Outsourced IT – Is It Right For You?
Maintaining the IT infrastructure for any business, even small ones, isn’t easy and it requires a lot of different skills which are nearly impossible to find in one person. There’s the obvious day-to-day desktop support and server management. But there’s also cloud services to be supported, web sites and databases to be taken care of, keeping up with the latest security issues and doing all this while fixing that executive’s laptop that just died. Read more →
Moving Your IT To The Cloud
Many of the posts on this blog have been about cloud services and that’s because so many of our clients are looking at migrating their IT infrastructure (their shared files, backups, email, applications and many times their whole desktop experience) to the cloud. But how do you know if it’s a good fit for your business? If you do decide to move to the cloud, do you have to move everything? While for many people, a full cloud migration is the right way to go but there are also ways to take advantage of the cloud without giving up the functionality or control that you may require onsite. When we work with our clients, we walk through all of the necessary items to determine what parts of the cloud (if any) are right fit.
What is 1 Point CompleteCloud ?
1 Point ClompleteCloud is our premier cloud offering that combines productivity, security and simplicity into a comprehensive IT solution. CompleteCloud is different because it really is all-inclusive. There’s no capital outlay and you are just billed monthly for the number of users you have. If you hire a few new engineers one month, we’ll just add them to the bill. If you terminate an employee, you won’t be billed for that employee on your next bill. With every CompleteCloud package, you get fast and secure cloud desktops, unlimited support, new hardware and your internet costs are included. So, yes, it really is all inclusive! And it’s a solution designed to provide your employees with full productivity no matter where they are (no more slow VPNS!) and reduce your IT worry down to zero so you can focus on your running your business, not on which server or workstation is giving you fits on any particular day. Read more →
The Ins and Outs of Cloud Dekstops (aka VDI or DaaS)
A lot of businesses are making the move to the cloud with the logic of “why pay for servers, licenses, power redundancy, backups and support when I can just move all of my applications, files and email to the cloud?” For some businesses, just moving your files to the cloud is sufficient (for example, if you don’t have any applications, such as QuickBooks or time tracking software, that you share…but more on that in another post). But, for many, the idea of moving their whole infrastructure to the cloud is very attractive. With this option, your infrastructure becomes much more simplified and your IT expenses become very predictable – – and you get the added bonus of anytime, anywhere any device access to the stuff that runs your business. Done right, this creates a truly “worry-free” IT infrastructure.
When Defenses Fail
If you are doing things correctly, you’ve got a solid firewall protecting your network, enterprise-grade endpoint protection on each computer and (hopefully) some reliable content filtering in place to keep your employees (and your business!) safe. But there could be one very import piece missing here – – how do you know when these defenses fail? “Fail?” you say? “They shouldn’t ever fail!” Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. The old sports adage about offense and defense holds true in IT, too – – Defense has to be right 100% of the time and Offense only has to be right once to win. So, eventually, defense will always lose. And statistics show it is most frequently not even faulty technology at the root of the breach, it is the human factor. So, it’s not a matter of “if”, it’s a matter of “when”. With the increase of attacks lately on Microsoft 365, you’re not guaranteed security there, either.
Multi-Factor Authentication – why you need it
From a thief’s perspective, stealing electronic data is the best type of crime there is – it’s easy to transport, there’s almost no risk of violence and you can steal from people who are across the globe from you. All you need is their password – – with it, you can log into their email and send messages as the CEO to the accounting department to have them wire money to your account. You can also remote into the network as the administrator and steal the company’s data to sell it on the black market or just encrypt it to sell it back to them (see our earlier post on ransomware). You just need the password. Read more →