Blog & Tools

Jodi Schwan uncovers the biggest business news in Sioux Falls. She covers it prolifically, from bar openings to multi-million dollar deals, and she delivers the news first, accurately and without sensation.

During the past several years, SDN Communications has really built up its internship program for college students. Sioux Falls-based SDN’s internship program is more than a good corporate deed. It helps the company attract and groom good future employees.

Trends in phone use are striking and underscore the need for improvements to relieve the region’s increasingly strained telecommunications infrastructure.

The most difficult barriers that confront people with disabilities are attitudinal, Vicki Kerkvliet says. Some people with disabilities are wrongly considered second-class citizens rather than recognized for their abilities.

Encouraging news for businesses: slightly more than half of all Distributed Denial of Service attacks are gamers attacking other gamers to get a competitive edge. The more troubling reality: the overall number of DDoS attacks on computing systems is rising, and attacks are getting larger and more frequent.

Our infographic of the month explains how small cell poles fit into the cellular phone network as the future of moving data.

The underlying message of the ads is especially refreshing and increasingly accurate: IT pros are heroes in the workplace, not nerds who operate invisibly in back rooms. IT pros have enormous responsibilities, and their jobs keep getting bigger.

2017 will be a big year for small cell poles in and near South Dakota. Jerry P. Andersen and his crew at Sioux Falls-based SDN Communications are overseeing the construction and underground cabling of 50 small cell poles to improve wireless services in the region, and plans are being made to install additional poles.

Computer users who are lax about online security apparently were feeling romantic in 2016. A few affectionate words crept into SplashData’s annual list of bad passwords.

As a business intelligence specialist at SDN Communications, Theron McChesney looks for ways to put research to good use. His objective is to produce good market and product research to help improve SDN’s business processes and to enhance the customer experience.

Gary Glissendorf played a key role in the development and launch of SDN’s Managed DDoS Protection Service, which helps clients ward off Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that can clog or damage systems.

Persistent telephone call completion problems in rural states are creating major inconveniences for families, hurting businesses, and threatening public safety, but a bill introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) and cosponsored by Sen. John Thune (R-South Dakota) could fix the problem.

Jake VanDewater is among the experts at SDN Communications who spend their work days making sure the Sioux Falls-based company’s business and organization clients have access to effective cybersecurity services.

When you think about someone planning an electronic attack on a computer network, you probably envision foreign terrorists, domestic criminals or maybe unethical business or political rivals. You probably don’t think about high school students who want to get out of a test or amuse themselves with mischief.

National news reports last spring indicated that some of the nation’s most prestigious law firms had been hacked. But they're a different kind of cyber target because they accumulate information about legal disputes and regulatory plans more than consumer credit card and Social Security numbers.

SDN's expanded network is ready for businesses in southern Minnesota and now has an experienced, telecom sales executive to work with them. Ryan Dutton is someone who knows the industry well.

As more people rely on their mobile phones and tablets to stream video and browse the Internet, some wireless carriers are using small cell networks to improve customer service and meet the bandwidth demands of mobile users.

With good reason, this blog has focused a lot of attention in recent months on ransomware, a form of cyberattack been increasing at a rate that is almost alarming. Last year, cybersecurity forensics experts discovered approximately 100 families of ransomware.

Golden West has been a significant factor in the telecommunications business in South Dakota for a 100 eventful years, and the Wall-based company keeps preparing for the future.

If you’re in business, hackers have probably breached your organization’s computer network at some level. Company leaders might not be aware of the intrusion yet, but they will discover it eventually.