All Entries in the "Volume 4 Issue 1" Category

Strategies to Help Your Business Thwart Cyber Attacks, Protect Systems and Secure Digital Assets

In a matter of a few years, the internet has consolidated itself as a very powerful platform that has changed the way we do business and the way we communicate. It has also opened the door to vulnerabilities of staggering proportions. Public- and private-sector organizations alike have been victims of cyber thefts of sensitive information, breaches of privacy, cybercrime, and cyber disruption (e.g., denial-of-service attacks).

If you think your industry or company is exempt, you should think again!

Cyber attacks against small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) have skyrocketed by 72% in the past 18 months according to Symantec, a leading provider of SMB and enterprise-class security solutions. Cyber criminals are now starting to focus more on soft targets, especially small businesses, which typically have less protection and fewer resources.

Indeed, after a spate of high-profile cybersecurity breaches at major companies like Target and, more recently, Home Depot, JPMorgan Chase and Sony, the biggest players generally have strong protections, both in terms of technology and staff, to secure their proprietary information. But smaller companies and vendors, who can’t afford expensive security measures—and yet store some of their larger client’s sensitive data—are now in the crosshairs of sophisticated hackers. The result has been a digital arms race between cyber attackers, who look for new ways to circumvent the security solutions that companies put in place, and vendors and end-users, who are perennially on the lookout for new ways to improve the security of their solutions and policies.

Securing a business against increasingly sophisticated and frequent cyber attacks, computer viruses, hacked websites, or even a well-intentioned but careless employee can seem daunting, particularly if an organization is of modest size and does not have a “crack team” of cybersecurity experts on staff.

Protecting systems and digital assets requires a holistic, company-wide methodology to minimize an organization’s exposure to cyber criminals. While there are established, but constantly changing, best practices and low- or no-cost solutions for SMBs, the emphasis should be first and foremost on prevention and mitigation strategies, such as internal security policies, employee training and continuing education, system patching and protection, and use of best practices (safe internet, email, and desktop practices).

Most cyber incidents are caused by lack of education and training or human error. In fact, internal threats posed by an unqualified or disgruntled employee with trusted access to a sensitive system and information cause 80 percent of small business security problems. While technological solutions are vital to protecting information and systems, their efficacy is limited if it is not effectively adopted and implemented by the management team and used by skilled employees who follow well-defined processes.

Don’t assume that employees already know everything they need to know. All employees should receive proper training and periodic re-training. Other ways to keep employees up-to-date with the latest threats and make sure that they don’t sidestep basic standards of best practices is by distributing pamphlets, posters, newsletters, and videos; rewarding them for good security practices; and employing regular phishing security tests (PST). Statistics show that companies with employee cybersecurity training programs experience 50 percent fewer cyber incidents caused by their own personnel.

Disaster recovery planning represents another important aspect of protecting a company’s overall brand and value. Every company should do more than just having data backed up on a tape. There should be a well-documented and well-exercised disaster recovery plan.

Building a comprehensive DR plan before a breach happens is fundamental because even all the prevention measures that you can put in place are never going to protect you all the time—you need to know what you’re going to do in case of a cyber incident. This should include identifying, locating and backing up all the critical files in your system; testing restoring procedures regularly; setting up offsite storage for the system’s backup; having well-defined business continuity options; and knowing who is in charge of the DR plan.

For today’s SMBs, cybersecurity solutions and services can be outsourced, especially in light of budgetary constraints and lack of internal resources that many businesses experience while still needing to be on the lookout for an escalating number of threats and increased complexity of cybersecurity.

Starting a business? It’s time to get organized!

Starting a business can be an exciting, crazy, and stressful time. If you are disorganized, you will create more work for yourself and you aren’t going to work at your potential. In order to maintain organization in your office or home office, you need to have systems in place for processing day-to-day functions. Without systems, you will become overwhelmed and stressed. With working systems, you will become efficient and productive, along with many other benefits that come with being organized. Have a system to:

Process your mail. Many people have difficulty with paper management. Most have difficulty setting up and following through with a system. I can’t stress this enough: process your mail every day. As soon as you touch it, either file it, attach it to your to-do list to take care of it during the week, shred it or handle it right away. It will be easier to take five minutes and tackle it when it arrives than to spend maybe hours on it at the end of the month.

Process your email.  Create categorized folders. Have a process to handle an email as soon as you open it. Treat it just as you would treat your physical mail. Decide whether to send it to a folder, trash it, act on it, or print it and attach it to your to-do list. Remember, sometimes it’s easier to pick up the phone and discuss than to send numerous emails back and forth.

Work with a to-do list. Keep a running to-do list. Whether you keep a to-do list on paper or in your electronics, just do it. Make a to-do list every night before you leave work. You will know exactly what you need to do when you arrive to work the next day. This process will keep you on track with your day. You have a lot to worry about when you are starting a business; clear the mental clutter by getting things out of your head and onto paper. The less clutter you are carrying around in your mind, the better.

Filing systems.  Create a filing system during the beginning phases of your business. Without filings systems, piles will form, chaos will ensue and you are going to start your business behind the eight ball. If you need to locate an important paper, you should be able to locate it in less than ten seconds. Keep files that you utilize on a daily basis close to you. Files that you use less frequently, you can keep in another area of the office. I’ve seen many important business deals fall through, and I’ve found significant sums of money and very important documents in piles of papers on desks because business owners didn’t have filing systems in place.

Keep track of your bills. When a bill arrives on your desk or through email, be sure to have a process in place to pay these bills. If you are receiving bills through the mail, create a system where the bills aren’t lying around on your desk buried under papers. You’ll forget to pay them or pay them late. Incorporate bill payments into your calendar to remind you to pay and file them immediately after they are paid.

Business cards. When you start your new business, you are going to meet many new people. You must develop a system to file your business cards. Whether it is through electronics, a good old Rolodex, or a binder with clear card inserts, you must have a system. Work with it for a little while and tweak it after a few months.

Handle phone calls and voicemail.  Set aside time to retrieve and return calls. Keep a message pad for your messages. Utilizing a book will allow you to refer back to important dates, conversations and phone numbers. Try not to keep sticky notes or loose message papers on your desk. Utilize your calendar to remind you to follow up with clients in a timely manner. Clients will have more confidence in you if you are organized.

Workspace.  Have a place for everything at your desk. Only keep items you use on a daily basis on your desk.  At the end of the day, your desk should be clear. Have an organized pile that you need to work on the next day with your to-do list on top of the pile. Try to avoid having a corkboard at your desk with too much information pinned to it. Less is more. Keep it contained to a binder or stored on your computer. Utilize drawer organizers and organizing supplies to keep you organized.

Systems have to work for you. Just because your fellow business owners have a smooth system that works for them, doesn’t mean it will work for you. Evaluate how you function and create a system that works for you. The more complicated the system, the more likely it is to fail. Keep the system simple and streamlined. Many offices I work with have made attempts at getting organized, but the systems have failed and a new attempt at another system was never made. Once you create a system, revisit the system in a couple of months and tweak what isn’t working to make it work better for you.

Time management.  Be as efficient and productive as you can be. If you are a disorganized person, you have to get organized in order to have great time management skills. Take a look at your physical space, get organized and then you’ll realize that your time management skills may fall into place, allowing you to be more efficient and productive.

Being organized will allow you to save money, have more free time, and be more efficient and productive. You’ll have less stress and more energy, and your clients will have more confidence in you when you are organized.

Preparing for 2015 – Back to Basics

With the election season finally over, it is time to look toward 2015 for our businesses. While politicians seem to exaggerate with impunity regardless of the facts, businesses do not have that luxury. Customers see through the fluff in a product offering quickly, and choose their providers wisely in today’s connected society.

As business owners and management teams look to a fresh beginning at the start of every new year, it is important to place on the table the generic question, what needs to change? I am asked that question frequently and always address it the same way. The success of sales and market penetration initiatives are fully aligned with the strength of a company’s value proposition.
The Corporate Value Proposition

From the customer’s vantage point, it does not matter what is going on inside your company; customers could care less. What is important to customers, existing and target, is what is coming out of the company in the form of product quality, on-time delivery, lead times, communication effectiveness, and other service elements.

So the key question that needs to be addressed by owners and management is, what can we do to improve the value proposition of our company? For the answer to this question to have any meaning, a company must, and I mean must, be able to quantify all the elements of the current value proposition. This is where the rubber meets the road. Most companies have no measurements that frame the performance of their value proposition from the viewpoint of the customer. To not have metrics on the current performance level of a company’s value proposition severely compromises any initiatives for its improvement. With the cornerstone of any market penetration program being steeped in the power of its value proposition, to ignore the customer’s view of a company’s performance is disrespectful to both the market and the company’s employees.

The Role of Emotion

With emotion playing a key role in maintaining the status quo (the “we have always done it this way” syndrome) how does an owner and the management team approach the change process? The most successful companies that have negotiated the change curve are ones that have looked at their company as a series of integrated processes, taking much of the emotion out of the discussion.

Every internal corporate process, every process, is laced with inefficiencies. Take the quoting process for example. In most companies, the request for quote (RFQ) is handled by many people and corporate functions. Mapping out all the elements of the quoting process, including options if questions arise during the process, will reveal many parts of the process that could be eliminated or shortened. The ultimate goal is to compress the RFQ time without compromising the quality of the quote.

I have seen quote times for the more complicated quotes go from weeks to days. This type of improvement in RFQ response, being part of the value proposition, is particularly important because once the quote is complete, the sales department is back on offense.

Processes are processes, and emotion compared to measurement plays only a minor role. One only has to look at any element of a manufacturing process. These processes are all mechanical, designed to optimize time while maintaining the highest standards of quality.

While employee emotion regarding buy-in to the emerging process is important, emotion serves little value in the actual process itself.

Employee Involvement

Making a commitment to change using a structured and measured approach is most important. This methodology will fail, however, without the complete engagement of the employees, whose performance is responsible for driving each of the processes under review. If management decides to make changes, and drive these changes down the organization chart, this change will not be sustainable.

Employees must be the focus for designing and implementing the suggested changes, if these changes are expected to be a sustainable part of the emerging culture. Employee buy-in plays a very important role here because if they are involved in process development, they will most likely drive the emerging changes with enthusiasm.

Back to Basics

This is really all about process optimization leading to a value proposition that has real, and quantifiable, value. This is basic to any management approach to change. Improving the flow of material, paperwork and communication through a company has no downside.

Since most companies have a very small market share, efficiency programs should not be a threat to employee security, especially if the nature of the efficiency program is fully disclosed at the outset.

An improved value proposition will help to increase sales by capturing additional market share. Because the company is more efficient through these process optimization efforts, as sales grow, management will NOT have to increase the number of employees at the same rate. This will have a positive impact on the sales/employee and profit/employee numbers resulting in a cash flow model that will allow management to reward employees for their efficiency efforts.

Process optimization results in the basic win-win that all owners, managers, employees, and customers covet. Process optimization is simple, very visual, and provides the cornerstone for any corporate change initiative.

“Back to Basics” = “Process Optimization”

Distilling a Recipe for Success

There is a company in Our Backyard that has gone from the drawing board to international honors in less than five years. Sons of Liberty Spirits Co. distills craft whiskies in a 250-gallon still in a former South Kingstown mill.

The company is proud to be challenging century-old whiskey traditions by focusing on American Single Malt Whiskies born from distinctly flavorful beers as well as the first-ever seasonal line of whiskies.

Its name reflects the founders’ unconventional beginnings and revolutionary spirit, according to Founder Mike Reppucci. “I was a kid in finance and I quit my job to start a distillery. How dumb is that, but how American is that? One thing we have in the U.S. is that entrepreneurial spirit. We’re not afraid to take that shot or take that risk. And I’m really proud of that,” he says. “We’ve been blessed by the people of Rhode Island, believing in us and supporting us since the beginning. That’s the coolest part.”

The business has exploded since becoming the first US craft distillery to win a “World’s Best” award in Whisky Magazine‘s World Whiskies Awards in 2014. To date, the distillery has taken home 15 medals in domestic and international competitions. “We realize that a major factor to success is the quality. We buy the grain. We mill it. We distill it. We age it. We test it. We make the whiskey. We need to keep that authenticity. We’re focused on keeping that product quality while growing and continuing to push the whiskey envelope,” he says.

You can see that commitment in the Pumpkin Spice Flavored Whiskey that won the “World’s Best” award. Reppucci explains that Carpenter’s Farm in South Kingstown grew a special varietal of pumpkin that ripens a little early in order give him plenty of time to brew his seasonal. Then his team, along with many loyal and enthusiastic fans, really gets to work.  “We literally wash all the pumpkins, chop them in half, and core them out with ice cream scoops. Then we roast them and press out as much fresh pumpkin juice as we can,” he says.  The team went from just 2,000 lbs. of fresh pumpkins in 2012, to a tremendous 32,000 lbs. in 2014.

You can visit the distillery year-round to take a tour and get a taste of the fine spirits coming out of our Ocean State.