Managed Services

Seven Smart Tips To Secure Your Business Network

June 30, 2014

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Hackers are constantly on the lookout for digital data they can use to make a profit, either by stealing money electronically or by selling the information to third parties.

Therefore, it is important to protect your precious data; here are seven tips to get you started:

Policies
Your staff is the front line of defense against hackers. Human error is one of the leading causes of data security breaches, so you need to have policies in place to ensure your employees are promoting the security of your network while working.

Strong passwords
People generally opt for simple easy-to-remember passwords that hackers can easily crack.

A simple “dictionary attack” (using an automated tool that uses a combination of dictionary words and numbers to crack passwords), is sufficient to uncover many passwords.

On the other hand, coming up with a complicated password and saving it to your computer as opposed to writing it down is a simple but very effective way to prevent hacks.

Multi-factor authentication
It is highly advisable to establish multiple layers of technology dedicated to security that you would apply to all your devices, including desktops, mobile devices, file servers, mail servers and network end points.

Multiple security blocks hacking attacks and alerts you to any problems beforehand so you can take the appropriate measures.

Data encryption
Encryption is yet another great security tool that you can use to protect your data. For instance, if your hard disk is stolen or your USB drive is lost, anyone trying to access your data would be unable to read it if it is encrypted.

Backup
Security makes up half of your data protection, while a proper backup strategy makes up for the other half.
Even with great security, you need to be able to recover your data if you have a failure. Back up often, and remember to test the backup regularly.

Audit
You need to identify the vulnerable areas of your network or which data needs to be protected.

Your entire IT infrastructure, including your computers, mobile devices and network should be audited by a professional IT specialist to determine the appropriate steps to prevent hackers from accessing your data.

Managed services
Managed services are an alternative and highly-effective approach for achieving the best possible security, including backup and recovery.

Many small businesses are unable to adequately meet the daunting and expensive task of securing their data.

With a managed-service provider specialized in data security, you get the benefit of professional services and skills without having to hire an in-house security expert, thus cutting on costs. In addition, you get access to the latest security technology and support professionals.

(Image Source: iCLIPART)

Why Third-Party Monitoring And Managed Services?

August 28, 2013

As technology advance and organizations face increasing demands for efficiency in their business, their IT infrastructures have become increasingly complex. Applications are far more interdependent than ever before, and their business tools, whether hardware or software, are making up a diverse web of systems from a wide range of vendors.

The challenges of dealing with this complexity are something that businesses have to deal with on a daily basis. In a recent study, nearly 50% of global business leaders have called “increased reliance on technology” the No. 1 risk to their organizations. Another 37% said the “business complexity of the organization” is their top risk.

All the same, businesses need to deliver high performance and high availability, typically without accompanying increase in budgets
to accomplish these goals.

So how can companies cope with the dual challenges of managing an increasingly complex infrastructure, while remaining focused on achieving business goals and delivering high quality products and services to their clients?

Organizations are increasingly turning to third party providers that delivers advanced monitoring and resolution services for your IT assets.

If you work with a knowledgeable vendor —one that is familiar with your infrastructure — there are big advantages to taking this approach, including:

Lower total cost of ownership
Higher availability of applications
Reduced downtime, (planned or unplanned)
Reduced workload on your own people to deal with IT issues
Improved application performance
Ability to proactively monitor and thereby mitigating issues as they arise, as opposed to after it’s too late

An advanced monitoring and resolution service should consist of 24/7 secure remote monitoring and resolution delivered by skilled engineers using proven practices.

The service should offer rigorous security certifications to ensure remote experts safely deliver proactive monitoring and administration of internal applications and hardware systems.

Don’t think of it simply as an outsourcing solution. Rather, think of it as a team of experts supplementing your own team, providing a number of products and solutions that it would be next to impossible to maintain in-house.

Because of the complexity of today’s systems, it is often difficult to identify exactly where and why systems fail. This can result in dissatisfied customers and less productive workers.

These problems can be severe enough to put the organization at risk. With proactive monitoring and advanced support, however, the organization will be made aware when (and why) vulnerabilities occur.

An advanced monitoring service means looking after performance or availability of all your critical systems and applications. This monitoring can extend through your entire infrastructure — applications, databases, servers, storage, networks and backup. Problems, can be addressed using best practices for incident, change and problem management.

As a client, you can choose to deploy the services according to your own needs, from full remote services to full onsite solutions or some combination.

The process of monitoring and remediating problems within your IT, you will learn a lot about your risks and vulnerabilities. Are there peak usage times that are impacting application slowing down the performance of mission-critical applications? The key is to continuously improve performance and availability.

You should meet regularly with your professional services team to review processes and set strategies for continual performance improvement. You should also have a plan that includes regular hardware and software health checks.

Your company gets the revenue as well as interacts with your customers through your applications. When performance slows down, the entire business suffers and is put at risk for lost revenues, lost profits, lost customers and general damage to your brand.

Advanced monitoring and resolution services lets you keep track of application performance at all times. Monitoring agents create alerts when systems or applications are under-performing, so you can fix issues before they impact the company further.

End-user monitoring takes the service a step further, whereby you can collect, process and present details — even going so far as to track user requests and follow them through to resolutions.

You can collect information on the length of time it takes to complete a business transaction and the length of time it takes to search, select and pay for a specific product. You can easily see how you can improve revenue and profits.

Predictive incident management diagnostics lets your vendor partner identify issues with configurations and performance before they become full-scale problems.

For example, advanced monitoring lets a service provider leverage complex algorithmic models and thereby identify potential issues with individual transactions within the database.

Advanced monitoring and resolution delivers significant improvements in IT support. You can measure the performance in meeting service requests, including trends on how long it takes for repairs to be performed, response by incident type, and reporting and measure performance against standards on all systems, including backup, emergency storage and system uptime.

A third-party supplier will have access to tools, methodologies and best practices your organization may not even be aware of.

Advanced monitoring and resolution is what they do every day, so your organization is always taking advantage of the experience the vendor has gained from working with other businesses, as well as the latest in diagnostic and recovery tools.

They often employ thorough diagnostic tool sets that cover all your systems. By using these tools, they are able to identify and qualify new incidents, automatically compare new incidents with a knowledge base of past incidents, and use the past experiences as the basis to quickly and effectively resolve issues.

Clearly you will want advanced monitoring and resolution to deliver 24/7 support for all your systems, databases and mission-critical applications. But some vendors can also offer more specialized services, such as end-user monitoring; firewall and VPN management; continuous risk assessment application management; and intrusion detection systems to mention but a few.

Because IT has grown in complexity, it is difficult and costly to hire and retain all the in-house expertise required to manage everything.

The other problem comes with internal politics, often resulting in finger-pointing than actual problem solving. An outside vendor gives you not only access to a team of service professionals with deep expertise. They are focused on fixing your problems, and not assigning blame.

The Advantages Of Managed Services Over Traditional IT Services

June 17, 2013

By Tech Experts Staff
Of all the important aspects to a successful business, your company’s IT systems are arguably the most important since these systems can impact all aspects of a business.

Many companies handle their IT resources in different ways, from having an in-house IT employee, to not having anyone, to managed services.

What exactly are all of these ways of taking care of your IT systems? With all the different approaches to taking care of your business what’s the best option?

Some businesses choose not to have in-house IT staff as it’s too expensive and instead go without IT support and try to fix problems on their own or ignore the issues all together.

The biggest problem with this approach, also known as a “Break Fix” approach, is that you generally always have downtime and issues with your IT systems since they are not properly cared for.

In addition to the high costs of downtime, when businesses finally break down and call for help the support can be very expensive since they are not on a support contract.

While many larger companies choose to have an in-house IT employee, or several for very large companies, this is not always the best option either.

One of the biggest problems with in-house IT staff is that they tend to have a knowledge base that is centered on one business’s network so when problems arise it can be difficult for them to figure out what the issue is.

When you use a service provider like Tech Experts, you are getting an IT tech that has a broad base of knowledge and can very quickly adapt to your network and use knowledge of similar issues other organizations have had to correct your problem much faster.

For small to medium size businesses the cost of having an in-house IT employee is simply too expensive so they tend to go with the first option.

It is possible for small to medium sized businesses to get the same level of service or higher than having one in-house IT employee at a fraction of the cost as well.

The third option and the best option is called Managed Services. Managed Services give the IT provider the ability to proactively monitor the important aspects of your business’s workstations and servers to prevent major issues before they cause costly downtime.

With our Managed Services platform, we offer a large number of software and hardware checks to keep your servers and workstations secure from hackers and running great for years.

We also offer several other benefits when combined in an all-inclusive, unlimited support, service contract. Our Managed Services platform offers the ability for us to connect to your computer and work with you remotely.

In most cases, we can solve your problem quickly so you don’t have to wait for a tech to travel to your location.

We also offer offsite backups as an option to protect your business from a catastrophic data loss that can cause a company to go under in a few months after such an event.

Managed services are simply the best option for small to medium sized businesses due to the flexibility they offer and the high amount of protection offered.

If you would like to see what Managed Services can do for your company give us a call and we can setup a meeting to take a look at your current systems and get you a quote on what this would cost your business today!

Got Compliance? Simplifying HIPAA And PCI Requirements

September 21, 2012

By Tech Experts Staff
Many of our clients from health care providers to any business that accepts credit cards via in house applications have compliance standards they must meet.

The health care industry in particular has to be compliant with HIPAA and possibly PCI as well. So, with compliance being such an important issue what are some ways businesses can be sure they are in compliance?

At Tech Experts we offer many different services that are designed to help your business be more compliant with the strict standards in place by HIPAA and PCI.

HIPAA was established in 1996 at a time when the health care industry was starting to move away from paper and rely on computerized documentation for day to day operations. With this new technology being used brought more security risks that needed to be addressed as a whole; this is what brought about HIPAA.

While new technology is great in improving productivity businesses have to learn to adapt to the new security risks that come into play when using these production increasing technologies.

One of the first services we offer to clients is our Email Hosting services. We have various offerings with email based off of POP email and Exchange email. For compliance we offer archiving services with both one year and ten year retention policies.

We also offer solutions that are encrypted so the traffic cannot be easily captured and read which protects the information you send by email.

The second service we offer to clients needing to meet compliance standards is our offsite backup system.

Our offsite backups send your important data over encrypted connections just like the email system protecting your data from theft as it travels from your location to the safety of our datacenters.

Depending on your ability to function in the event of a disaster/outage we also offer disaster recovery options to help your business continue to function should your primary server go down.

The third service we offer is managed services. With managed services you can be sure that your computer always has an up to date, high end, antivirus installed. We monitor the antivirus that is installed on all of our managed service clients workstations and servers to ensure they are safe and secure.

While an antivirus does not guarantee you will not get an infection (because no antivirus can guarantee this) having a good one does ensure that the likelihood of being infected is greatly reduced.

With our managed services offering, we also monitor failed login attempts to see if there are any brute force attacks targeting your network. This lets us quickly address a problem before it becomes a network breach. Patch management is another feature of managed services that helps with compliance.

Patch Management ensures that your computers are kept up to date with the latest security patches.

Our managed services plans also include remote service and support. We offer a robust remote support feature that allows us to troubleshoot and correct almost any issue remotely.

The ability to offer such a comprehensive remote support tool means that we can more quickly address issues you run into without having to actually come out to your location.

Another component we offer to make your business more compliant is our server and workstation packages. Any server we offer can be programmed to make your business more compliant.

From enforcing regular password changes, account lockout policies, to hardware or software restriction policies, our servers are sure to improve your current network configuration.

With all of our services bundled a business can vastly improve their security and become more compliant than they were previously.

If your curious how compliant your business is, give us a call. We can setup a security evaluation based on the requirements for your industry. We can then offer some suggestions to improve your network’s security and compliance.

Why Make The Move To Managed Services?

March 20, 2012

If you are one of our clients, chances are you’ve heard us talk about “managed services.” However, you might not know what the term means.

In a nutshell, a managed services plan provides you with unlimited, comprehensive technical support and network management for a low, fixed monthly fee.

It gets the most out of the IT services you pay for, and eliminates the “Oh my gosh, we’re down” problems and costs for a small business.

A managed services plan lets you get a handle on your IT costs, usually at a fixed monthly fee, and also provides you with a much more comprehensive and up-to-date IT system.

Managed services delivers a network and computer system that’s dependable, stable and allows you to comply with regulatory compliances.

Control costs
In any business, it’s important to be as cost-effective as possible. IT costs are especially important, since poorly managed systems cost way more than they’re worth.

It’s essential to have a system that works with your budget, but doesn’t compromise on quality.

Managed services is the most feasible and practical way to accomplish that, especially in the long term.

Manage complexity
The constant evolution of hardware and software used in your business can really impact your bottom line. Companies with limited resources may very well find themselves left behind as technology moves ahead.

With Managed Services, you are able to enjoy the advantages of the latest IT solutions at a fraction of the cost – enabling you to provide the best possible service to your clients.

More dependable infrastructure
For a small business, maintaining an in house IT system can be tedius and time consuming.

With limited staff, the business owner or owners typically get stuck being the “computer guy” for the company – robbing the business of the owner’s talents for sales, marketing and customer service.

Companies run the risk of stretching resources too thinly, which can compromise the quality of your service or products.

Managed services provides you with a stable and dependable computing infratructure that’s dedicated to meeting your specific needs in a cost-effective manner.

Maintaining compliance
With the marketplace becoming more and more competitive, meeting different regulatory compliances has become a fundamental need.

From Sarbanes-Oxley to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), smaller companies can often find themselves lost. It’s managed services that helps these companies not only fully understand the requirements of these regulations, but also comply with them.

Small companies typically don’t have the resources to research what their requirements are for email archiving, for example. Under a managed services plan, services such as email filtering and archiving are included in the monthly cost.

If you want to know more about how managed services can directly benefit your day to day operations, please do not hesitate to give us a call – we’d be happy to sit down and discuss a custom solution that works for you.
Feature article by: Tech Experts

How To Prevent Downtime On Your Network

May 28, 2009

With the national average of computer related repairs at $95 – $125 per hour, a troubled economy, and so many security vulnerabilities lurking around the Internet, getting downtime on networks to a minimum is becoming the number one goal of Computer/IT support companies like Tech Experts.

Preventing downtime on your network starts at square one: Who provides your IT support, and what do they have to offer to ensure you’re getting a high quality support at a reasonable cost to your business. With the right kind of IT support, your employees can focus on their own work and maintain a high level of productivity, without the hassle of downtime.

Using a service company to manage your network can be done in a variety of different ways, but for the most part, there are two main forms of service: Break-fix, better known as pay as you go, or managed service protection (MSP). So the big question is: Which is right for your company?

So what are the key differences between the two? We’ll start with the break fix approach.

This is the standard service model – when something breaks, you call your service provider and they repair it. For some companies, particularly smaller networks, this works very well. The costs are relatively low, but every time you have an issue, there’s a cost involved. Oftentimes, you’re reluctant to call for support for what seems to be a “minor” issue. Instead, you save them up to combine service visits. The problem comes in when what seems to be a minor issue is really something more significant.

On the other hand, we have the managed service model. This type of service delivery plan is designed to provide a high level of IT support to a company at a fixed IT budget, so there are no surprises.

Typically, a fixed monthly price negotiated by the IT support company and the client. There are usually different levels of support, starting from basic support of servers, workstations, and network devices, all the way on up to fully managed networks.

The highest level of support typically gives the business “whatever it takes” support, meaning that whenever you have an issue, it’s taken care of, and again the price stays as agreed. It’s always in the best interest of the managed service provider to maintain maximum uptime for your network.

Managed service provides full network maintenance, and proactive management, reducing the number of future issues, which again keeps your network uptime maximized, which ensures productivity is at the highest level possible.

There’s usually no minimum or maximum number of users, which provides scalability for your network, giving it room to grow in the future. No matter how large your company might grow, your managed service provider will provide peace of mind in keeping your network up and running at full proficiency.

Lastly, there is typically a hardware replacement plan in place. Because the MSP is monitoring your network at all times, they actually create a “map” of the entire infrastructure, which gives the company the age and health of the equipment on the network. In most cases, you’ll have insight into which hardware needs to be replaced ahead of time, which lets you budget for equipment upgrades.

Overall, I think a managed service is the way to go. It provides the business with peace of mind that the entire network is being monitored, recurring issues are prevented, costs and hidden fees are eliminated, and network growth is scalable and affordable.

10 Warning Signs Of Impending Computer Disaster

March 11, 2008

These Tips Can Help You Avoid Expensive Downtime And Repairs

Computers rarely stop working overnight. In most cases, there are early warning signs that problems are brewing.

Here are 10 sureﬁre signs that you need to get a professional to investigate your network ASAP:

Your workstation or server starts running very slowly, freezes up, or crashes.
Your web browser has been changed to another strange browser you’ve never seen before.
You are getting an unusual amount of pop-up windows, even when you aren’t surﬁng the web.
You don’t know if every computer on your network has the most current virus deﬁnitions.
You don’t know if you have a ﬁrewall in place or the last time it was updated.
You haven’t attempted to restore your data from a backup tape or other storage device in awhile, and you aren’t checking your backup log for errors.
You receive e-mails accusing you of sending spam, and/or you ﬁnd e-mail messages in your “outbox” or “sent” folder that you didn’t send.
Your computer starts making a grinding, clicking, or loud whirring sound.
The fan is constantly running.
You are getting a growing number of error messages, and you are forced to create work-arounds to complete certain work tasks.

If any of these signs are present, you should contact a pro immediately to investigate further!

The old saying of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is especially true in the world of computers and all things digital; and if you are like most businesses, your computer network is critical to the operation of your company – so make sure you don’t procrastinate if any of these signs are present.

Ideally, you should perform regular health checks and maintenance on your network to make sure problems don’t crop up. Here’s why:

Critical security updates need to be applied at least once a month to protect you from a constant ﬂow of new hacker attacks.
Firewall, virus and spyware protection need to be monitored and updated on a daily basis because new attacks are released daily.
Your data backup system needs to be monitored and tested frequently to ensure easy data recovery in the event of loss. The rate of tape drive failure is 100%; that’s why you need to frequently monitor your backups.
Servers and workstations need regular tune-ups to keep them running fast and error free.
Monitoring of disk space is important to avoid data loss, crashes, and storage problems.
Server event logs need to be monitored for early alerts to network issues.

One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is taking a reactive approach to network support and maintenance rather than a proactive one.

In other words, they wait until something stops working and THEN they call in the professionals to ﬁx it. This approach not only costs more in the long run, but it also leaves you vulnerable to more devastating crashes such as data corruption and loss, virus attacks, and extended downtime.

Even NEW computers and equipment need regular maintenance because new threats are constantly evolving.

Fortunately, there is an inexpensive and easy way for you to completely avoid – even anticipate and prevent – these problems while making your network far more secure, reliable, and problem free.

We call it our “No Problem Network Support” plan, and it’s designed speciﬁcally for the small to medium business owner that doesn’t have the time, expertise, or staff to perform this regular network maintenance.

Thanks to advancements in support technology, we can now monitor your network 24/7/365 days a year and provide all the maintenance your server needs for a fraction of the time and cost.

For a ﬂat, monthly fee, you’ll get 24/7 remote monitoring of your network to not only ensure that it is running at peak performance, but also to guarantee that your data is being backed up and secured, that your virus deﬁnitions are up-to date, that your ﬁrewall is conﬁgured properly, that your server is optimized, as well as keep an eye on over 100 system processes and alerts that could spell problems brewing.

If you hired a technician – even a junior one – to perform these basic network tasks, it could easily cost you $40,000 in salary, insurance, and hiring costs. If you were to outsource this type of service, it would easily run you $800 to $1,000 a month in hourly, on-site fees.

However, thanks to the No Problem Network Support plan, we can deliver all of these services to you for as little as $189 per month.

We’re so certain that you are going to LOVE this service we are willing to give it to you for 3 months, absolutely FREE, and without any obligation whatsoever.

If at the end of those 3 months you aren’t absolutely convinced that this service is worth every penny you are paying for the fast service and peace of mind, simply call or send us an e-mail that says, “this just isn’t what I had in mind,” and we’ll stop the service immediately—no payment, no obligation.

That way, you have absolutely nothing to risk. What could be more fair than that?

But if you decide to keep the service, we’ll bill you a ﬂat monthly fee that you’ve agreed upon up front — no surprises, hidden costs, or extra fees.

And, to make it even more of a “no-brainer,” we’re going to offer the ﬁrst 5 clients a very special VIP discount to create an even greater incentive for you to sign up TODAY.

To take advantage of this FREE 3-month trial, contact us at 734-457-5000, or e-mail info@expertsmi.com.

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