IT Firefighting: Balancing Urgency + Strategy
There's a reality where your IT operations can break out of the endless break-fix cycle. The most common challenge for IT Directors in mid-sized organizations is balance – there's...
Unlocking Efficiency: How Outsourcing Empowers Your Internal Team
Organizations with limited IT staff and resources face growing pressure to manage both day-to-day technical operations and strategic, business-specific IT initiatives....
Why Co-Managed IT Is a Game Changer for Rural Critical Access Hospitals
At Five Nines, we understand the unique challenges rural hospitals face because we've seen them firsthand. With experience supporting more than 85 healthcare organizations and 15...
What is Smishing? How to Identify + Report It
SMS phishing (“smishing”) is a form of phishing in which an attacker uses SMS text messages to trick recipients into taking an action and compromising sensitive information....
5 Benefits of a Managed Service Provider
The 2020 onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a rapid increase of remote working, and the years that followed created a culture of hybrid work, a boom in smaller satellite...
Moving to the Cloud: The Complete, Affordable Solution
As cloud computing solutions flood the business world, one question comes up frequently for businesses hosting on-premise solutions: “Should we move (even part of) our data center...
Azure Virtual Desktop: 4 Benefits for Your Remote Organization
Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) is a set of technologies from Microsoft Azure allowing IT professionals to create virtual desktops and remote apps in Azure and publish them to users...
Preparing for Windows 10 End-of-Support and End-of-Life
Support for Microsoft Windows 10 ends October 14, 2025. After this date, Microsoft will no longer provide free security updates, patches, or any technical support for machines...
Timely Patching: Prioritizing Your Risk Management
Do you patch all critical vulnerabilities within 'X' days? If you've dealt with an audit, cyber insurance, or third-party vendor due diligence, you've probably seen some variant...
Why Businesses Need Multi-Factor Authentication
Typing in a simple username and password is no longer enough to protect your data in the business technology world, which is why multi-factor authentication is such an important...
What Are Password Managers And Why Are They Important?
What's your go-to password? We all have one. Is yours secure? You can test how secure one of your top-of-mind passwords really is by checking it here:...
Secure your data with these password tips
In recent years, billions of people have been affected by various data breaches and cyberattacks. Not only have these victims lost money or valuable data, but they also lost their...
What Is Phishing?
We'd like to throw a quick statistic your way. According to Verizon's Data Breach Investigations Report, over 74% of all breaches include a human element in some way. Why is this...
Top 5 Signs of Social Engineering
It's true – your devices, accounts, and data are all incredibly valuable to cyber criminals, no matter your industry or role. According to Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Report, 68%...
Why Phone Record Breaches Increase Risk of Impersonation Scams
The AT&T phone record breach – which took place in 2022 and was disclosed July 2024 – affects everyone. Even if you're not an AT&T customer, records of calls placed and text...
Microsoft 365 Copilot: Minimize Risk & Empower Innovation
Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI-powered assistant that is built into the Microsoft 365 suite of applications including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams to provide...
Microsoft Licensing Shake-Up: Why Teams is No Longer Included
In April, Microsoft announced that they have unbundled Teams from the Office suite for all net new Enterprise subscriptions effective September 30, 2024. Customers with existing...
The Urgency of MFA: Lessons from the Change Healthcare Cyberattack
Information released from the Change Healthcare ransomware attack in February 2024 reveals the absence of Multi-Factor Authentication on a remote-access tool that attackers used...
IT Security Priorities: Top Recommended Improvements to Make This Year
It's a harsh reality for most small and mid-sized businesses, but it's the truth. You simply don’t have the resources to stop well-funded, highly-targeted attacks. But that's not...
Why is my Domain Being Flagged as Spam?
Have you had an issue with email deliverability or your domain being flagged as spam? The industry standard for spam complaints is 0.1%. This means if you send an email campaign...
Bulk Emailing for Small & Mid-Sized Businesses | What You Need to Know
In a recent development, both Yahoo and Google have chosen to make DMARC a requirement for email delivery. This move is a significant step toward enhancing email security and...
Utilizing IT Resources For Business Continuity
Your team spends time and money on your IT resources, so it's only fair to make sure they are being utilized to their full potential. It's important that IT experts ask the right...
Strategic IT Planning for the New Year
The new year is quickly approaching. That's right, it’s already time to start strategically planning to hit next year’s IT goals. Our rule of advice is that your team should sit...
Understanding Co-Managed IT Services for Your Business
Discover which IT service model is right for your medium-sized business. What are Co-Managed IT Services? Co-managed IT services can be a game-changer for medium-sized businesses...
When You Should Reboot Your Devices And Why
"When was the last time you restarted your computer?" Does that question sound familiar? Whenever a user is facing a tech issue, typically one of the first troubleshooting steps...
Top 5 Things to Consider When Debating Internal vs Outsourced IT
The world of technology is always changing. Recently, IT has become a multifaceted Human Resource issue as companies look to hire good IT people, find someone with the knowledge...
Unplug Over The Holidays: Leave "IT" To A Managed Services Provider
There are only a few times throughout the year when it is encouraged to "unplug" from your work, when you should spend time with family, eat too much food, and turn your attention...
What Role Will AI Play in Cybersecurity?
AI, with its immense potential, is reshaping the realm of cybersecurity. The integration of AI into the already overwhelming list of today’s cyber threats can seem daunting. It’s...
IT Strategic Planning: 3 Steps to Start the Process
As another year flies past, is your technology accounted for? In order to keep a well-maintained IT environment, you must make your technology a part of your annual strategic...
5 Benefits of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (MECM)
The Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (MECM), formerly known as System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), is a Microsoft systems manager that allows administrators to...
3 Components to Understand Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure is a growing collection of more than 200 integrated cloud-based products and cloud services spanning analytics, computing, database, networking, storage, and more....
What is Microsoft Teams?
If you’re looking for the best solution for a hybrid work environment, look no further than the Microsoft Teams Platform – built for communication, collaboration, and...
The Placement Engineering Model: How To Augment Internal Staff with an MSP
To view the recording of our Tuesday Tech Talk, click HERE. Over the last 12-15 months, staffing conversations have taken a turn that not many people expected, especially staffing...
Spring Cleaning: It’s Time for an IT Compliance Assessment
Audit season is right around the corner. Do you know if your organization is in full-compliance from a technology standpoint? With last year’s unprecedented events leading to a...
Think Like a Hacker: Knowing What to Look for So You Can Prevent It
To view the recording of our Tuesday Tech Talk, click HERE. Cybersecurity incidents continue to make the news. Here is the Five Nines’ take on typical breaches and how to avoid...
What is Microsoft 365?
Microsoft's suite of business productivity products is constantly evolving – both in name and in technical capabilities – so it can be challenging to keep track of what's what if...
Breach. Theft. Disaster. Preventing a Threat Before It Happens.
No matter the industry, cybersecurity will be critical to your organization’s long-term success. In our first Tuesday Tech Talk of the year, Jarrod Daake, our Director of...
IT Strategic Planning for a New Decade
Strategic IT Planning is a collaborative process taken with clients to understand their business needs and goals, that ultimately allows the IT budget to appropriately align with...
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Website Maintenance: Improving Security and Performance
Website breaches can cost millions of dollars and thousands of hours to remediate. Joe Brown, Five Nines Director of Marketing Operations, knows firsthand. In his career, he has...
5 Cybersecurity Tips to Keep You Safe at Home & Work
We partnered with HBE CPAs & Consultants to present Security Tips to Keep You Safe at Home & Work, and here are the top 5 tips we covered: #1 – Practice Good Password Hygiene To...
3 Reasons Why Hospitals Consider Outsourcing IT
You come to work with all systems operational: patients are being checked in. Nurses are filling out charts. Doctors are prescribing medicine. Everything in your hospital is...
Multi-Factor Authentication - What It Is & Why It Matters
We’ve talked a lot about the importance of changing your password and making sure you choose passwords that aren’t easily guessed. But while you should always beef up your...
IT Asset Management: What It Is & Why It’s Important
It’s likely your company depends on several pieces of technology to consistently deliver a seamless product or service to your customers. When you consider that, protecting your...
Tools To Get The Most Out Of Office 365
Cloud services have modernized the way company's work and allow for collaboration in any place, with any device. At Five Nines, we’re big fans of Office 365 applications, but...
You Can’t Depend on Anti-Virus To Stay Secure. Here’s Why
As technology continues to change, the number of ways your company can be targeted in a malware attack grows. At Five Nines, we put a major emphasis on educating our clients about...
Cyber-Insurance:How It Can Save You Long-Term
It's likely you have insurance plans for all of the unforeseen circumstances in life: apartment fires, cell phone accidents and even getting sick. You may think of these plans as...
The Difference Between Backups & Disaster Recovery — How To Plan For Both
As business owners, we typically prefer not to think about what would happen if we suddenly lost all of our company’s data and crucial information through a breach or accident....
What is the future of SaaS?
It’s all too easy to forget how integral and pervasive software-as-a-service (SaaS) has become to modern business operations, given the efficiencies and flexibility benefits it...
Ensuring HIPAA Compliance With A Risk Analysis
While you hear about the occasional breach of Protected Health Information (PHI) from large organizations, smaller medical offices often believe they are safe from a breach due to...
The Ins And Outs Of An MSA
Change is hard. Ask any business owner and they’ll tell you that the slightest change can cause ripple effects throughout an organization if not properly administered. Changing...
Navigating An IT Provider Change With Your Staff
As a leader in your company, you’ve done the research and know that moving toward a managed IT services provider is what is best for the success of your business. The concern?...
How Secure Is Your Manufacturing Operation?
After the public and finance sectors, the manufacturing industry is the third most targeted by cyber-attacks, as the threat from malicious hackers, cybercriminals and corporate...
Improving Business Collaboration with Your Technology
When it comes to working with your team, collaborating with another company, or simply working on a project from multiple locations, everyone wants to network and feel connected...
What Makes Cylance An Impactful CyberSecurity Solution
Cybercrime is a real threat to all businesses, SMB's included. Statistics are only showing an increase in cyberattack methods, and successful attacks result in a significant loss...
How Unified Communications Helps To Increase Productivity
Unified Communications is an important business component meant to optimize processes and increase user productivity. It is something that relies on successful technology in order...
You See It In Our Logo - But What Does It Mean?
Solve. Secure. Advance. You have seen these 3 words beneath our logo since our rebranding back in 2015. This phrase is incorporated in everything we do: it drives the way we...
The Importance of IT Documentation
In all aspects of business, there is typically some form of documentation. You could be tracking certain numbers for goal completion, documenting budgets, or analyzing metrics for...
What Do End-Of-Support and End-Of-Life Dates Really Mean?
Have you ever run into technological terms where you don't fully understand their meaning? Have you felt this way when hearing your technology is approaching "end-of-life" or that...
Cyber Insurance: Do You Need It?
You might be thinking to yourself, cyber insurance… is it really necessary? Think about it this way - cybercrime damages will cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021. A lot of...
Don't Overlook The Rising Threats: Protect Your Business
How many times have you seen cybersecurity breaches in the news in the last year? If you can recall even one time, we think that is one too many. Why? Because that one news story...
Sustaining Your Business With Network Management
Your network is such an important part of your business, which is why correctly managing your network is so important. Overlooking network management could cause a severe halt in...
How To Effectively Report A Tech Issue
When reporting a tech issue, the better the communication, the more effective the problem-solving. We want to provide you with what IT professionals look for when addressing a new...
Don't Be The Next Big Catch: Register For Your .Bank Domain
.BANK is not just another way to change up your domain name, it's a proactive and protective measure put in place to give you peace of mind that your customers are protected....
The Many Hats Of Your Internal IT Employee
Have you ever heard anyone go up to an IT engineer and say "Hey, just checking in to let you know that everything is running smoothly!"? Probably not. In the IT industry, there...
3 Signs It's Time Your Company Gets An IT Assessment
An IT environment without a clear direction can easily get lost in the constant twists and turns of tech traffic that is constantly evolving and adapting. When it comes to...
The IT Software Life Cycle: 3 Things To Know
Your organization's users interact with different IT software platforms every single day, so it's important to ensure they are not playing a role in a potential security breach...
7 Questions To Ask When Auditing Your IT
Business growth does not happen overnight, nor does it happen without addressing what is working well and what isn't working well within an organization. The same goes for the...
Spam Filtering: Why It's Important And How It Works
Once spam hits your email inbox, you become a target. When it comes to technology, humans tend to be the weakest link in most IT security situations. Attackers will constantly try...
Supporting Remote Employees Through The Right Technology
In today's world, technology is on-the-go... and there are no trends to show that this on-the-go tech culture will be slowing down. According to a poll conducted by Gallup, in...
Managed IT: The Customer Service Experience Matters
We've seen the statistics, we've heard the horror stories, and we understand. The reality behind how often customer experiences go wrong or problems go unsolved is alarming, and...
Mayday, Mayday! My IT Environment Is Sinking!
Do you feel as though your IT environment is a sinking ship that you are trying to keep afloat? Keeping your IT environment efficient is the best way to help your organization...
The Importance Of Securing Your Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi. It's a symbol that everyone recognizes, a term that most people are familiar with, yet many business' Wi-Fi networks are left unprotected and exposed. Securing your Wi-Fi...
The Benefits of Promptly Replacing Old Computers
As long as old computers are still running with limited problems, they don't need to be replaced... right? It may seem easy to place these updates on the lower end of your...
Case Study: Supporting A Rural Nebraska Hospital
Five Nines is partnered with a 22-bed critical access hospital in rural Nebraska that supports up to 125 employees working between a hospital, clinic, and remote clinic. The...
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A Deeper Dive Into 8x8
Businesses rely on phone calls and virtual meetings for collaboration both internally and externally on a daily basis, and in order to achieve significant levels of up-time this...
Be Prepared To Fight Cybercrime With User Training
In the tech industry today, even the most reliable tools can be used against you. Five Nines has recently discovered phishing attempts that are in the form of an Office 365...
NBA Bank Technology Event Recap: Financial IT
We had a great time at the Nebraska Bankers Association Bank Technology Conference last week. We got the chance to connect with financial organizations across the state of...
Defining Your IT Road Map
Preparation is an important part of any business, but when it comes to business technology preparation can make or break how your technical environment operates in the event of an...
Troubleshooting Tips: Don't Let Frustration Win
Running into a technical problem can be stressful, overwhelming, and a huge disruption to your workday. Don't be like this guy (thank you to our co-owner James, who provided this...
How To Combat Organizational Downtime
When it comes to workplace technology, the possibility of downtime is very real and has lasting impacts on organizations who experience it. Downtime is idle time within a business...
Hand-Held Hacking: Mobile Devices
Your mobile device holds your entire life: emails, messages, photos, social media accounts, etc. Because your phone is always in your hands, on your desk, or in your pocket, it's...
How to Begin The Fight Against Cybercrime
Small to medium-sized businesses are consistently targets of cyber-attacks due to their size and underestimated security measures. According to the 2017 State of Cybersecurity in...
How Network Connectivity Impacts Your Business
Network connectivity has the potential to make or break your IT work environment. If your network connectivity is down, it can cause a severe halt in productivity. Here are three...
Traction - Get a Grip On Your Business
Do you have a grip on your business, or does your business have a grip on you? Miss the Nebraska Tech Summit? Based on the business strategy book Traction written by Gino Wickman,...
Your Risk Partner: Managed IT Organizations
To put it simply, risk can cost you… and it can cost you a lot. Unfortunately, risk will always be a factor when it comes to business technology. How you choose to eliminate...
Becoming Acquainted With Your Data Center
Out of sight, out of mind, right? Wrong. Your data center may be a behind-the-scenes tool, but it is one of the most important technical aspects of your organization. Here are a...
What's Keeping You From The Cloud?
What's keeping you from the cloud? That is the overall question. It is up to you and your IT team to determine whether or not you should implement a cloud solution. You might be...
Track What You Do: The Importance of IT Analysis
If you are spending time, money, and extra resources on IT efforts for your business you must recognize that technology is always changing, and the job is never truly done. It's a...
The Right Technology Facilitates The Right Communication
It's a simple idea, with a complex follow-through: workplace communication. If employees feel as though their communication isn't prioritized, it could decrease productivity. This...
What is IT Life Cycle Management?
The life of technology can vary, and it can be difficult to keep track of everything, which is why the idea of Life Cycle Management is necessary to the success of an IT...
Web Threat Defense - The Ultimate Protection
Surfing the web plays such a strong role in the daily lives of users, that it's almost uncomfortable to imagine life before it. As technology has advanced, so have its users,...
What You Need To Know About Next-Generation Firewall
There are so many components put into place to protect your organization on the technical side, it's difficult to differentiate between each one. So, when we talk about a...
3 Ways To Keep Your Business Email Account Safe
The most common way most business users share information with one another is through their work email addresses. Aside from sharing important information, business emails assist...
Why Your IT Environment Is Not A DIY Project
We've discussed the real story behind Managed IT Services, and the importance of a strong IT infrastructure for businesses. It's important to set up your IT environment in the...
4 Technological Solutions That Will Change the Way You Work
Your computer keeps freezing. You can't make a phone call, and you have a meeting in an hour. You are locked out of your Outlook account. Have you ever run into technological...
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What Does Connectivity Have To Do With IT?
One of the major components of our client's success is the effectiveness of their connectivity. Just as it sounds, connectivity is the state of being connected, a back-of-mind...
What To Do First: Solving Your Tech Problems
The process of solving a problem can often be strenuous, stressful, but it is one of the major components of the Information Technology industry. Here are a few steps we feel are...
The Real Story Behind Managed IT
In the IT industry, we IT folks often assume that users understand all the language and processes. Which is why when the topic of Managed IT Services is discussed, we assume you...
Top 10 Benefits of Outsourcing IT
While IT continues to gain seats at the boardroom table, so does the complexity of the IT plan needed to keep the lights on in the organization. As the demand for IT professionals...
Has your skype account been hacked?
Microsoft believes hackers have been targeting Skype accounts since early August. When Microsoft integrated Skype logins with general Microsoft account logins, your old Skype...
Forging Alliances: The changing relationship between Banks & IT Support
As banking has evolved over the past few years there has been a growing trend towards consolidation of community banks. As a result, there is a huge challenge around finding the...
Unite Everyone with One Unified Communication Tool
Great communication starts with the right tools. Unified Communication as a Service (UcaaS) is not a new concept nor is it a niche market, but a mainstream one already worth $4...
Modernize Your Conference Room for only $50
Have a conference room or meeting space that looks like this? Need a solution to eliminate all of the cords, wires, and adapters? Recently, Microsoft released Microsoft Miracast,...
Creating a Culture of Learning
It is no secret that the world of technology is constantly changing, notably Managed IT Services. What Five Niners have learned in technical training programs as early as last...
Internet Safety – 5 Best Practices for Keeping Your Business Safe
It is no secret that your business could be under attack by cybercriminals at any moment of any day. It is the basic fact of business in the internet age. Providing small business...
Service Desk vs Primary Engineer Model
If you have looked to outsource your IT needs in recent years the words, "Service Desk" or "Primary Engineer" have probably come up. What do they really mean and what is the...
7 Things You Should Know About Allo Fiber Internet in Lincoln
You may remember hearing the buzz about Nelnet acquiring Allo in 2015. Prior to the acquisition Allo was (and still is) providing fiber optic network options to Western Nebraska....
The Year of Ransomware: What you need to know to protect your data.
"Help_Decrypt_Your_Files," the year of ransomware has officially arrived. These 4 words can turn a business upside down with one click of the mouse. Your calendar, your kid's...
