management, but it has also given cybercriminals access to even more tools to leverage against their victims. Here are some ways cybercriminals are using the cloud, as well as how you can protect against these threats.

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How Does the Cloud Enable Cybercrime?

With the pandemic sending many workers into remote working conditions and isolation, the cloud has increased in popularity as a business solution. Cybercriminals have used these changes to increase their opportunities for attacks. Here are just a few ways the cloud has given cybercriminals even more ways to attack your business.

Complicated Configurations

While the types of cloud solutions might vary, every cloud has to be configured in a specific way, and if it’s not configured properly, this could lead to vulnerabilities and security challenges. Therefore, in order to guarantee security, it’s recommended that you work with a professional to make sure everything is going according to plan.

Inherent Insecurity

Whether it’s the user interface itself or the cloud application, insecure systems enable hackers and leave your cloud system vulnerable. This is why we always recommend encrypting data you store in the cloud.

Denial-of-Service (DoS) Attacks

DoS attacks, or attacks when a system is overloaded with traffic by countless external computing resources, is one of the methods a cybercriminal might use against you. Considering the connected nature of cloud applications, cybercriminals can effectively bring down any online system that is not adequately protected simply by using a botnet.

How to Secure Your Cloud Solutions

Here are some ways you can protect your cloud infrastructure.

Adopt Appropriate Authentication and Access Management

Unsecured passwords are one of the biggest ways hackers gain access to your cloud solution, so we recommend you implement more advanced authentication and access management control measures. Doing so limits the damage that any one user’s account can do in the event it is compromised.

Secure Your Endpoints

All endpoints, including computers, peripherals, and other hardware that connects to your infrastructure, should be secured. If any one device is left unsecured, hackers can leverage that device to gain access to the greater network. This is especially important if you have employees working remotely in any capacity.

Leverage Encryption

Encryption is a wonderful tool to secure your data. Basically, it scrambles your data, thereby making it unrecognizable without the appropriate decryption keys. If you implement these safeguards, you can effectively secure your data, in the cloud or otherwise.

Back Up Your Data

You should always back up your data, and the cloud makes it easier than ever before to make sure this happens. Most cloud providers have some sort of policy or procedure in place to protect the data of their users, so you can rest assured that your data is likely backed up in some capacity with your cloud solution.

Teach Your Team to Be a Security Asset

If you can help your employees be security assets rather than security risks, you’ll have a much easier time protecting your infrastructure. You can pull this off by imparting upon them security awareness and a culture of cybersecurity.

The Cloud is a Tool That Can Be Used Safely

Rainspace can help your business secure its infrastructure. To learn more, reach out to us at info@rainspace.com or call us at 8778136800.

Something that has become more prominent is how often small to mid-size companies are being asked to move, market, and execute quicker than ever before. We believe there is a direct correlation to the increasing technology adoption- making it easier to practice agility, but not plotting a course to it. What happens when your technology provider can't keep up with you? What happens when they are not as agile? The common solution would be to find another technology company (we happen to know a pretty good one).

This begs the question: do we as tech providers need to move just as fast? Of course, we do! We recently found out how fast we could move when one of our clients asked us to architect, procure resources, and implement an outdoor wireless solution with a timeline of 6 days. Did I mention it had to support more than a thousand users and cover an area of 65,000 square feet? So, what do you do? You become agile, move fast, and get shit done!

Mid City Aerial View

RCP Companies, a long-time customer of Rainspace, came to us and asked that very question. They have many great large-scale projects developing in Huntsville- one of them being a swanky outdoor venue called Mid City, which needed wireless coverage. With projects of this scale, there are a million and one tasks to complete before the grand opening. Mid City was in need of a wireless infrastructure, but this crucial task fell low on the agenda and priority lists. With recreational areas, a large stage to build, and multiple vendor areas to create, RCP Companies handed the wireless task off with the expectation to have it done promptly.

““No matter how simple or complex the build out of a development, technology is an integral part of servicing the patrons,” said Lindsey Pattillo, RCP Companies Director of Marketing and Property Activation, “We trusted Rainspace with this activation and they exceeded our expectations on all fronts.””

Needless to say, Rainspace managed to deliver the entire solution on time and without issues. The moral of this story for us is that it is easy to say you can be agile. It is another thing to actually prove it. It also shows how important it is to have your clients’ back when they need you most. You should be able to move as fast as they need you to and recognize the ever-growing importance of business agility. That's how you add value.