Cloud services offer flexibility, security, and convenience to life science companies. In such a fast-paced and competitive industry, these benefits are not to be taken lightly. Whether you need to handle complex computational needs or simply get your company up and running without having to set up a physical hardware infrastructure, consider if cloud services are suitable for your work.

If you read or watch the news, then it is no surprise that companies’ electronic systems get compromised all the time, whether big or small. The biotech and life science industry is no stranger to these threats. Even with antivirus and antimalware systems in place, breaches are still possible through the vulnerable path of your employees.

Biotech and life science companies tend to grow quickly. Your team may grow from two to thirty or more in a single year, and your workflow needs to scale and pivot smoothly with you. Partner with a mature MSP such as Data Evolution who understands this industry, what you need to operate now, and how this will change over time.

Life science companies regularly deal with intellectual property and expensive lab equipment, making them an appealing target for cybercriminals. This is a major issue on two crucial fronts:

A data breach has the potential to cause reputation damage, financial ramifications, and legal liability. Any company with sensitive data or intellectual property must ensure their work is secure. Data security is an escalating issue for life sciences companies in particular: 40% of cyberattacks on life sciences companies reported to the media since 2017 took place in 2020 alone.

IT disasters can range from a minor inconvenience to a dilemma that brings your work to a screeching halt, and they are more common than you might think. Things can go wrong in many ways – even something as simple as someone deleting information by mistake.

Created in the wake of the financial scandals of the early 2000s, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) was the federal government’s attempt to keep public companies honest about their financial status — to investors, employees, and the public. But while Enron and Tyco grabbed the headlines, mega-corporations aren’t the only companies that must comply with SOX.

Any public company — or, crucially — any company intending to go public, must comply.

In the race to generate value, many startups set their sights on an initial public offering (IPO). Others hope to be acquired by a larger company. In the first case, SOX compliance will be mandatory. In the second, it can increase your company’s value in the eyes of potential buyers.

With the recent news that Bill Burr, who originally wrote the guidelines for government employees password polices that influenced the business world too, now regrets those complexity standards he developed businesses are now left to decide how they should handle these new standards.

NIST released a draft of its guidelines for review last year, and this summer, released the final version. It’s a four-volume document, written, as Fortune describes, “in turgid bureaucrat-speak.” We’ll save you the trouble of wading through it and highlight some of the biggest changes from the password best practices of the past.

Apple likes to cultivate a pristine image: hardware, software, and user experiences blending seamlessly together. And for the most part, image and reality are the same.

Apple products command a premium because they “just work.” Businesses owners will tell you they choose Macs — despite their higher price tags — because they’re powerful with less hassle. And the perception is that they’re more secure.

In fact, since Apple debuted Mac OS X (10.0) in 2001, the conventional wisdom has been that the operating system is nearly impenetrable to viruses and other malware due to it being built on Unix.