With more schools closing and event cancellations by the day, it’s becoming clear that every organization needs to develop a plan to deal with the threat of infection both internally and in the ways they interface with the public.

Use VPNs to provide remote access to company resources. VPN technology by Affinity could boost your security. Contact us online or give us a call.

It can seem like a daunting task to determine the right time to outsource your company’s IT. If you’re a startup, you might reason that it’s best to do what you can to manage your own technology until you reach a certain scale and can afford to hire a full-service outsourced provider. Or you may be the leader of a growing company weighing the options of an in-house IT professional against outsourcing. Or you may even have one or two IT professionals, wondering if a managed service provider could address some needs that your current staff isn’t getting to.

So, what’s the right size to be considering outsourcing your IT to a managed service provider?

One of cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs’s 5 Immutable Truths About Data Breaches reads: “If you connect it to the Internet, someone will try to hack it.” And never has this been more important to keep in mind than now, when we are connecting everything from appliances to light bulbs to the internet. This trend, known as the “Internet of Things” or “IoT,” utilizes technology to bring helpful new features to everyday items in our homes and businesses. But an unwelcome consequence of that is an increased risk of cyberattacks.

When planning for their organization’s technology, nonprofit leaders face a specific set of challenges. The latest technologies can help nonprofits expand their reach, increase their efficiency, accomplish more within a fixed budget, and fulfill their mission more effectively. But the pricing structures—not to mention the prices themselves—of technology tools don’t always map easily onto their budgetary needs.

It is precisely these challenges that the market for cloud computing solutions has begun to resolve for nonprofits. There are a number of inherent benefits to cloud computing that may be especially attractive for nonprofits. In the past, though, the cost of moving key company assets to the cloud was prohibitively high for many small and mid-sized organizations. Given the increased competition in the cloud market and the continued development of cloud technologies, though, that is no longer the case.

As we close the book on 2019 and look ahead to 2020, we’re all curious about what trends might affect our businesses and our lives in the new year. And it’s hard to think of an industry more dynamic, with new trends from one moment to the next, than technology.

Still, as your managed services provider, we wanted to give you some sense of what kinds of developments we see coming down the pike in the new year. While no one has a crystal ball, our team of technology experts have some educated predictions about what we can expect in technology, from consumer devices to cybersecurity, in 2019. Our hope is that these predictions will be helpful to you in your business planning, as even developments in consumer tech might affect your customers in interesting ways. Plus, if you’re anything like us, thinking about what technology might make possible in the near future is just plain fun.

Affinity is excited to announce that Charles Latham has joined our growing team as our Support Team Lead Engineer. In this role, Charles will provide excellent, friendly support to our clients’ end-users and will serve as an escalation point for Affinity staff, ensuring that all issues are addressed quickly and efficiently.