Network Integration Specialists, Inc. Blog

Toys are an essential part of our development as people, whether you’re talking about baby toys that teach color recognition and empathy, collaborative toys that teach sharing and teamwork, or creative toys that encourage imagination and outside-the-box thinking. Just imagine what the toys of the future will be able to accomplish… assuming, of course, that the security issues we’re currently wrestling with are dealt with appropriately.

Unfortunately, this hurdle still needs work to be cleared.

Do you know exactly how much a disaster incident could cost your business? You might think of IT as your reactive safety net, only taking action when something goes wrong or breaks, but here’s the problem… By the time your server crashes, or your office is underwater, or you’re dealing with a ransomware attack, it’s already too late.

In order for any modern business to be successful, it is crucial that everyone is on the same page…and in order for this to happen, a business needs to have the tools available to collaborate and communicate, internally and externally.

Let’s take a few minutes to go over what these tools look like nowadays to see if we can identify any gaps in your own resources that should be filled.

With a vulnerability appearing on the scene, we felt it was an appropriate time to peel back the curtain on a technology we all use daily but rarely question: Bluetooth. Given the nickname of King Harald Gormsson, who famously united disparate Scandinavian tribes back in the 10th century, the technology unites our headphones, mice, and keyboards. Unfortunately, even the strongest alliances have their weak points.

It is fascinating to think that in 2026, our workdays will be defined by orchestrating AI agents, optimizing cloud-native environments, and deploying self-healing security protocols. But if we rewind exactly 40 years to 1986, business technology wasn’t just "retro," it was a different reality entirely.

In 1986, the cloud was something that ruined your Saturday tee time, not a place where you stored your database. Here is what the cutting edge looked like when high-tech involved a lot more physical heavy lifting.

As IT administrators, we spend our days securing networks and managing cloud migrations, yet one of the biggest budget leaks often sits right in the corner of the office: the printer.

If you haven’t taken a serious look at your organization’s printing costs lately, the numbers are staggering. The average organization spends between 1 percent and 3 percent of their annual revenue on printing. That comes out to roughly $750 per employee every year. With a strategic digital transformation, however, these costs stop skyrocketing; they start vanishing.

One question businesses have been asking over the past couple of years is: “Is crypto a viable payment system?” With the maturity of digital asset markets and the rise of regulated stablecoins, the landscape is more professional than any time in the past, but still carries with it substantial risks. If you are considering adding digital assets to your checkout or B2B payment flow, here is the current breakdown of the pros and cons.

As your business has grown, have you fallen into the tech trap of DIY IT solutions? While you might have started with just a handful of employees, the infrastructure you’ve built is no longer sustainable or reliable. You need professional help if you want your business to stay competitive, and we have just the thing for you.

Can your team recall what you discussed during your last mandatory cybersecurity training session? We doubt it, and not because you did a bad job (we’re sure you did an excellent job on that PowerPoint, champ). It’s just that small business security training is far from engaging by default, and it’s seen as more of a requirement than anything else. If you want to shift this “annual compliance” perspective, you’ll have to make some changes, and fast.

We’ve all been there: the Wi-Fi drops during a high-stakes meeting, or the TV remote ignores your commands for the tenth time. In a moment of pure frustration, you give the device a love tap, and—as if by magic—it starts working again.

Whether you call it percussive maintenance or just asserting dominance, that physical jab feels like a victory. While that slap might provide a temporary fix, you’re actually playing a high-stakes game of planned obsolescence.

Quantifying the impact of AI on employment is notoriously difficult because technology rarely replaces a job in its entirety. Instead, it tends to disassemble a role into its component tasks. While AI is exceptionally efficient at handling repetitive, data-heavy, or predictable processes, it struggles with the high-level reasoning and interpersonal nuances that define many professions.

It’s easy in IT to see a large IT invoice and think something needs to be done about it, but have you ever stopped to think about how much lost productivity is costing your business? Chances are, it’s even more than what it costs to receive IT support. Today, we’re exploring this invisible tax you pay due to poor IT performance (and what you can do to stop it).

Is your business ready to grow as we head into 2026? You may have heard that data is what fuels the decisions that lead to growth, but without a focus on the right types of data, you could be floundering and playing catch-up. Today, we’re sharing three types of data that your business can use to dominate in 2026, as well as solutions to help you collect it.

Do you remember when you were able to Google something and get the answer immediately, and not have to scroll past ads, sponsored results, and a not-totally-reliable answer hallucinated by an AI? You aren’t the only one. This trend of gradually declining quality in the products and services we all rely on has a very specific, descriptive name that efficiently captures what is happening to tech while also making all our feelings about it exceptionally clear.

In 2022, technology critic and author Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification.” The term was named the Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society in 2023, even beating out “AI.” It has proved so resonant that its use has expanded beyond social media platforms to include hardware, software, and technology in general.

Do you actually know which of your coworkers is one click away from getting the whole company hacked? It’s surprisingly easy to get into a business’ IT system. All it takes is one person falling for a fake email, downloading a sketchy file, or giving up their password to a scammer.

If you aren't testing your team, you’re basically just waiting for a disaster to happen. Here is why simulated phishing tests—sending out fake scam emails—are actually a great way to protect your business.

It’s easy to think of IT as a money sink. No matter how much you spend, there’s always some issue that surfaces, requiring a considerable investment on your part. But what if we told you that you don’t have to worry about IT issues?

With the right approach, you can transition from the traditional reactive method of IT maintenance to proactive IT solutions, designed to save you money.

Every so often, it helps to reflect for a moment on the purpose of your business, which is—with almost no exceptions—to deliver a good or service to your customers/clients. As such, every improvement you make to your technology should yield dividends for this base, even if the improvement is internal.

Let’s talk about how this might take shape and how we can help you facilitate it.

We’ve all been there. You’re flying through your inbox, trying to reach inbox zero before a meeting, and you click a link in a shipping notification. The page doesn't load quite right. You stare blankly and your anxiety spikes.

That moment happens a lot and it is a fork in the road for your company’s security. In many organizations, that employee’s next thought isn’t: “I should report this,” it is: “If I tell anyone, I’m going to get fired.”

We’ve seen our fair share of convenience vs. security trade-offs, but few consumer devices sit at the center of that Venn diagram quite like the Ring camera. To the average user, it’s a doorbell that significantly reduces package thieves. To those of us that work with technology, it’s a sophisticated Internet of Things (IoT) sensor with a direct, persistent uplink to one of the world’s largest cloud infrastructures.

The holiday season isn’t usually a time we like to spend dwelling on unpleasant things, but unfortunately, cybercrime is so prevalent that we cannot afford to ever let our guard down. What we can do, however, is tell a (somewhat) happier story that nevertheless reminds us what to keep an eye out for.

As such, please enjoy our version of a lesser-known Charles Dickens story.