IntegrityNETworx Blog

Hackers and Thieves Zeroing in on Small Business - Friday, June 12, 2009

Today Clark Howard was talking about how hackers and identity thieves are targeting small businesses more than individuals and large businesses these days. Small Businesses are less likely to have an in house IT department and will more than likely use cheap firewalls and not utilize stringent security practices on their computer networks. However small business bank accounts are a much bigger payoff for thieves than are individuals. The worst part of it all is that businesses fall under Uniform Commercial Code and are not protected from liability the same way individuals are.

This again makes the case for small businesses having an IT budget. Spend money on having certified IT professionals monitor and maintain your network. This is such a no brainer!

Clark told a story about a business owner that was out over $150,000 due to hackers making wire transfers from multiple accounts during a 30 minute period of time. He discovered it almost immediately but it was not soon enough to stop some of the transfers.

Check out the story on ClarkHoward.com.

Labels: Information Technology, IT Consulting, Managed Services

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Finally a good example of WHY managed services is a good deal for clients. - Friday, May 22, 2009

So we have a client who REALLY needs their computer network to work. They need it to work all the time: early in the morning, late at night. You name the time, they need it to work at that time. So they hired us to do typical "break and fix" work. This means they call us when their system breaks and we come fix it. They already had their equipment in place. We simply stepped into the role of being their IT guy.

When they hired us, we tried to explain the value of being on a maintenance plan with us. We use Kaseya. It allows us to automate very important maintenance tasks (i.e. patch management, virus & spyware updates, service packs, system monitoring etc.). They didn't think it was necessary to spend several hundred dollars a month for it. They didn't see the value in it.

We're not salespeople. I'll admit it. I'm probably admitting it to all of our competitors right now LOL. Oh well, that is who we are. We're honest hardworking people and want to provide true value and we're not pushy. So they did not want a maintenance plan and we agreed to do "break and fix" work.

The client had an old server that someone built. It wasn't under any warranty. They did not have a good system for backing up their data. Frankly, it was a mess. The system went down one weekend. The server was basically dead. We worked day and night for about 3 days straight (over the weekend) resurrecting it, only to have it die again sometime Monday morning. We managed to get their data over to a temporary machine and they ordered a new server. The amount of time spent diagnosing the issue and finally moving everything was astronomical. Had we been taking a more proactive approach with this server, as we would have on a maintenance plan, we would have been able to prevent this failure or foresee the need to replace the equipment long before it failed. There was not a proper backup, but luckily we were able to get the data off the machine. That is not always the case. Sometimes you can't recover the data.

Honestly, this case is the kick in the pants I needed to wholeheartedly believe in managed services. Like I said before, I am not a salesperson. I really like to keep things inexpensive for the client and help them get as much value as they can out of their equipment and our labor. So it has been difficult for me to sell a recurring fee service such as a maintenance and monitoring package without experiencing its value first hand. When I saw how quickly the bill can accumulate when something catastrophic like the above happens it finally clicked for me that managed services is really a great deal for the client.

When something like this happens, it is never about the cost of the equipment. It is about doing whatever is necessary, at whatever cost, to save the data and get them back up and running as quickly as possible. Lost productivity is way more expensive than equipment. So by that reasoning it is a no brainer to spend a couple of hundred dollars a month to have proactive maintenance and monitoring done to your system. Not only could this prevent a catastrophic failure from occuring all, but it allows you to follow a plan for equipment replacement rather than waiting for it to fail. It can also drastically reduce lost productivity, because "break and fix" calls are nearly eliminated.

Keep in mind I'm not happy that this happened to the client, but it was what I needed to see to really get behind managed services.

Labels: Information Technology, IT Consulting, Managed Services

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