Blog & Tools

In her recent budget address, Gov. Kristi Noem outlined her plan to start with a $5 million investment to encourage private sector partnerships to deliver internet to every pocket of the state. So where is the digital divide in South Dakota?

Advances in high-tech fields such as automation and artificial intelligence, as well as old-fashioned criminal greed, have made digital data difficult to protect. But it must be done.

The most viewed blog published by SDN Communications in 2018 was a column that gave readers an inside look at how company experts responded to an equipment failure at a bank in South Dakota.

A significant upgrade in telephone switching equipment at SDN Communications provides striking visual evidence of how the tools of technology are getting smaller as well as better.

The SD-WAN market is predicted to grow by 69 percent annually to become an $8 billion market by 2021. So which enterprises are most suitable?

South Dakota Department of Transportation employees are working with neighboring states to test high-tech trucks on the interstate. They’ll be radar-controlled and follow each other at a distance other drivers might consider tailgating.

Internet-based transactions drive half the U.S. economy, according to a study conducted for the Foundation for Rural Service, and cyber contributions to the gross domestic product are growing.

A chance encounter with someone at a store in Sioux Falls led Jerry Andersen to a career of 44 years - and counting - in the telecommunications industry.

To help protect themselves financially, some businesses are buying cyber insurance. It’s a relatively new offering that can help cover expenses related to incident response, legal defense and business interruption.

Estimates suggest that as many as one-third of working Americans already participate in the gig economy (I’m among them), and the total is expected to increase.

Improved communication systems are a big factor that helps make nontraditional schedules and remote work easier, even in government.

SDN Communications has added two broadband partners to its Minnesota network, which will improve business broadband reach into two counties of that state – Nobles and Watonwan.

SDN Communications and its employees are prominently engaged in causes ranging from assisting schoolchildren to serving in community leadership positions.

Santel Communications of Woonsocket is finishing work on the first phase of a $24 million network upgrade. The project is bringing world-class fiber connectivity to its customers.

In the jargon of electronic communications, bandwidth and speed sometimes seem to mean the same thing. At other times, the two terms clearly refer to something different.

Before public schools in Worthington, Minn., were connected directly to a fiber optic network, they relied for years on wireless internet with spotty service.

Among the benefits of a business expanding its network to the cloud is that cybersecurity can be less of a concern. Right? Wrong.

Traditional wide area networks (WANs) have been great with reliable delivery of packets, thanks to MPLS and Ethernet. But there are other ways to scale the network and do more with less hardware while meeting cloud computing needs and business requirements.

Every device connected through a wireless or wired network is assigned an Internet Protocol address, or IP address, so it can communicate. Today, that’s done using IPv4 but the inventory is limited and has run out.

I recently watched a captivating, 16-minute video. It documented how a team of hired hackers rather easily broke into the headquarters, substations and other facilities of what appeared to be a secure rural electric cooperative.