Posts by Rachel Miller
From Annual Checkup to Continuous Monitoring: Moving Beyond Basic Compliance Audits
Article summary: Annual compliance audits are point-in-time snapshots, but controls drift as users, systems, vendors, and configurations change throughout the year. Continuous compliance monitoring keeps ongoing awareness of control health by tracking high-impact areas like identity and access, logging, configuration exposure, patch posture, and third-party risk. This reduces audit scramble, catches issues earlier, and helps…
Read MoreCompliance Audit Prep: What to Do When the Auditor Asks for Your Incident Response Plan
Article summary: An incident response plan audit often exposes gaps because incident response documentation is scattered, outdated, or untested. An audit-ready plan includes clear roles and escalation, a full response lifecycle, and communication and notification rules. It should also be backed by evidence like tabletop exercises, logs, and documented improvements over time. This reduces audit…
Read MoreWhy Your Backup Strategy Fails When You Need It Most: The 3-2-1 Rule Explained for Small Business
Article summary: A lot of “backup plans” fail because they’re built for convenience, not recovery. The 3-2-1 backup rule for small businesses reduces the most common failure points by keeping multiple copies on different media, with one copy stored offsite. Without testing, you won’t know what works until you’re already in trouble. Small businesses that…
Read MoreSecuring Your VoIP System: Protecting Business Calls from Eavesdropping and Fraud
Article summary: VoIP turns business calls into internet traffic. That means call security depends on the same fundamentals as network security. The biggest risks are eavesdropping, account takeover, and toll fraud. Caller ID spoofing also plays a role, and it can lead to phone-based scams. VoIP security for small businesses improves quickly when signaling and…
Read MoreMicrosoft 365 Phishing Protection in 2026: How to Catch Phishing Emails
Article summary: Phishing emails still reach inboxes even with Microsoft Defender in place. This is most common when attackers use compromised accounts, convincing “document share” lures, and links that change after delivery. The highest-impact warning signs are mismatched sender details, pressure to break normal process, and unexpected sign-in prompts. Effective Microsoft 365 phishing protection combines…
Read MoreFrom On-Prem to Cloud: A Simple Security File Server Migration Checklist
Article summary: Moving files from an on-prem server to the cloud is a security redesign, not a simple copy-and-paste job. The most common migration failures are over-sharing, messy permissions, weak identity controls, and zero visibility into what’s being accessed or shared. A practical file server migration checklist starts with identity hardening, then rebuilds access around…
Read More