By: Glenn Laga, Founder & President, Guardian Data Destruction

Guardian Data Destruction employees frequently refer to themselves as “the undertakers of the IT world.” We know that IT and data storage trends are wagging our tail; as industry reports and surveys are released, we watch carefully to see how our core services: secure data destruction, data center services and secure packing and logistics are affected.
A snapshot of industry trends and predictions from data authorities
It’s no surprise that data and therefore data storage is growing. The astonishment is the rate. Then we extract to understand the impact on secure data destruction and sanitization, the complexity of the networks and data centers as they configure and reconfigure. Don’t forget the impact of COVID on workplace architecture. Some industry forecasts and facts that we are watching as Guardian plans for the next five to ten years of VAR, ITAD, MSP and reseller services:
From Storagenewsletter.com and Trendfocus, Inc.  
67 Million HDDs Expected to Ship in 2Q21 With All Global Figures Up
From the Seagate Technology “Rethink Data” Report:

• Over the next two years, enterprise data is projected to increase at a 42.2% annual growth rate.
• On average, organizations now periodically transfer about 36% of data from edge to core. Within only two years, this number will grow to 57%. The volume of data immediately transferred from edge to core will double, from 8% to 16%. This means enterprises will have to manage a lot more data in motion
• Improving data security is the most important factor driving the changes to how organizations manage central storage needs.
• Two thirds of survey respondents report insufficient data security, making data security an essential element of any discussion of efficient data management.
• Survey respondents indicate that approximately 30% of stored data is found in internal data centers, 20% in third-party data centers, 19% in edge data center or remote locations, 22% in cloud repositories, and 9% in other locations.
• Enterprise data stored in 2025 will amount to 9ZB—while 2015 was 0.8ZB.

From the Gartner Top Security and Risk Trends for 2021 Report

• Trend No. 6: Remote working is now just work According to the 2021 Gartner CIO Survey, 64% of employees are now able to work from home, and two-fifths actually are working from home. As a result of COVID-19, what was once only available to executives, senior staff and sales is now widely available, with plans to shift some employees to remote permanently post pandemic. From a security perspective, this requires a total reboot of policies and tools and approved machines to better mitigate the risks.
• Trend No. 7: Breach and attack simulation A new market is emerging to help organizations validate their security posture. Breach and attack simulation (BAS) offers continuous testing and validation of security controls and tests the organization’s posture against external threats, as well as offering specialized assessments and highlighting the risks to high-value assets like confidential data.
• Trend No. 8: Privacy-enhancing computation techniques Privacy-enhancing computation (PEC) techniques are emerging that protect data while it’s being used — as opposed to while it’s at rest or in motion — to enable secure data processing, sharing, cross-border transfers and analytics, even in untrusted environments. This technology is rapidly transforming from academic research to real projects delivering real value, enabling new forms of computing and sharing with reduced risk of data breaches.

From IDC’s Global Datasphere Forecast

• More than 59 zettabytes (ZB) of data will be created, captured, copied, and consumed in the world this year [2020]. Expect 175 zettabytes of data worldwide by 2025
• The amount of data created over the next three years will be more than the data created over the past 30 years, and the world will create more than three times the data over the next five years than it did in the previous five.
• Video surveillance data and privacy and regulatory initiatives/mandates continue to intersect with one another. Finding the correct balance between security, personalization, efficiency, and individual rights to privacy will be one of the great tensions of this decade.

From IDG’s CIO Pandemic Business Impact Survey, 2020 (for Information Technology Decision Makers — ITDMs)

• Technology is realized as a key element in navigating the pandemic – 41% of ITDMs anticipate their tech budgets will increase in the next 12 months (bouncing back from 25% in April), and another 35% expect budgets to be stable.
• CEOs’ top priority for IT continues to be to lead digital business/digital transformation initiatives, and 59% of respondents agree that the effects of the pandemic are accelerating their digital transformation efforts.
• As a result of COVID-19, 64% of ITDMs say that increasing operational efficiency has increased importance as a digital business objective, followed by creating better customer experiences (58%) and improving security (58%).
• In order to become a digital business, ITDMs expect to invest more into big data/analytics, business process management and mobile devices over the next 12 months compared to three months ago.
• COVID-19 continues to change how we work, with the majority of organizations (52%) saying they won’t see employees back in the office in 2020, and organizations are facing the reality that on average only 23% of their workforce needs to be in the office for their business to be fully operational.

​The data and security trends takeaway
In a nutshell: how does data storage affect your business model? Understanding future IT equipment and data security needs are essential for creating services for our ITADs, VARs MSPs and resellers to support their success as suppliers and solution experts.
Data destruction, typically the end-of-the-line, end-of-life security precaution, will likely be performed multiple times on the same hard drive or equipment due to extended life cycles, changing hands and secondary markets..And, the sales of so many more hard drives means more data destruction. Solid state drives and nano-technology call for improved and varied methods of secure sanitization. Distributed networks and smart devices will result in broader asset disposition plans to capture data in previously invisible equipment. Reduced personnel (or “lights out”) for data centers means remote and outsourced services will be needed. Updated workplace models will likely produce flexible or reconfigured data storage architectures. Those in turn will increase outsourced, knowledgeable data center services such as decommissioning, equipment migration and remote data erasure.
What we do know
Guardian Data Destruction is evolving as IT and data storage trends evolve. What doesn’t change is our commitment to the security of data handling whether it’s a data center, data destruction or custom services. Our focus on service, process and compliance is the framework that we adhere to as the nation’s data storage and IT equipment needs morph. As our customers embrace the new, we follow with services that continue to securely shred and sanitize the discarded and relocate and migrate the existing.
As your needs or your customers’ needs are changing, what services do you see emerging? Or disappearing? Do you wonder how your company will keep up? Are your service partners working with you to understand your client challenges and how to provide exceptional and profitable solutions?
If you’re looking for a partner to keep you in the forefront, talk to Guardian. Our flexible solutions and experience ensure that data challenges don’t become data headaches.


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By: NPZ Law Group, P.C.

From June 1st, 2021, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has made it more flexible for employers to comply with specific I-9 employment eligibility verification requirements because of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused. Thus, the validity of the extended policies is till August 31st, 2021.

Here is an overview of the latest Form I-9 update.

Form I-9 Receipt Policy Updated

The USCIS has implemented various updates regarding I-9 employment eligibility verification from the time it introduced flexibility policies due to COVID-19. The latest Form I-9 update is to the “receipt rule,” in which a worker must provide evidence of filing an application to replace a List A, B, or C document that was damaged, stolen, or lost. Thus, the worker must provide evidence of replacing the document within 90 days. However, the USCIS has updated this policy, changing it to:

The employee may present an acceptable document(s) to verify his/her identity and/or employment authorization if he/she does not have access to the original document that was provided for the issued receipt. The employee must provide the alternative document(s) within 90 days, and employers may accept such documentation.

Furthermore, USCIS confirmed that employers must prepare a new Section 2 and attach it to the original Form I-9 for employment eligibility verification if the employee provides a document that is different from that being replaced.

The Effect of the Latest Form I-9 Update on Employers
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The flexibility guidelines of the latest Form I-9 update allow employers to use scanned copies of documents to recruiting, hiring, and onboarding employees in remote settings, even though these circumstances could present issues compared to meeting the requirements for traditional in-person I-9 employment eligibility verification.

There is still no clarity on the implications of these updated policies in the long term. This is especially so regarding whether the new flexibility on in-person requirements by ICE will remain after the pandemic settles and whether it will remain for employers that offer full-time remote work to employees. That said, the fact that ICE continues to stay flexible despite the fact that the number of employees returning to work in offices indicates that there is some hope that the updated policies from the latest I-Form 9 update may stay this way for the foreseeable future.

Moreover, the expanded receipt rule for lawful permanent residents gives them added flexibility with respect to work and travel authorization while they wait for the new Form I-551 permanent resident card to be issued. It indicates that the government understands that processing times are slow, and exemptions and alternations are necessary for persons who cannot show renewed documents by no fault of their own.

If you have questions or need additional information about US Immigration and Nationality Laws, please feel free to contact the NPZ Law Group. If you have more questions on how these laws in the US may impact you or your family, contact the lawyers specialized in US Immigration and Nationality laws at our law firm. You can send us an email at [email protected], or you can call us at 201-670-0006 (x104). In addition to that, we invite you to find more information on our website at www.visaserve.com

By: Glenn Laga, Founder & President, Guardian Data Destruction

Whether your company boomed due to increased laptop and webcam sales for work-from-home zooming or impatiently waited for the safety “all clear” to re-energize your business, COVID has diverted the typical IT asset program. And, the upcoming act is going to add another layer of change.

Guardian has pinpointed eight post-COVID market changes that will grow our relationships with ITADs, VARs, resellers and MSPs. Each prediction is followed by the services it will impact.

1. As SaaS computing and storage are moved to the cloud, desktop units will be replaced by thin clients.

Any IT asset that holds data will require data destruction before recycling, redeployment or remarketing.

2. As workers remain offsite (perhaps permanently), physical office space will decrease. Or disappear completely as leases are rethought.

Secure services like remote hard drive erasure, packing and secure logistics programs will be required for data destruction and asset retrieval. And, for offices that are downsized or just eliminated, full cleanouts of abandoned IT assets (desktops, servers, phone systems, copiers, printers, etc.) will need to be audited and processed.

3. As data storage needs consolidate and move offsite (the cloud is only getting bigger) in response to less onsite personnel or smaller office spaces, enterprise and data center decommissioning and equipment relocation projects will also increase.

Data destruction for obsolete or resellable equipment, data center operations knowledge as well as secure packing and logistics will all be in demand.

4. As refresh and procurement programs struggle to catch up with postponed contracts, ITADs, VARs and resellers will need help to handle the “bubble” of equipment coming in.

Outsourced and on-demand services such as packing, logistics, auditing, grading, sorting, reporting, short-term storage and redeployment will be needed to keep up with demand.

5. Asset disposition plans will expand to include non-traditional smart office equipment and devices that have hard drives

Printer, copier, auto, kiosk and point of sale devices will be included in the data destruction plan (erasure, degaussing, factory reset) before lease return or replacement.

6. Employers will realize that personal equipment, by COVID necessity, is storing proprietary and confidential data (phones, tablets, home laptops).

Data destruction of private devices will be included as part of asset disposition.

7. As Right to Repair is rolled out and the cost of fixing existing equipment falls, redeployment and remarketing options will expand by one to three years.

Each cycle of ownership will require secure data sanitization to ensure that personal, proprietary and information aren’t inadvertently passed along to the wrong person.

8. As Edge computing models increase, especially for IoT-centric enterprises, we’ll see a complex network of clouds and data centers set up to improve latency and security.

With smart devices and distributed IT setups, secure data destruction and data center services (decommissioning, lift and shift) increase to include anything with a hard drive.

How did we arrive at our predictions? 

We’re seeing a shift in work requests from ITADs, VARs, MSPs and resellers across the country. As confidence in worker safety has increased:

• data center work is exploding as companies roll out responsive IT architecture (decommissioning, lift and shift, remote erasure, recycling, sorting, grading, data destruction, packing and logistics)
• ITADs are scrambling to meet contractual deadlines and asking for qualified, organized IT asset disposition assistance (or outsourcing their process completely)
• awareness of the growing list of “smart” office and IT devices is giving obsolete or unwanted equipment asset management planning a makeover and increased coverage
• data destruction needs are up as closets, offices and storage facilities are cleaned out to reduce office leases
• new legislation including Right to Repair is already affecting lease and redeployment planning

Conclusion

What’s clear is that company management, HR, operations and IT departments are rethinking everything as they “catch up” after a forced, extended hiatus. The realization that the workplace environment is unlikely to resume pre-COVID configurations (on every level) means new strategies for workplace IT architecture and computing. As a result, a growing number of varied IT assets will need secure data destruction, packing and logistics before recycling, redeployment, decommissioning or remarketing. And new IT setups and upgraded equipment will be employed as companies worldwide respond to security, IoT devices and increased data storage needs. And global, viral pandemics.
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We’re interested in what you are seeing in the marketplace. Do you agree with these trends? How are you responding to your customers? If you’re interested in learning more about Guardian and how we support our channel partners, reach out.

By: Joseph Imperato, Sr., Partner,
XSolutions Consulting Services, LLC

Hackers, Malware, and Ransomware—Oh My!

To all those business owners and executives who don’t think their companies are at risk from cybercriminals—turn on your TV, radio, or favorite internet news site. Unfortunately, breaches are happening every day, with small and medium-sized businesses as prime targets.

Suppose you’re a hacker, whether alone or part of a cybercrime syndicate, it makes sense. Why spend all that time trying to bypass multi-million dollar cyber-defenses employed by mega-companies when you can easily waltz into the networks of many smaller, less defended businesses.

Well, folks—if it makes sense to you—it certainly makes sense to criminals! So, as a business owner or company executive, ask yourself two questions:

#1: What would you do if a ransomware attack impacted your business for more than two weeks?

​Let’s face it; most businesses have a backup. Some employ a cloud-based data-only backup; others have an onsite data-only backup or a combination of cloud and onsite backups. Those in the know use a Hybrid Cloud-Business Continuity solution.
Note: data-only backup systems will save your data—but recovery from a ransomware attack will be slow and painful.

But what about your cloud-based services: Electronic Health Records (EHR), Point of Service (POS), Accounting, Payroll, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems? They are critical systems, without which most businesses will struggle to provide services, collect payments, and pay their employees.

Additionally, other systems (cloud-based or not) can be impacted, such as phones, premises security, digital X-ray machines, credit card processing, etc. Unfortunately, you have no control over when they are restored after a ransomware attack. That is up to the individual vendors that support these systems.

The heart of this first question is business interruption. Have you ever put a number on what it would cost your company per hour and per day if it were not allowed to conduct business? Many business owners are surprised to find out that the actual cost of downtime encompasses much more than just the amount of repairs, data recovery, etc.

#2: What would you do if hackers had access to customer, patient, and/or employee data?

The security playing field has changed. In the past, hackers were satisfied with encrypting your data and receiving a small ransom payment to release it.

However, with the rise of large, underground criminal organizations, hackers increase their payday by stealing your data first, then encrypting it, and afterward demanding large ransoms, sometimes in the millions.

As if that wasn’t enough, cyber-gangs sell your data on the dark web even after you pay the ransom—not to mention the extortion of your clients!

Data theft may impact a business even more than the attack itself (i.e., regulatory penalties, reputation damage, etc.) and trigger additional time and costs:

• Data forensics is needed to determine who has been impacted.
• Legal counsel to help with regulatory reporting requirements.
• Call centers to address incoming calls and emails from impacted individuals.
• Credit monitoring / Identity Protection for impacted individuals.

Cybersecurity Is A Must For ALL Businesses

First, let me get this out of the way. We’ve said it many times that “there is no one system or process on the market today that can 100% guarantee total security.” So if any company gives you a 100% guarantee on security—run away as quickly as you can— because they’re lying.
But, there are things you can do to help your company become more secure:

• If you don’t have an internal IT department, get yourself a security-minded Managed IT Services Provider (MSP). They’ll monitor, maintain, and secure your network—removing you from the “low-hanging fruit list.”
• Use a layered defense plan:
  • Strategy
    • Security Risk Assessments (SRA)
    • Organizational Policies
    • Incident Response Plans
  • Detection & Response
    • Vulnerability Scanning
    • Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR)
    • Firewall & EDR Synchronization
    • Security Operations Center (SOC)
    • Log Collection (SIEM)
    • Vulnerability Scanning
    • Expert Security Team Monitoring
    • On-Call Incidence Response Team
  • Security Best Practices
    • Email SPF, DKIM, DMARC Monitoring
    • Advanced SPAM & Email Phishing Protection
    • Device Encryption Management
    • Multi-Factor Authentication Management (MFA)
    • Network Access Control
    • Web Filtering
    • Data Loss Prevention
  • User Security & Awareness Training
    • Phishing Email Test Campaigns
    • Phishing Awareness Training
    • Security Awareness Training
    • Dark Web Monitoring
  • Compliance Assistance
    • Regulatory Compliance (PCI DSS, HIPAA, NYShield, CCPA)
    • Insurance (Cybersecurity & Ransomware Supplementals)
• Get a good, comprehensive cybersecurity insurance policy. You may find it difficult to get or renew a good policy without a strong cybersecurity program already in place.
• Overall, follow a standard cybersecurity protocol such as NIST.

​Finally—don’t go it alone! Cybersecurity is detailed and complex, especially if you’re not an IT professional. Protecting your network is more complicated than slapping anti-virus programs in place.

Whatever you do—don’t evaluate cybersecurity programs on cost alone. Quality programs from trusted IT professionals will save you much heartache and stress. Be safe.
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XSolutions is an IT Services Provider serving New York (NY), New Jersey (NJ), and Connecticut (CT). We provide Managed IT Services | Managed IT Security | Backup & Disaster Recovery| Cloud Data Protection. Call (845) 362-9675 for a free consultation.