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Like its Word and Excel partners in the Microsoft Office productivity suite, PowerPoint is ubiquitous. As of 2012, Bloomberg Business estimated that the slide presentation software claims 95% of market share, with installations on more than 1 billion computers and an estimated worldwide usage rate of 350 times per second.

No matter what business you’re in, information and technology management is important for success. But in the health-care realm, the ability to keep data safe and secure is even more paramount. That’s because government regulations mandated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) state that all protected health information must be strictly protected — and that any breach of such information must be reported immediately.

The Microsoft Windows landscape is scheduled to change again in mid to late 2015, when Windows 10 will be released. That may excite some early adopters who love to have the latest and greatest operating system on their computer. And many industry experts are thrilled that Windows 10, which is currently in its public beta testing period, was designed with business customers in mind — and is forecasted to be much more responsive to user needs.

Last month, an online data breach at Anthem Inc., the second-largest health insurance provider in North America, exposed the medical information, Social Security numbers, and email addresses of over 80 million consumers.

Security experts note that a stolen patient medical record sells for 750 times that of a stolen credit card on the black market.

In late January, the FBI and the Internet Crime Complaint Center released a public service announcement about the recent proliferation of Business Email Compromise (BEC). Defined by the FBI as a “sophisticated global scam targeting small to large businesses,” BECs affected more than 2,000 victims worldwide in 2014, while inflicting upwards of $200 million in fraudulent losses.

Remember the build-up last year for the death of Windows XP? A similar scenario will play out in 2015, as Microsoft announced in November that it would end support for Windows Server 2003 and Server 2003 R2 on July 14th.

The most immediate impact of this announcement is that any system using Windows Server 2003 will no longer receive updates or patches from Microsoft, which the computing giant said in a white paper “can result in a less stable and less secure infrastructure for your organization.

Data Privacy Day is celebrated each January 28th by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), which leads an international effort that focuses on “respecting privacy, safeguarding data, and enabling trust.” Studies of North American consumers show that a large percentage of them are concerned about the privacy of their data; last year, CMIT Solutions cited a Gallup poll that found 37% of the public had lost trust in the companies they regularly do business with, while 30% said they had little to no trust in those companies to keep their information secure.

If 2014 was “The Year of the Breach,” with a whopping 43% of North American firms telling the Ponemon Institute that they experienced a hack in 2014, then what lies ahead in 2015 for technology and security? Tech Crunch described our current state of awareness as “a tipping point for cybersecurity.

The New Year is upon us, which means we all get a fresh opportunity to consider what’s important for the next 12 months. In the small to medium-sized business world, technology routinely tops that list — you can’t work well without technology, and technology that doesn’t work well will only hold you back.