The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the way we live in a myriad of ways. It posed an enormous risk to the health and safety of millions of people around the world and devastated the economies of various countries and industries. It also profoundly changed the way business is conducted.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses to significantly change the way they work. Due to government-mandated lockdowns, many businesses implemented remote work to curb the spread of the virus. Computers and cloud software therefore played a crucial role in establishing seamless remote work environments.

The worldwide health crisis sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic led to a record number of businesses allowing their employees to work from home. Thanks to a sufficiently digitized work landscape — i.e., employees are used to receiving information, creating output, and sharing documents virtually — the transition has worked well for the most part.

Mobile phones have increasingly become part of the fabric of our day-to-day lives. We use them not only to communicate with one another, but to consume content, browse the internet, navigate roads, and much more. It makes sense, then, that as mobile phone usage and reliance continue to rise, so do the number and variety of threats that take advantage of the medium.

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned so many aspects of normal life on their heads, not the least of which is business and how it’s conducted. Due to the lockdowns imposed in most hard-hit parts of the world, many businesses reliant on physical premises have been forced to shut their doors, some of them for good.

“We do not negotiate with terrorists or criminals.” This is the default stance of most branches of the United States government, and the Treasury Department is no exception. In fact, the Department has made its position perfectly clear: Not only will they not negotiate or deal with any sanctioned entities, they won’t tolerate any organizations on US soil doing the same.

The cloud has become one of the most widely used and revolutionary IT tools to be adopted by businesses. The flexibility and ease it confers upon file sharing and collaboration have resulted in immense gains in productivity and efficiency. It has also led to gains in security and cost-effectiveness, making it an incredibly popular solution for small- and medium-sized businesses.

Passwords have been used as the primary method for digital authentication since the inception of computers in the 1960s. Yet despite this ubiquity, passwords are loathed by security professionals and users. The former view passwords as ineffective measures that often pose a liability due to the frequency and relative ease with which hackers and other threats are able to crack them and use them to infiltrate secure networks.

Advanced Update on the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification CMMC
I know many of you have been following the roll-out of the CMMC rules and requirements. I wanted to take a minute to update you on what we know. F1 recognized well over a year ago the impact that this new requirement would have on you, our customers, and we made a push to stay in the know.

Employees have increasingly turned to their mobile devices, such as phones and tablets, for work purposes. These devices grant flexibility beyond that offered by other devices, such as laptops, due to their portability and constant connectivity, allowing employees to work from home or on the go.