MSPNetworks Blog

There are quite a few platitudes that we support, in terms of business IT. Some that we haven’t really touched on, however, are Schofield's Laws of Computing. Let’s fix that today by reviewing where they came from, and what these laws entail.

So, Who’s Schofield, and What are His Laws?

Jack Schofield, born in Yorkshire on March 31, 1947, spent decades writing for The Guardian until his passing in 2020. His work appeared in numerous tech-centric media outlets throughout his tenure, but his best-known contribution is the collection of best practices that he published while working for The Guardian, which he referred to as his Laws of Computing. While the first of these laws is about two decades old at this point, they still offer critically valuable advice for businesses.

These laws are as follows:

1. Never put data into a program unless you can see exactly how to get it out.
2. Data doesn't really exist unless you have two copies of it. Preferably more.
3. The easier it is for you to access your data, the easier it is for someone else to access your data.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these tenets.

Schofield’s First Law of Computing Protects Your Data Portability

Let’s say that Jane Q. Businessperson works with Initech for her business’ cloud services, which help support her organization’s extensive data storage and software needs. However, one day, Initech is bought out by ACME, resulting in changes to the terms of service and the pricing structure. According to Schofield’s First Law, Jane Q. Businessperson should have no issue migrating her data out of Initech if she does not accept ACME’s new terms.

This principle of ensured data portability covers any reason a company would want to remove their data from a given software or service, from end-of-service events to those we highlighted above.

Schofield’s Second Law of Computing Endorses Data Redundancy

While “redundant” isn’t usually seen as a positive attribute, Schofield posits that your data absolutely needs to be—and for more reasons than we would normally emphasize, too. Naturally, data that is redundant means that you have at least one other copy to fall back on if something were to happen to the original data…and that “something” could be caused by an alarming variety of circumstances.

There’s the usual suspects, of course—lost or malfunctioning devices/infrastructure, user error, and criminal activity—but Schofield also referenced other possibilities, such as issues on the provider’s side. What if the cloud provider hosting your data goes out of business?

All of this is to say that the more copies of your data you have in different places, the better.

Schofield’s Third Law of Computing Explains Why Cybersecurity Has Become So Irritating

We’re not going to pretend that today’s necessary cybersecurity measures are any fun. They aren’t. However, with alternative means of storing data now available, and more data than ever presenting value for cybercriminals, it is important to keep in mind that the easier you find it to access your data, the more likely it is that someone without authorization will be able to as well.

Are the countless multi-factor authentication prompts annoying? Absolutely—but “annoying” doesn’t begin to describe how a successful cyberattack against your business would feel.

We’re Here to Help Ensure Your Business Adheres to All Best Practices Where Your IT is Concerned

Through the managed services that we here at MSPNetworks offer, we can ensure that your business’ technology follows all of these laws, along with many different compliance requirements and otherwise sound business security and productivity practices. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to learn more, and to set up a complete technology evaluation.

When you suffer a data breach, you might wonder how you can possibly come back from such an event, especially if it leads to a network compromise. Can your business rebound effectively, and if so, what do you need to do to make sure that it doesn’t happen again? It all starts with understanding how much data you need to function, as well as how much downtime you can afford to suffer from.

With all this in mind, you need to have a business continuity plan to prepare for the worst. Your business cannot afford to not be prepared for downtime-causing incidents. You can have the strongest security system in existence and still suffer from a data breach; therefore, you need to have contingencies in place that can help you navigate these unfortunate and unlikely scenarios in an effective way.

You should be backing up your data for multiple reasons beyond cybersecurity. You also must prepare for damages to your physical infrastructure that could affect your data, like natural disasters and user error. Let’s go over what business continuity and disaster recovery mean for modern businesses.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Are Two Different Things

Business continuity and disaster recovery are often mistaken to be the same thing, but the fact is that disaster recovery is part of the greater business continuity effort. Business continuity includes far more than just data recovery; it also includes administrative aspects of running your business, including other events that could derail operations. Disaster recovery, in essence, is one part of an effective business continuity plan.

Disaster recovery starts with data backup, and if you think your business can run without it, you’ve never tried to run it without data or applications. Some businesses can suffer from downtime for longer than others without serious ramifications—this much is true—but enough downtime can cripple any business. This is why it’s important to know what standards you are working toward regarding disaster recovery.

What You Must Consider

Proper backup protocols include far more than storing copies of your company files in a safe location. It also means making sure they are accessible when you need them most. Not all disasters are going to hit you hard enough to knock you out of commission permanently, but you should treat each of them as seriously as they could. Even something as simple as a malware attack or a user error could make more work than necessary for your company if you’re not prepared to deal with it.

We want you to take this major point away from this blog. You should store multiple copies of your data in various locations, both on-site and in a secure, off-site data center (or the cloud). With these contingencies in place, you should be prepared for any situation that could derail your operations, whether it’s hardware failure or a hacking attack. A BDR solution from MSPNetworks can prepare you to restore your data as quickly as possible following a disaster through a temporary server which can keep operations moving while IT repairs or orders a replacement server. On top of that, our BDR solution is much faster at restoring a backup onto a new server compared to traditional backup methods, saving you a ton of time and labor.

To learn more about how a BDR system can be just the right proactive solution for your business, contact us today at (516) 403-9001.

There’s no beating around the bush with this one; moving data from one place to another, also known as data migration, is critical to get right the first time. If you create and follow a migration strategy, evaluating here and there to make sure it’s all going according to plan, you’ll see great success in this effort. Let’s go over how you can make it happen.

The Process of Migration Testing

When testing your data migration process, it’s important to make sure you take action to plan it out long before the process begins, as well as what happens after the migration. If you evaluate your process before, during, and after the migration, you’ll have key insights into specific metrics that can help you gauge the success of the endeavor. Of course, there are plenty of things that can go wrong, and keeping an eye on things throughout the process will help you catch them before they cause too much trouble.

Also of note is that data migration requires some pretty technical skills and know-how, so it’s advisable to have professionals on hand to help you with the process. MSPNetworks is happy to assist you with this complicated process.

All that said, we can now take a look at what you need to know before, during, and after a migration.

What Should You Do Before Your Migration?

First, we recommend that you look at how much data needs to be migrated to establish a frame of reference for the success of the migration. It’s also crucial that you take measures to protect your data while you migrate everything to a new location, and be sure to back it up just in case of a worst-case scenario.

Furthermore, be sure that your team is aware of the proposed timeline, and make sure that your budget can cover this timeline in a sustainable way. The last thing you need to do is cut corners. Doing so could potentially put you at risk of doing it poorly, or even leave you subject to fines and other compliance issues if the system you’re migrating to is not adequate.

What Should You Do During the Migration?

As the migration occurs, you should break up your data into smaller batches so that testing is more efficient and easier to pull off. You can also take the opportunity to set access permissions according to the roles of your employees.

What Should You Do After the Migration?

Once you have finished the migration, you should go through and test your new solutions to make sure that they all work correctly. This involves making sure that the data have made it to the new system in the correct format. Checking the system performance should also be a priority, as well as various security assessments like stress testing, penetration testing, and others.

Need a Hand with Data Migration?

MSPNetworks can help your business with its data migration needs. To learn more, call us today at (516) 403-9001.

When security breaches and data breaches are mentioned in the same breath so often, it’s easy to look at them as one and the same. However, we want to take a moment to explain the differentiating factors between the two, as it could be all the most important for protecting your business in the future.

Defining the Security Breach

A security breach can be explained as unauthorized access to company-owned accounts. This happens when people, or other machines, gain access to an account without the appropriate authorization. This could include the device, the network, a website, a server, or any other part of your IT infrastructure.

Defining the Data Breach

Compare this to the data breach, which is a specific type of security breach that involves unauthorized access to data, like computer files or documents. This also includes the alteration and destruction of data.

Why Does This Difference Matter?

Data breaches are indeed a security breach, albeit a very specific one. However, it’s important to know the differences between the two because of the semantics involved with regulations and other data protection laws out there. There are specific definitions for what constitutes a data breach. To put this into perspective, consider this scenario; when encrypted data is accessed and stolen, would it be considered a security breach or a data breach?

And now you see where the definitions come into play. We always try to encourage our readers to avoid security breaches at all costs, which is why we recommend software like firewalls and antiviruses that can proactively prevent these types of issues. Furthermore, we also recommend that you implement patch management and routine maintenance into your technology strategy to keep these systems ready to protect your business. Combine all of this with security training and complex passwords or multi-factor authentication, and you have an adequate security system in place that can keep most threats at bay.

MSPNetworks knows and understands your plight, and we would be happy to discuss with you what you can do to better protect your business. To learn more, call us today at (516) 403-9001.

Do you ever think about how incredible technology is? In a world where it’s easy to take advantage of technology and devices that were practically inconceivable just a few short decades ago, it’s really amazing to just look at how far we’ve come, and how something so small can fit so much information.

Breaking Down What Data Actually Is

Let’s go back to before there were modern computers and smartphones. The prominent form of data storage throughout the centuries has been the book.

A typical novel has somewhere between 60,000 and 110,000 words (unless you are reading something by Brandon Sanderson—his novels tend to be three or four times that). 

How much data is that though? If you want to parse this down into smaller numbers, we can look at one of the most common forms of bite-sized information on the planet, the text message.

A text message has a maximum length of 160 characters. You can usually squeeze 1-3 sentences into that on average. Characters in the English language are 7-bits. A bit is represented by a 1 or a 0. The letter “A” is translated to 01000001, and “B” is 01000010. We’ll get back to this shortly.

A text message can contain a maximum of 160 characters, or 1120 bits (1120 ones and zeroes). There are 8 bits in a byte, which means a text message is 140 bytes.

There are 1,000,000 bytes in 1 Megabyte. Figure that the average word is around five characters, so a novel could have somewhere between 300,000 and 550,000 characters

Take 550,000 characters and multiply that by 7 (the number of bits in a character) and then divide the result by 8 (the number of bits in a byte) and you’ll get 481,250 bytes, or 0.48125 Megabytes.

That means a book on the larger side of things is technically around half a Megabyte of information. Once you add some of the hidden meta information, the cover, and some other data, a typical ebook sits around 1 Megabyte. If there are illustrations or images, then there is a lot more to calculate, so we’ll just assume that we are dealing with text for this thought experiment. 

How Much Data Does a Library Hold?

Many books are much larger than the average novel, considering that there are textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, massive reference books, and a lot of other larger format texts out there. Plus, it’s easier to work with round numbers, so let’s just assume that on average, a book rounds out to about 1 Megabyte.

A typical library tends to hold somewhere between 5,000 and 500,000 books. The world’s biggest libraries tend to put their book counts in the millions. The US Library of Congress holds more than 51 million books, and 75 million manuscripts, plus millions and millions of other items.

Let’s assume those 51 million books are all text. How much data would that actually be?

51 million Megabytes is 51 thousand Gigabytes, which translates to 51 Terabytes. It’s pretty common to buy 1 or 2 Terabyte drives for a home PC, so if you were conservative about your data, you could easily fit the entire Library of Congress book library in a pretty small office with 25 or so computers. Of course, you could just put multiple 2 TB drives into your workstations and store the entire Library of Congress on fewer machines too, or build a media server with an array of high-capacity drives… you get the idea.

We’re not quite to the point where a mobile device can hold that much information, but we’re getting there.

Keep in mind, this is just assuming we are taking the text. If instead, you wanted to scan every single page as a grey-scale image, you would be looking at an average size of around 8 Megabytes per book, so it would take about 408 Terabytes to store the Library of Congress. At that point, you’d be looking at a large rack-mounted device or a very small section of a data center.

How Much Data Does Your Organization Produce?

We’re going to make this a two-part blog since there is still a lot more to talk about! Next time, we’ll break down how much data human beings have ever produced, how much data you can fit into the palm of your hand, and more! Be sure to subscribe and bookmark our blog and keep coming back for more!

Last time, we broke down how much data is stored in a typical book, and how much data every book in the Library of Congress contains. This time, let’s really show you what that data consists of, and some other really neat comparisons to put things into perspective. Buckle up!

A Piece of Data is a Bit, but What Is a Bit, Really?

Last time, we mentioned that data is composed of ones and zeroes, called bits. There are 7 bits in an English character, and 8 bits in a byte. Why do we break down bits by simple ones and zeroes? 

Throughout most of the last 70 years, and technically even before that, we’ve stored digital information in a very simple, easy-to-comprehend way. Imagine a row of 7 lights. Any single light can either be lit up, or dark. There is no in-between. A one, or a zero. Depending on which lights are lit and which lights are dark, gives you a different character. It could be a number, it could be a letter, or it could be a symbol. Now multiply that row of 7 lights thousands, or millions, or billions of times, and you’ll have a massive array of lights that can convey large quantities of data.

For the last 70 years, most of our data storage has used this concept, mostly by using magnets.

Inside the traditional mechanical hard drive are multiple spinning platters. To the common eye, they look sort of like CDs stacked on top of each other. They spin incredibly fast, usually at 72,000 RPM. On these platters are billions of tiny little magnets. There’s a little arm that floats just over top of the platter as it spins, and it reads and manipulates the magnets as you read and write data to the drive. 

The sensitivity of this device is absolutely incredible. Imagine taking a single human eyelash, and holding it in the palm of your hand. Your hand wouldn’t even recognize its weight, right? If we were to cut that eyelash into 100 little pieces, and place one of those pieces on the arm of a hard drive, it would dramatically bend it. This arm is designed to detect forces billions of times smaller than that.

Kinda makes you realize the importance of data backup, right?

This miraculous little marvel of engineering has been the cornerstone of data storage in every single computer over the last several decades.

More recently, modern computers have started using Solid State Drives (SSDs) which store data as an electrical charge in tiny little transistors. These drives don’t rely on mechanical movement or magnets, which is much better for mobile devices as it uses less electricity and can survive being jostled around much more in your pocket compared to a mechanical drive.

Either way, these devices contain billions or trillions of pieces of information.

How Much Data Can I Hold in My Hand?

Last time, we came up with the amount of data of all of the books in the U.S. Library of Congress. It was about 51 Terabytes based on our estimates. We said that, right now, you can’t really hold that much data in a mobile device. You could, however, hold that much data in the palm of your hand. 

Take a look at the image above for this blog post. That’s a Micro SD card. Many digital cameras, smartphones, and other mobile devices use them to store data. At the time of writing this blog, you can purchase a Micro SD card that stores 1 Terabyte of information in a form factor that is about the size of your own thumbnail. 1 Terabyte could hold just under a 50th of the entire Library of Congress.

One of these tiny little cards can hold about a million books.

Dozens of these little Micro SD cards can fit into the palm of your hand—you could easily keep hundreds of them in your pockets. 

If you weren’t the reading type, you could use your 1 Terabyte Micro SD card to hold:

• 200,000 songs
• 250 full-length movies in full HD
• 6.5 million pages of PDF documents
• 250,000 photos taken with a 12 megapixel camera
• Essentially every video game from the 80s and 90s.
• Or you could store 10,000 copies of Windows 95 and Microsoft Office 95.

How Much Data Has Humanity Produced?

As of the end of 2020, the entire digital footprint of all of humanity is 44 zettabytes. That would require 44 billion of those 1 TB Micro SD cards. By the end of this year, that number will have doubled. By 2025, it’s estimated that our digital footprint will be higher than 200 zettabytes.

We produce a massive amount of data. With more than 62 percent of the world population on social media, and 300 billion emails sent every day, information is constantly being moved around. 

Every single minute, 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. That equates to approximately one of those 1 TB Micro SD cards every minute.

Data is Critical To Your Business

Every day, your business generates data. Your staff sends and receives emails, produces documents, updates and stores customer information, and so much more. That data is fundamental to keeping your business operating smoothly.

That’s why data backup is so important. It’s so easy to lose all of your data. Ensuring that your data is properly backed up will ensure that you can continue operations in the event of a mistake, hardware failure, or major disaster.

If you want to discuss properly backing up your organization’s data, give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

It’s incredibly important to keep your personally identifiable information secure, but what exactly constitutes PII? Today we offer a definition and suggestions or strategies to help you keep your PII safe.

The Definition of PII Depends on Who You Ask

If you want to protect PII to the best of your ability, you first need to understand what it is, but the answer to this question is not exactly clear-cut.

The United States identifies a couple-dozen identifiers in its legislation, but other countries have different ideas for what is considered PII. The European Union, Brazil, China, and even various US states like California and Virginia have different ideas of what makes for PII. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) sees race, political opinion or affiliation, religion, and sexual orientation as PII, but the California Consumer Privacy Act does not.

With so many different factors and variables in place, it’s hard to define PII, which in turn makes it hard to protect it. Five US states want to hold companies more accountable for failing to protect PII, and regulators are in the same boat. For example, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney failed to properly dispose of consumers’ PII on servers and drives that they wanted to sell following a big move, resulting in a $35 million fine.

Avoiding Fines for PII Security

The first and foremost thing you need to account for is the PII as it is outlined for your industry. Take this information into consideration right from the start so there is no room for error or confusion. Implement it into your data handling and sharing practices immediately to ensure compliance.

Furthermore, you’ll have to test your protections to make sure that you are keeping your data as safe as possible. Be sure that the data, even if stolen, cannot be used to identify the individual.

To top it all off, implement solutions designed to protect your data on all levels, including encryption, identity and access management, and role-based permissions.

MSPNetworks can help to make sure that your business is protecting its personally identifiable information. All you have to do to get started is call us at (516) 403-9001.

At the beginning of September, it was revealed that a relatively simple issue existed in nearly 2,000 mobile applications that potentially exposed some (read: a lot of) sensitive data. Let’s take a brief, basic look at the situation to see if there are any lessons that can apply to your business.

Trust us, there will be.

In Essence, the Issue is One of Access Permissions

Let’s go over how these apps generally work.

Naturally, the apps that you use on your phone aren’t fully hosted on your device. Instead, they are commonly hosted in cloud services. In theory, the application you install effectively just contains hardcoded access credentials that allow you to access the data or the service that application provides.

Notice that we said, in theory. Research conducted by Broadcom’s Symantec Threat Hunter team revealed that these purportedly single-purpose logins were able to access all of the files that a cloud service contained—including company data, backups of databases, and system controls.

Worse, if multiple apps included the same publicly available software development kits (SDKs) or were created by a single company, these login credentials could potentially grant access to numerous applications, exposing the infrastructure and user data of each.

So, let’s say that an attacker happened to obtain these access tokens. With the situation being the way it is, that would give the attacker access to all of the applications—and more critically, the user data these applications contain—that the access tokens granted access to.

Between the Android and iOS platforms, researchers found almost 2,000 applications that had their credentials hard-coded to Amazon Web Services—three-quarters of those granting access to private cloud services (and half of those granting access to private files), with about half containing access tokens found in completely unrelated applications.

So, What Does This Have to Do With Your Business?

Let me ask you something: who in your business could potentially access your payroll information, your employees’ private information, or all the financial data you’ve collected from your clientele and workforce alike?

This idea that certain information is accessible by those who shouldn’t have access to it is the crux of the issue. You need to ensure that your data and files are only accessible to those who need them for their work responsibilities. This is known as the principle of least privilege—basically, all access and information are distributed on a need-to-know basis, based on the responsibilities of the individual users.

In short, much like these applications should have been doing, you need to ensure that access to this data is locked down. We can help.

Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to learn more about how we can help you.

The blockchain has had a single purpose since it was first developed back in 1991, and that has simply been as a secure means of storing data. Its method of doing so is fascinating, so let’s examine the concept and all that it now allows us to do.

To begin, let’s review how it is that the blockchain works.

How Does the Blockchain Work?

The big selling point behind the blockchain comes in its immutability…the fact that it is structured in such a way that the information it stores effectively cannot be changed without that change being recorded and reflected. The blockchain is really just a ledger system that is accessible by numerous parties. All transactions are gathered and compiled into records—the blocks of the blockchain—that are verified across the entire chain.

So, each time a transaction is submitted, the peer-to-peer network of computers that form the blockchain all individually validate the transaction. This transaction is then added to many others to form a block, this block being permanently added to the chain.

This is where the blockchain gets its security. Hacking the blockchain isn’t a matter of hacking one computer… it’s a matter of hacking dozens, or even hundreds or thousands, all at the same time. Hence, why the blockchain is seen as so secure.

Nowadays, the Blockchain is Most Known for NFTs and Cryptocurrencies

These are just two of the many potential applications of blockchain technology, with the promise of more to come in the future. For example:

• If properly encrypted, health information can be securely shared between different providers without its privacy being undermined, with a complete record of changes and updates.
• Financial services could benefit from the blockchain, in terms of transparency and significantly reduced transaction costs.
• Incorporating blockchain into mobile voting applications could help to improve voting in terms of accessibility and trust.
• By using the blockchain, food could be more effectively tracked through its distribution systems from its origins, catching contaminants and other health threats.

What Else Might the Blockchain Enable?

Through the immutability that the blockchain relies on, there are a great number of potential uses for the technology—with new ones becoming clear as time passes. There’s really no telling what we might apply the blockchain to in the future.

To find out what’s possible for your business through today’s technology, give MSPNetworks a call at (516) 403-9001 today.

It feels like streaming is everywhere these days, from video content to music to video games. Coincidentally, it also happens that innovations in cloud streaming have allowed these entertainment mediums to flourish in “as-a-service” type offerings. Just how have the innovations in technology allowed streaming services to grow and expand? Let’s investigate.

What is Streaming?

Remember the good old days when you couldn’t stream video without it being a massive time sink or spending loads of time waiting for the video to buffer? Gone are those days. Streaming is the continuous transmission of video or audio content over the Internet. It’s what powers services like YouTube, Spotify, and other music and video streaming services. Even some games can be streamed over the Internet now. Essentially, the data for these files are stored on a server somewhere, then get sent a little bit at a time to the user.

The Difference Between Downloading and Streaming

It used to be the case that you would have to download the entire file before you could use it on your PC, but streaming offers a better approach. Rather than saving a copy of the file to your hard drive, streaming allows users to simply play them from their web browser through an Internet connection.

All that said, a big difference between downloading and streaming is that, well, it requires an Internet connection. Without a good one, your connection will not be stable, creating problems for whatever you are trying to stream. For example, a video might need to buffer if your Internet connection cannot keep up with the rate of download. In a lot of ways, you can compare it to the way that many companies rely on the cloud for their computing. While it is great to have the content ready and available locally, sometimes accessing it through the Internet is easier and more efficient. However, without that connection, access is cut off.

The Technology

When you stream something from the Internet, the file is split into data packets containing video and audio. These data packets are essentially compressed files that are designed to be sent and unpacked at their destination. Ultimately, how the streaming provider goes about doing this is up to them, and it is largely based on the purpose of the streaming and what value it provides to their customers.

For example, when streaming video content from Netflix, the quality of the video and audio is a pretty big deal. In comparison, a video conference with multiple attendees might prioritize connection with others for real-time interaction over the quality of video and audio.

Two of the more common transfer protocols used by streaming services are user datagram protocol (UDP) and transmission control protocol (TCP). They are typically used for two different types of streaming. TCP provides a dedicated connection between the server and the client to ensure that all of the content is received properly. UDP, on the other hand, cuts some corners, so to speak. The result is that TCP makes for a more reliable connection compared to UDP, but UDP offers a faster and more efficient connection.

In the aforementioned example, you might see how the two can be used for two different purposes. TCP is better when the content delivered needs to be lossless, while UDP is better in situations when some loss is acceptable. In the end, streaming providers go with the option that allows them to provide the best services possible to their clients based on the goods and services they are rendering.

We hope you learned something interesting and new about the technology behind streaming services with today’s blog. What are some topics you would like to see us cover in the future? Be sure to let us know in the comments.

Insurance is a great asset, should you ever need it… including where your business technology is concerned. If you weren’t aware, there is a form of insurance—cyber insurance—that you can purchase in case your business suffers from a data breach.

Is this additional form of insurance worth the investment? Absolutely.

Let’s take a few moments and explore why you’ll be happy to have cyber insurance when the time comes

What is Cyber/Cybersecurity/Cyber Liability Insurance?

Cyber insurance, like any other form of insurance, is meant to help cover the financial impacts of a given event. In this case, the event would be some kind of cyberattack.

It can be easy to underestimate the fallout that a cyberattack can have. Sure, there’s the immediate issue that the attack itself creates in terms of lost time and productivity, but there are plenty of other impacts and aftereffects that are also associated with these attacks as well.

For instance, if you’ve lost data, you could very well face significant fines from the government, on top of the definite lack of trust the general populous will likely feel toward your business once word gets out about your data loss event.

Then, you also have to consider how much it will cost to restore your business, fixing the systems that have been impacted and influenced by the attack. You need to account for all the business that the aforementioned lack of trust will lose you. You need to factor in the cost of all the notifications that you will need to send out to those impacted by your data breach.

This is a pretty, pretty penny… far more than you can realistically budget away in your IT costs.

Hence, cyber insurance.

What Can Cyber Insurance Help Cover?

There are assorted needs that cyber insurance can help you to pay for, if need be, including:

• Notifying affected parties
• Resolving security issues
• Providing credit monitoring services for those impacted
• Extortion payments
• Expenses related to resuming your business practices
• Covering public relations costs

Who Needs Cyber Insurance?

To put it in no uncertain terms: any business that stores or handles sensitive information, whether that’s financial data, medical information, contact details, or personally identifiable information.

Don’t get us wrong, we don’t hope that you ever have a need for cyber insurance—we just know it is better to be prepared. Having said that, we’re also here to help minimize the chances that you’ll ever need it.

Reach out to us to learn more about our comprehensive cybersecurity services by calling (516) 403-9001.

A disaster recovery plan is a strategy that allows a business to return to normal after a disruption of some type. Some data disasters are brought on by outside attacks, some are the result of a natural disaster or environmental issue, and some are simply a return to normal after an internal problem interferes with business operations. Today, we’ll take a look at a few things you need to know about disaster recovery to help you mitigate the negative effects of a data disaster. 

In IT, disaster recovery is focused on the safeguarding of data and information systems, but for the business it is a wholesale strategy that protects a business’ ability to function after it has dealt with an often avoidable issue. With companies now dealing with much more data than ever before, as well as customers who don’t respond positively to data breaches or downtime, having a comprehensive disaster recovery platform in place is essential to getting through tough situations that may affect your business. Let’s take a look at three things you need to know to properly manage your disaster recovery plan.

Planning is Imperative

The first misconception that most people have about disaster recovery is that it is a massively complex strategy that has a lot of moving parts that need to be handled before you can go on business-as-usual. This isn’t the case. For most smaller businesses, it could simply be a strategy highlighted by a comprehensive data backup and recovery plan. As organizations get larger, however, more detail will be necessary about how to recover systems, applications, and working conditions. 

Regardless of what type of organization you run, you need to understand that if you are enacting your disaster recovery plan, there are some serious issues that are affecting your business and you need to confront them head-on. Planning out scenarios can help your team be ready to do what needs to be done to get your business back up and running fast after a disaster. You will need to know how your backup system works, who is in charge of the different parts of your DR platform, and set a responsible recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) to pinpoint how far back your recovery needs to go to get stable applications and data back and how much time you have to get that done. 

Test Your DR

One of the biggest problems organizations have with their disaster recovery platform is that they haven’t tested it. In fact, nearly a quarter of businesses have never tested their disaster recovery plan. Failure to test opens up a litany of issues, including the DR platform falling on its face and leaving your organization clutching at straws. You don’t have to test the platform monthly, or even quarterly, but ensuring that your DR platform is tested at least once a year can help you avoid a lot of would-be headaches. 

Since testing your DR strategy can disrupt your business and cut into productivity, some business leaders won’t want you to do it. It’s this reason that IT administrators have to push back and ensure that the system is tested at least once annually. Any time you test any system, you will inevitably find problems with it. It stands to reason that your DR strategy will have some issues, but every test provides an opportunity to fix problems. As a result, updating the DR plan with lessons you’ve learned during testing will be invaluable if the real thing needs to be enacted.

The Human Element

You may think of your disaster recovery strategy as an IT issue, but your entire DR platform is handled by humans. A comprehensive DR strategy has to include contingencies for employees. For instance, if your business’ location is compromised for whatever reason, do you have the ability to get them access to company data they need to do their jobs? 

Take the COVID-19 pandemic for instance. Not many businesses had “global pandemic” on a list of their DR contingencies and it cost many organizations greatly. With governments handing down shelter-in-place mandates in the early part of the pandemic, many businesses had to invest a lot of capital, often capital they didn’t have, to ensure that their businesses could continue. Regardless of what you do with your technology, businesses are mostly human endeavors and ensuring that your policies cover eventualities like work-from-home strategies can make all the difference between being profitable and closing up shop.

Don’t get caught in-between. If you would like to have a conversation about business continuity or disaster recovery with our IT experts at MSPNetworks, reach out to us today at (516) 403-9001. 

Business can be difficult when everything goes right, but when disaster strikes, serious issues arise that need to be answered fast and if you don’t have a business continuity plan in place, your business will be in peril. It doesn’t matter what you do, if circumstances decide that your business needs to shut down, having a disaster recovery policy in place as a part of a larger continuity plan, will do more than you think to save your business. 

Consider the Risks

Having a business continuity plan is to consider the risks your business is likely to face. Some of them have to do with your geographical location and the types of disasters that you could legitimately face, some have to do with operational downtime and the causes of that, but regardless of what risks your company could potentially face, having a plan to circumvent those potential risks is at the core of your continuity strategy. 

When we talk about disaster recovery, we are talking about instances that stop your business’ ability to function. Sure they could be flood, fire, or weather, but they could just as easily be computer component or utility failure. Most businesses were not ready for the COVID-19 pandemic, which turned out to be a huge disaster for a lot of businesses. The businesses that were able to quickly pivot to deal with the problems of state-sponsored quarantine or the lingering uncertainty of operations in response to the global pandemic, were the businesses that thrived over the past couple of years. 

So while you can’t rightly have a response to every problem, covering your bases to help maintain your business’ ability to operate is essential to overcoming these issues. Let’s take a look at some variables your disaster recovery strategy needs to ensure that digital assets are protected.

Data Backup and Recovery

The truth is that any business that is unable to recover data when struck by a data disaster will likely lose customers. This can happen from malware attack, component failure, or any natural disaster caused by weather. The best way to mitigate this scenario and protect your business’ data is to have a reliable, redundant backup of all files and applications. Not only should you keep an onsite backup, you need a solution to the fact that many times, that backup would be compromised due to the disaster. A cloud-hosted backup that is incrementally updated makes the most sense for almost every organization. 

Think about it, a data backup service can effectively keep your whole organization from descending into chaos. Think about all the negative circumstances there are surrounding the compromise of people’s personal and financial information, and a data backup and recovery service begins to pay for itself. Here are a few scenarios:

• Ransomware attack - Your business gets hit with one of the millions of ransomware attacks that hackers are disseminating and your files are locked down. With a timely backup, you can restore your systems rather than paying a huge ransom to get your files back. There’s no telling if you would even get them back, either, a whole other can of worms that you don’t want to face. 
• Natural disasters - Regardless of where your business is, disasters come in many forms. If you are knocked out of commission because of a natural disaster, ensuring all your operational data is safe in an offsite data center, it makes it easier to make the important moves necessary to get your business back up and running.
• Human error or sabotage - End users are the cause of 88 percent of all data breaches. With that knowledge, understanding your data is protected against employee mistakes, negligence, or sabotage makes dealing with an internal data breach that much easier. 

Those are just three examples where disaster recovery can save your bacon. Having the ability to restore your data and applications quickly in the face of a perilous situation not only provides peace of mind, it provides stability in situations that demand it. If you would like to talk to one of our security professionals at MSPNetworks about getting a backup system in place that is right for you, give us a call at (516) 403-9001 today. 

Many professionals see the word “informatics” and think of one of two things. First, what the heck is it? Second, isn’t that just computer science? While the two certainly are similar and often used interchangeably, they are quite different. Let’s take a deeper dive and see what the field of informatics entails, how it can be applied to computer science and business, and why it’s important to consider for your organization.

Defining Informatics

Pinning down informatics is a bit of a tricky one, as it is most commonly used when referring to healthcare. In regards to medical informatics, Merriam-Webster defines it as “the collection, classification, storage, retrieval, and dissemination of recorded knowledge.” Now, we know what you’re thinking. Wouldn't that definition be applicable in just about any other context? Well, you’re not the first one to think of this definition in a fluid manner.

The definition of informatics has shifted throughout the years to reflect this more abstract line of thought. Generally speaking, informatics can be referred to as the study of any system, artificial or natural, and how it shares or processes information of some sort. If we zoom out a bit with our definition, you can see how informatics can be applied in many different ways, whether we are discussing natural systems in the biological world (like neuroscience or the study of the brain), or computing systems (like computers or algorithms). By now it should be clear why it is so commonly used synonymously with computing, but what are some of its applications?

Informatics in Computing

In the case of computing, you can boil informatics down to the way that data is shared across either your internal network or across multiple networks (like the Internet). Data is spread out across your network, collected, classified, stored, retrieved, and distributed to workstations as applicable. This happens on a micro level on a day-to-day basis, but the scale and scope at which this happens is very flexible.

One of the best examples for how informatics can be applied to computing is through the use of big data. Traditionally, big data as a term refers to a large mass of data that is too expansive to analyze with traditional data analysis tools but can be used for the purposes of interpretation and extrapolation. Thus, businesses can learn a lot by analyzing their big data; they might even be able to identify trends that can be leveraged for growth in the coming years.

How Can Your Business Benefit?

Too often businesses sit on a treasure trove of data that can be analyzed, extrapolated, and applied to various operations or business functions. MSPNetworks can help equip your organization with the tools to take full advantage of its data, from storage to dissemination. To learn more about how we can help your business, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

Having a comprehensive data backup and recovery strategy in place can absolutely save your business. This means it’s extremely important. Unfortunately, too many businesses don’t consider their backup and recovery systems until it is too late. Let’s unwrap what makes a successful backup and recovery platform work, and how to get one for your business.

Many business professionals use data backup and disaster recovery as if they are interchangeable, but this is simply not the case. Data backup is the act of making copies of your data while disaster recovery is a process that includes the act of actually restoring the data using the data backup. Obviously, the two systems are related (as one can’t happen without the other), and today we’ll take a look at why they are both integral to the continuity of a business.

Data Backup

When you first implement your backup solution, you should be focused on which data (and how much of it) you want to back up. It’s important to remember that not all data is as important as other data and therefore it is critical that you think about what data will be necessary to keep your organization functional if and when you experience operational troubles. As a rule, you should try to back up as much as you can without it affecting your ability to restore later on. The ideal data backup process will happen automatically without any resource dedicated to running it, as user error has sunk more than a few businesses in need of a data backup.

Disaster Recovery

On a related note, disaster recovery deals with the process of restoring your data following a disaster. The main way of measuring effectiveness of disaster recovery is speed. How fast can you get back into a comparable situation where you’re not operating at a loss? You should also consider where you’re trying to restore from. Best practices dictate that you have at least three copies of your data with one stored in the cloud, and two stored on-site for ease of access. Furthermore, you need to consider running automated tests to ensure the disaster recovery process will work the way you want it to when you need it most.

Does your business need a hand with implementing data backup and disaster recovery? Our all-in-one Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution can provide you with a powerful preventative solution to ensure your organization doesn’t fall to unexpected disasters. To learn more, give our IT experts a call today at (516) 403-9001.

Unfortunately, the more people lean on technology, the more data breaches there are. The correlation makes sense, but with so much innovation in data security and data systems, it’s a shame more can’t be done to keep businesses and individuals from losing data to opportunists and scammers. That’s why knowing how to circumvent these forces is essential to keep your data safe. Let’s take a look at how the people that are best at it keep their data secure. 

Best Practices Keep It Simple

To avoid negative data situations like this you will want to ensure that your best practices are being followed. In this particular case, they aren’t very complex. They include:

• Keeping data (particularly sensitive data) organized in secure locations
• Keeping data on a need-to-know basis via access controls

That’s the list. It’s not a lot to consider on the surface, but let’s unpack them a bit. By keeping data in a secure location, it makes it easier for the professionals that manage your data and infrastructure to respond to a breach; and, by controlling who can access what, they can easily identify where the problem comes from and work to remedy it. 

Detecting When You’ve Been Breached

Obviously, to remedy against data breaches, you actually have to know that you’ve been breached. Unfortunately, attackers are using more sophisticated methods than ever to hack into your network, making evasion a priority. This means that the speed in which you identify a data breach is taking place is one of the most important factors. 

Businesses today are using smart technology to consistently monitor and automate a response. A Netwrix 2020 Data Breach and Security report suggests that organizations using automation were better able to detect data breaches in minutes rather than hours or days. Comparatively, most of those without (56 percent) measured their detection time in days.

Respond Confidently

It can be quite off putting to consider that people are trying to break into your network. This is why you have all those procedures in place, after all. For those that haven’t gotten around to concocting a cyber threat response strategy for their team, it’s important that it is standardized and consistent; it makes it easier to follow should you have to deal with it. 

Your business will definitely have to train its staff on what to do if they are confronted with a cyber threat. Training your staff on phishing, password hygiene, and more will put your workforce in a position to help you sustain a record of security, not hinder it. On top of testing, you should consider evaluating each worker individually to better understand who needs more training and who is competent to effectively respond against these threats.

Staying On Your Toes

Having the tools to recover from a data breach is almost as important as thwarting one. Your business may be on solid footing today, but one scam, hack, or situation brought on by outside forces can floor your business. Not only do you need to have the infrastructure and the support team in place to deal with a potential data breach, you have to know that your business can recover from one. This is why you need a business continuity plan with a full data backup and recovery strategy in place. Additionally, the exploit you have dealt with could have come from a vulnerability on your network (not a human). You will need to ensure that your team’s access credentials are updated and all software patched to their most current versions.

This is not a situation you have to handle alone. Call the IT professionals at MSPNetworks today at (516) 403-9001 to learn about how we can help you protect your business against cyber threats, and provide you with the tools and support to handle any situation that comes your way.

Quick, off the top of your head, how many network switches are in use at your office? How many wireless access points? How many routers are past their warranty or no longer getting support?

That’s not a question most business owners are asked on a regular basis, and we don’t really expect you to be able to rattle off the answers. You should have all of that information documented though.

Documenting your entire IT infrastructure saves you a ton of time and hassle later. It can help with insurance, it can help simply keep track of everything you are supposed to be keeping secure, and it can help prevent you from buying something you don’t need.

What Information Needs to be Documented?

While it’s going to depend a little bit from device to device, you’ll at least want to track some of the basics.

Device Name: Pretty straightforward—the name of the device on the network, if it has one, or give it a descriptor name if it doesn’t, such as “Conference Room Network Switch.”

Device Model and Serial Number: You’ll want this for support and warranty issues. It’s easier to have it written down than having to find the tiny label on the device after it is in place and hooked up.

Installation Date: When was the device purchased and installed?

Who Installed It: It never hurts to know—if a particular company or employee set it up, and it wasn’t set up properly, you’ll want to know who to reach out to.

Warranty Information: How long does the manufacturer’s warranty last? Did you purchase extended warranty? Does the device have an estimated end of life date?

Vendor Information: Is there a support number? Did you purchase the device directly from the vendor or a third party?

Location: Where is the device located in the office? Is it in the server room, or behind the reception desk? 

Service History: This one is huge, and the hardest information to keep up with. If work is done on the device, it should be documented. That includes the initial setup and ongoing administrative changes. If the device has a tendency to fail often, your documentation will show this as you audit your network.

Documenting your IT is a huge part of keeping your IT running smoothly. You don’t need to do this by yourself. At MSPNetworks, we document every piece of hardware and software we touch and keep a very clear historical record of the work we do so we can always adjust our processes and help business owners make informed IT-related decisions.

Want to learn more? Give us a call at (516) 403-9001.

For a while there, blockchain was a buzzword that you would hear about constantly. It was the future of data security and secure online transactions. As 2020 has pointed our attention elsewhere, you’ve heard less and less about blockchain technology. Today, we’ll take a look at what some of the most innovative companies are doing with distributed encrypted networks,

What Is Blockchain? 

Blockchain was one of the most talked about technologies of the last half of the past decade; and while there have been hundreds of startups that use blockchain at the center of their offerings, there is some thought that the usability of the technology wasn’t as revolutionary as it was made out to be. For those of you who didn’t believe the hype, however, it should be noted that blockchain, the distributed ledger technology that provides unparalleled data security, transparency, and reliability, has been used as the basis of applications for financial services, real estate, law enforcement, supply chain management, insurance, and many more industries. 

The applications of this technology don’t end for cybersecurity, however. For the past several years the technology has been seen used in more and more practical applications.  You see, when you can depend on the reliability of information, developers will want to use it to enhance the ability to manage waste. Supply chain management is a great example. The more transparency a business can have with the products and resources on their supply chain, the more efficient their operations will be and the reliable their projections will be, allowing them to budget better and use the capital they would have otherwise wasted in advancing their company’s agendas.

How Some Industries Use Blockchain

The best way to see how blockchain has been integrated into software is to take a look at how companies utilize the technology.

Medical

If there has been one industry that has utilized blockchain technology the best, it is the healthcare industry. Some hospitals have already started utilizing the technology to help protect patient data. In healthcare there is a lot of information that needs to be both secured and simultaneously available, a complete conundrum for healthcare providers. Enter blockchain. Here is a technology with the ability to keep a transparent, yet incorruptible and private log of all patient health, insurance, and provider data; and, since it is decentralized, sharing the information that’s needed comes with fewer risks to patient profile info.

Banking

One industry that analysts were most curious about was how blockchain was going to affect the banking industry. Obviously, with the ability to keep transactions transparent and secure, the technology is perfect for the banking industry which, despite all the technological advancements over the past 50 years, hasn’t changed all that much. Today, banks are using blockchain as the basis for smart transactions that can be used to move money faster than ever. Banks are also partnering with various FinTech (financial technology) companies to create financial products that will seemingly revolutionize the way people and businesses can get the capital they need to push their initiatives forward.

Cybersecurity

Another obvious industry that is both quickly growing and in need of reliable instruments is the cybersecurity industry. Basically, companies are creating products that revolutionize the way people store their sensitive data. The distributed nature of blockchain is the impetus behind this shift. The less information can be gained from one location, the less likely hackers and cybercriminals will be to try and infiltrate. Moreover, with blockchain’s built-in encryption it has become a great option for access control systems and for data confidentiality as a whole. 

You may not be able to download a blockchain app and find any practical use, but the technology is here and is being used to secure large portions of sensitive data by companies from all over the world. If you would like to learn more about data security using blockchain technology, why not reach out to the IT professionals at MSPNetworks? Our experts can help you better understand what blockchain is and how you may be already using applications built with blockchain and didn’t even know it. Call us today at (516) 403-9001 to learn more.

Data security always needs to be considered as one of your most important business priorities. After all, the ramifications of data loss are wide-reaching and severe. To help you ensure that your data security is at the level it needs to be, we’ve put together five questions you need to answer regarding your business’ security preparedness.

“Are my processes based in security?”

Or, in other words: is your work environment designed in such a way that the most secure option is the default? End-to-end security is one thing, incorporating it into a proactive process is quite another. A foundation based upon secure functionality will help lead to better outcomes. Are your users trained to exclusively follow the most secure processes?

If not, this is where you need to start. A company culture steeped in security awareness is one of the best ways to protect your data, simply because it will help to minimize any improvisation that your employees would otherwise attempt. Educate your users properly, and they will turn into one of your biggest security assets.

“How regulated is access to different files?”

On the topic of your employees, how much data is accessible by any given person? There is no reason that one of your salespeople should have access to payroll information, just as your fulfillment division shouldn’t know any payment information beyond whether a bill was paid or not. Securing your data and only enabling access through role-based permissions with private usernames and multiple authentication measures will help shore up your risks. Remember, these permissions and access controls should be audited regularly to ensure that the data they protect remains on a need-to-know basis.

“Is my data encrypted?”

Or, as this question reads after being encrypted on a random website:

“?b64b0EbdbZMVy0aghJaLO+x2ic7F02JurazKFq4r6dv0y7RpMWaNL00qDWW1nQ39vgmELHKNtUl42u0iIhoc4AM1w==?64b”

Of course, without the decryption key, you can only assume that I’m being honest, which is kind of the point. Making sure that your data is encrypted can protect its contents should it be stolen. This means that you will want to be sure that the answer to this question is…

“?b64LQwXhsseeRhWY0MptIJLxsV4NyLYoBpSAzcypRZMD7BEQmmnDgbB4I6ks8ujGmza?64b”

…or, decrypted: “It sure is!”

The topic of encryption is far too complex to go into here in any detail. If you’d like to learn more about encryption and how it can help protect your business’ sensitive data, call us and ask one of our technicians to explain it to you (or to help you implement it)!

“Have I tested my security measures?”

Once your security measures are implemented, your job is far from done. To ensure that they remain effective, they must be stress-tested and evaluated under controlled conditions. What assets are the most important to protect, and what threats are they most in danger of succumbing to? How likely are these threats to come into play, and how are you vulnerable to them?

Establishing these benchmarks will give you greater insights into the weaknesses inherent in your processes and how they can be remedied.

MSPNetworks can help you find these insights and put the best solutions in place in response. To learn more about this process, reach out to our professionals at (516) 403-9001.

As much as a business relies on its technology, it relies just as much upon its employees to properly put that technology to use. Unfortunately, this can very easily expose the business to various threats that involve their employees. Understanding these insider threats is crucial for a business, especially given how current events may tempt those who would never have considered them otherwise.

Let’s review what constitutes an insider threat, and why they are now a bigger potential problem than ever.

What is an Insider Threat?

An insider threat is precisely what the term implies: a threat to your business that is sourced from one of your in-the-know employees. While this makes it sound as though we are referring to an embezzler or corporate spy (which can be the case), it also applies to any employees whose actions inadvertently compromise your business’ data, security, and other property. So, when you are working to prevent insider threats, you need to focus on a variety of fronts.

There are many reasons that these kinds of threats can arise, especially with the current issues that businesses everywhere are struggling with.

Technical Shifts

Given the fact that a pandemic has closed many workplaces, a huge amount of businesses of every size have needed to adjust drastically to sustain their operations however they can. For many, this meant rotating to a virtualized environment for remote work.

Of course, putting it this way makes it sound far easier than it is. Not only have many organizations suddenly been tasked with adopting an entirely new means of accomplishing their goals, many of these changes require adjustments to enable remote work at all. When all of this is considered, there is generally some trade-off between capability and security.

Emotional Distress

There is no denying that the last few months have been a challenging time for everyone. Stresses have been high, and without the recreational activities that many would normally turn to as a means of relieving some of this stress, many people will consider actions that they otherwise wouldn’t. With rising anxiety comes less forethought, and always-present thoughts of economic challenges and potential unemployment can tempt even the most trustworthy employee into considering alternatives like fraud and theft.

Organizational Adjustments

Every successful business has struck a balance between its progressive operations and the appropriate level of security it needs. If security were sacrificed, the business’ operations would be undermined, but if security becomes too oppressive, the business wouldn’t be able to function well enough to support itself. As a result, businesses must find a middle ground, of sorts, that positions them in the best possible circumstances.

Typical Behaviors Associated with Insider Threats

Of course, insider threats can be an issue in the best of times, as well. It doesn’t necessarily take the changes brought on by a pandemic to sour an employee’s opinion of a company, and data has shown that about 60 percent of insider threats involve data being taken as an employee prepares to leave a company—particularly if that employee had a role in preparing that data. Most who do this use email, while fewer numbers use cloud storage, data downloads, and removable storage media, respectively.

These flight risks can be spotted, however, with a little bit of diligence. For instance, if an employee is spending time on job search websites with no work-related reason to do so, you should be concerned, as you should if they are accessing data from a strange place or granting themselves more privileges than their responsibilities require.

Insider threats are certainly a problem, but many potential ones can be fixed proactively. It is important to remember that not all of them will be intentional attacks to your business. Very often, it is more of a matter of an employee inadvertently compromising your security in the attempt to do their job—emailing themselves a file to work on it after hours, for instance. Employees who are operating remotely may be reverting to old security habits as they are out of the work environment. Regardless, you need to do whatever you can to minimize the threats your business and its data face from those closest to it.

Putting the Kibosh on Insider Threats

Communicate Better with Your Team

Right now, things are pretty scary, and many are doubting their job security. Therefore, it only makes sense that people aren’t taking the most well-thought-out actions or could be tempted to create an insurance policy for themselves. Frequently and clearly communicating with your team will help to make them relatively more comfortable in their given situation, hopefully making them less likely to make rash decisions or act out.

Maintain Relationships

While there may be a time and a place for taking a step back and managing your team from a distance, a pandemic ain’t it. Make sure you double-down on your efforts to evaluate how well your employees can cope under the circumstances and adjust your processes accordingly. This will both give you a closer view of your employees and assist you in reducing the stress that might lead to error otherwise.

Give Your Team the Tools for Success

Finally, to cut down on the challenges that your employees must cope with while bolstering your business’ security, make sure that the team is making the most of the solutions at its disposal. The collaboration solutions now available, paired with modern security measures and implemented with a focus on best practices, will make life easier for your team… something you want when difficulties will increase the chances of an insider threat.

For the tools and resources to help your business put these protections in place—even now—reach out to the professionals at MSPNetworks today.