Network Innovation Solutions Blog

Safeguard Your Business' Future

IT compliance audits are critical for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Far from just avoiding penalties, these audits are vital health checks for your digital infrastructure, ensuring your business operates securely, ethically, and in compliance with all relevant laws and regulations.

What is an IT Compliance Audit?

An IT compliance audit is an independent review of your business' technology systems, processes, and controls. Its purpose is to verify adherence to specific regulatory requirements and industry best practices. This varies by industry and data type, encompassing regulations like:

• HIPAA: For healthcare, ensuring protected health information (PHI) privacy and security.
• PCI DSS: For credit card processing, safeguarding cardholder data.
• GDPR: For businesses interacting with EU customers, governing personal data handling.
• SOC 2: For service organizations, demonstrating commitment to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.

Audits examine everything from data storage and access to cybersecurity defenses, employee training, and data backup strategies.

Why Are Compliance Audits Crucial for SMBs?

Proactive IT compliance offers significant benefits, safeguarding your business against costly risks: 

• Mitigate Financial & Legal Risks: Non-compliance can result in substantial fines and legal issues. Audits identify and fix problems before they escalate into significant liabilities.
• Protect Reputation & Build Trust: Demonstrating a commitment to compliance through regular audits builds credibility with customers, partners, and investors, proving you prioritize their data protection.
• Enhance Cybersecurity Posture: Audits uncover vulnerabilities in your defenses against cyber threats such as ransomware and data breaches, significantly strengthening your overall security.

• Improve Operational Efficiency: The audit process often reveals and helps streamline IT inefficiencies, leading to better data organization and improved operational flow.
• Ensure Business Continuity: By identifying IT infrastructure risks, audits contribute to robust business continuity and disaster recovery plans, protecting your operations during unforeseen incidents.

Partnering for Seamless Compliance

Navigating an abundance of compliance regulations can be challenging, especially with limited in-house IT resources. Partnering with the team at NIS simplifies this process, providing invaluable peace of mind. We help you identify relevant regulations, assess your current posture, implement necessary changes, and ensure comprehensive documentation for adherence. This allows you to focus on your core business with confidence, knowing that your IT infrastructure is secure and compliant.

Concerned about your business' IT compliance? To get started, please fill out the form. For a more personal touch, you can also reach out to us at 304-781-3410.

AI is quietly changing the game for businesses in 2025—but not everyone is ready. Some business owners are already seeing massive growth from AI-driven insights and automation, while others don’t even realize they’re falling behind. If you're running a business in the Tri-State Area, you've likely heard lots of buzz about AI. Maybe you dismissed it, thinking it’s just for big tech companies, but guess what? It’s a lot more accessible than you think!

The question is: where does your business stand?

Why You Should Care About AI for Business Growth Right Now

Businesses that aren't at least thinking about introducing AI are already starting to fall behind. Understandably, it’s being overlooked; your plate is probably already full running your business. But what if I told you AI could take some of those plates off your hands?

How AI Is Useful for Business Growth

• Customer Service That Never Sleeps

Have you ever woken up to a bunch of missed customer messages from the night before? Wouldn't it be nice to have someone (or something) taking care of those basic queries for you while you sleep? That's where AI chatbots come in. They're like having a super-smart assistant who works around the clock and never takes a coffee break. And best of all, they won't break the bank!

• How Can Predictive Analytics Help Your Business?

Predictive analytics is a branch of AI that helps you guess what's coming next in your business. For local businesses, this means you can better predict which products will sell, when you'll be busiest, and what trends are emerging. No more guesswork—AI makes inventory management smarter.

• Security That Gets Smarter Over Time

Let's be honest: cybersecurity isn't a topic you think about too much until something goes wrong – and then it's the only topic on your mind. AI-powered security is like having a guard dog that learns from every attempted break-in and gets better each time suspicious activity is spotted.

Keeping Your Business Safe

AI can be a game-changer—but only when configured properly.

This means:

• Regular check-ups related to security
• Ensuring your team knows what's what
• Keeping your operations legal and compliant
• Having tech experts on speed dial

AI Deserves All the Hype

A store owner we work with started using AI to manage their inventory recently. Within three months, they stopped running out of some of their more popular items and saved a lot of money on items that weren’t selling. Another client of ours let AI handle their after-hours customer chats and started catching 45% more leads. All this amounts to real money they were just leaving on the table before AI.

Are You Ready to Get on Board?

AI isn't going anywhere, and it's getting easier to use every day. You don't have to be a tech genius to make AI work for your business growth – you just need the right partner to help you figure out what makes sense for you.

Are you ready to learn more about keeping your business safe while using AI? Grab our complimentary guide on "The Growing Role of AI in Security" or reach out to chat about how we can help your business level up.

Here's the bottom line: getting started with AI doesn’t mean going all-in overnight. It's about finding the right tools that will make your life easier and your business stronger. Let's talk about how to make that happen for you!

FAQ: AI for Business Growth

What are the biggest AI trends for small businesses in 2025?

AI is transforming small businesses with:

• AI Chatbots – 24/7 customer service.
• Predictive Analytics – Smarter business decisions.

• AI Cybersecurity – Prevents cyber threats in real-time.
• Automated Marketing – Generates content & campaigns instantly.

AI is no longer optional—it’s a competitive advantage.

Is AI expensive to implement?

No! AI tools are affordable, scalable, and ROI-driven:

• Many chatbots & automation tools start at low monthly costs.
• Predictive AI saves money by reducing inefficiencies.
• AI prevents costly cyberattacks before they happen.

It’s not about cost—it’s about the cost of falling behind.

How can AI improve cybersecurity?

AI detects, prevents, and responds to cyber threats automatically:

• Real-time threat detection – Identifies suspicious activity quickly.
• Automated security updates – Keeps software protected.
• Fraud prevention – Detects unusual logins & transactions.

AI doesn’t just react—it predicts & prevents threats before they happen.

Microsoft's Artificial Intelligence Brings New Perspective to Business Computing

Your business needs every advantage. Microsoft Copilot adds another powerful tool to Microsoft 365. Microsoft’s AI tool helps you and your team work smarter, faster, and more creatively, freeing you up to focus on what matters most: growing your business. Imagine having an intelligent assistant that can help you conquer everything you need to do, while unlocking new levels of efficiency.

AI has become an extremely important part of today’s business, and Microsoft Copilot, integrated through the Microsoft 365 productivity suite, brings several benefits.

Boost Everyday Productivity

Microsoft Copilot gives you the ability to do much more today than you did yesterday. Let’s take a look at some of the ways Copilot can help build a more dynamically productive business:

• Reclaim your time - You’ll have to spend less time on administrative tasks. Copilot can summarize lengthy email threads in Outlook, draft professional responses, and help you manage your inbox more effectively.
• Create content faster - Generate first drafts of documents in Word, create engaging presentations in PowerPoint from simple prompts, and get suggestions for refining your work.
• Unlock data insights - Ask questions in natural language to analyze data in Excel, identify trends, and create visualizations without needing complex formulas.
• More effective meetings - Get real-time summaries and action items in Teams, ensuring everyone stays aligned and tasks don't fall through the cracks.

Enhance Creativity and Innovation

Besides enhancing organizational productivity, Copilot can open up new opportunities with its advanced creativity capabilities. They include:

• Overcoming mental blocks - Copilot can help brainstorm ideas, outline proposals, and kickstart your creative process, so you're never starting from a blank slate.
• Improve organizational focus on strategic work - By automating routine tasks, Copilot frees up valuable time for you and your team to concentrate on improving your customer relationships and strategic growth initiatives.

Empower Your Team’s Collaborative Efforts

What’s more, Microsoft Copilot can enhance your team’s ability to work together, which has more benefits than just efficiency, including:

• Fewer burnt-out employees - By taking on repetitive and time-consuming tasks, Copilot can help reduce workload stress and improve job satisfaction.
• Overhauling employee onboarding - Help new team members get up to speed more quickly by easily creating training materials and accessing information.
• Getting an AI you can trust - Your business data is not used to train the foundation models, ensuring your sensitive information stays protected.

It's not always smooth sailing when you're running a business. Even if you try to avoid risk and follow standard safety procedures, unexpected things can happen. That's why it's so important to have a solid disaster recovery strategy, whether the tragedy is accidental or the result of a malicious hack.

A good number of business continuity and disaster recovery strategy (BDR) options are available for your security. We can help you find a solution that helps you achieve your goals and keep your network and data as safe as possible.

Backup and Disaster Recovery Strategy Planning

Many companies handle sensitive information, such as financial records, personnel information, and customer profiles. Having a system in place to keep all your company's data safe is part of managing your organization.

Many things can go wrong as you run your business, and some issues will inevitably result in data loss or corruption. Reasons may include natural calamities such as hurricanes, floods, fires, and earthquakes. Damage to your system can also happen from faulty hardware, such as when an electrical surge destroys your hard drives.

However, hackers are now the most common cause of network and data disasters. Malware from phishing attacks can get into any system and steal or delete sensitive information. When breaches happen, businesses that are unprepared may end up closing their doors.

Do Backup and Disaster Recovery Strategy Solutions matter?

Reliable BDR solutions defend and secure a company in multiple ways. One of the best uses for them is making sure a company can keep running after a natural disaster. Depending on the damage, your company may be able to perform limited business soon after a disaster. However, with a disaster recovery strategy plan, your business can resume as usual.

The same holds for your company's finances; a good catastrophe recovery strategy will keep them to a minimum. Having reliable backups can, for instance, help you save money on data restoration costs. It will also cut the time you can't do business or sell things.

Find Experts in Disaster Recovery Strategy

For a successful recovery plan, you must know the factors involved. First, find a group of professionals who can give you the tools, methods, and knowledge you need to stop data loss and fix any damage caused by disasters. Their job is to help you get your company up and running again after a catastrophic occurrence.

A Method for Assessing Risk

Each type and severity of potential disaster poses a unique challenge for businesses. If you have a system for evaluating risks, you can prepare for bad things to happen and get ready for them.

Identifying Essential Resources

Your company will need to go through a period of rehabilitation and reconstruction after a calamity. When getting back on your feet with disaster recovery strategy, you must give the most valuable assets top priority while restoring data.

Safe Data Storage

Have current backups of your data stored in a safe place. In the event of a disaster, you will need to get to your data backup quickly to restore data that was lost or destroyed. There are many cloud storage solutions, so ask your managed service provider to show you some options.

Concluding Remarks

If you manage a business, you already know how important it is to have a plan in place for when calamity strikes. For safety and peace of mind, search for a managed service provider that focuses on backup and recovery. If you want to check the safety of your company’s logins, have your employees take our BDR quiz!

We have the most reliable backup and disaster recovery strategy solutions for any business. Call us today, and we'll start working on the optimal solution for your company's needs.

Luckily, most people will, if they have an eligible device, upgrade to Windows 11. The promise of new innovations with productivity, connectivity, and creativity is now a reality. For those who can't upgrade due to their device not having the right specs, and who don’t want to buy a new device, Windows 10 will be the right choice. Microsoft said it will continue to support Windows 10 until October 2025, and there will even be updates to it later this year.

Security
For those who are considering the upgrade, security is one factor in any decision. As you might expect, Microsoft has raised its baseline of security for this latest version, which means it is the most secure Windows has ever been. During the security upgrade process, Microsoft used over 8 trillion signals from threat intelligence to test every aspect of the security system. They used reverse engineering of cyberattacks and got input from experts, including the UK National Cyber Security Centre, the NSA, and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. That means Windows 11 security will address threats that software alone can’t tackle.
It is for security reasons why many of the hardware requirements exist. Microsoft has also analyzed the most effective defenses to help it build the Windows 11 default security features. The research included looking at data from 2020 attacks that were blocked and archived. This process included six billion endpoint device threats, 30 billion threats to emails, and 30 billion authentications.

Windows 11 and HIPAA
If your organization needs to be HIPAA compliant, upgrading to Windows 11 would be the best decision to ensure your company stays compliant now and in the future.

System requirements
For Windows 11 to install properly, a PC needs to have the following basic requirements:
Intel: eight generation+, 64-bit architecture at 1Ghz+ Processor
4Gb or more of RAM
64Gb or more storage
Secure Boot capability, UEFI system firmware
Trusted Platform Module version 2.0
DirectX 12 + graphics card; driver WDDM 2.0 or newer
High-definition (720p) 9”+ display with at least 8 bits per color channel
Microsoft account & Internet connectivity

Should you upgrade to Windows 11?
Upgrading your operating system can be risky. If you recall, some versions of Windows in the past have flopped and were not liked by some. So, before anyone considers updating their system, you should consider backing everything up just in case you really can’t get on with it and want to revert while you can.

Should everyone think about upgrading? Most likely, yes. There needs to be an element of 'wait and see' before we all jump at it. But the new update certainly looks promising, and that it fixes lots of the issues with regards to design that people have complained about over the years. However, we don't yet know what drawbacks Windows 11 might have. Also, we don't yet know how it will perform, which means it's hard to recommend without first testing it.
Assuming Microsoft releases Windows 11 as planned, we still need to approach it with caution. If you haveolder software, it might not work with the upgrade. In this case, you might consider holding out. Not many apps had issues with previous versions of Windows, but it could happen.

Final thoughts – should you upgrade to Windows 11?
If you have a compatible device and, then go for the upgrade when you can. Remember to consider doing a full backup before you upgrade in case something goes wrong or your old software won’t run on the new operating system.
If you don’t yet have a compatible device, there’s no need to panic and rush out to buy a new PC as Windows 10 will still be supported for many more years yet and it might be worth waiting to see if there are any teething problems with any new devices that run Windows 11. Don’t forget the adage: "if it isn't broken, don't fix it."
Don’t forget, if you have questions about Windows 11, or need help installing it, give us a call. We’re here to help you with the technology you use to run your business.