MSPNetworks Blog

With tax season quickly reaching its crescendo, accountants and CPAs face increased threats to their data security. Your clients' financial information is too good for a cybercriminal to pass up. Now is the time to prepare yourself to fight a cyberattack. Learn how managed IT can support your business in a variety of ways.

Is Your Data Secure for Tax Season?

Cybercriminals are well aware of the stress most accountants and CPAs face during tax season. They also know that with stress comes mistakes and opportunities for them to attack. The reality is most businesses, regardless of size or industry, usually have cybersecurity protocols that are underpowered. Cybercriminals know this and wait for predictable moments of distraction to target a company. What’s more predictable than tax season, and what’s a better target than a CPA or accountant?

Why are Accountants and CPAs Targets?

The answer should be obvious: these industries are most likely to have access to the type of data cybercriminals are most interested in: financial. However, it is also important to remember that with the ascendance of ransomware, the cybercriminal’s MO has evolved. These days cybercriminals are more likely to hold your accounting firm’s data/computers hostage than to try and steal your client’s data to resell on the dark web.

As you can imagine, a cybercriminal would be able to exert considerable pressure on your business if they gained control and locked you out of your system around April 15th, rendering you unable to file your client’s tax returns electronically. How much damage would your business suffer, and how much would you be willing to pay to regain access to your data?

Finally, even if you’re a smaller business, chances are you are linked to larger organizations. This connection makes cybercriminals treat you as the weakest link and will use you as a way to gain access to the other businesses you are connected to. It should be apparent that losing control of your data could well cause enough damage that your business may not be able to recover.

How to Protects Your Data

The most effective way to protect the data your accounting firm is responsible for, is with a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery plan. A ransomware attack can only hold your data hostage if you cannot regain control of it. Your backup is going to be the solution to this problem. A data backup and recovery solution in the form of a business continuity strategy should be a prominent part of the foundation of any well-designed managed IT plan, regardless of your business or industry. 

We also manage and maintain your network to prevent threats from coming in.

Why Managed IT for Accountants Is Essential For Business Growth

While it's evident that managed IT can benefit your firm’s data protection, it can do so much more. Due to the wide range of solutions provided, managed IT should be considered an essential service for any business. Due to their services' nature and the data they are responsible for, accountants and CPAs can benefit from the full suite of managed IT. 

While during tax season, it makes sense for accountants and CPAs to request that their managed service providers (MSP) focus on cybersecurity (however, cybersecurity is a 24/7, 365 issue), the benefits of partnering with an MSP stretches beyond cybersecurity protection. Managed IT can provide your organization with increased protectivity, stability, collaboration, and communications, all of which can benefit your company's bottom line.

Some benefits managed IT brings to your accounting firm include:

• 24/7 Monitoring - We watch your network to identify and prevent incoming threats.
• Patches and Security Updates - By having us keep your software updated, your team can work without interruption.
• Less Downtime - Solving problems preventatively will reduce the amount of time that users can’t get their work done.

Are You Ready to Embrace Managed IT?

Managed IT’s wide range of services allow your firm to leverage your technology into a resource and not a liability. MSPNetworks can help you accomplish this with the solutions that your firm needs to boost productivity while developing best IT practices to stop your technology from holding back your growth. A managed IT partner allows you to stop worrying about your technology.  

Call (516) 403-9001 today to schedule a free IT consultation, and learn how our personalized, proactive IT support for small and medium-sized businesses can be of service.

Most business owners that rely on their IT have heard about managed It services. Many already subscribe to some form of outsourced IT service. It is one of the best ways to cut down your business’ operational costs while gaining value through the use of services that, if they were to be purchased intermittently, would cost a lot more. Today, we thought we’d list some of the most important variables you should consider if you are looking to choose a managed IT services provider.

Fast, Fast, Fast

If your business is going to use a service over hiring your own IT professionals,you have to know that the service provider can provide you with the reaction speed necessary to do the job. At MSPNetworks, we can do you one better. We use some of the most cutting edge management software available to monitor and maintain your hardware and network’s integrity, patch your software before there are problems, and do all of this proactively.

You need an IT service provider who can return your IT to an acceptable standard of working order as quickly as possible, but if it’s always working as intended, that would be better, no? Get proactive and forget downtime. 

Disaster Recovery

Many business owners don’t know how to identify a disaster, let alone have a disaster recovery platform in place. With a comprehensive IT services platform from MSPNetworks, you will. Not only does our managed IT service offering come with comprehensive backup and disaster recovery built in, it comes with the experience of our certified technicians who have seen everything and can get your business back up and running quickly after any type of disaster, whether it be malware, user error, or full-scale disaster. 

Employee Support

Your staff is going to have computer issues. It goes with the territory. Sometimes they lose their passwords, sometimes the printer won’t print, sometimes the computer they’re using sounds like a small prop plane. No matter what the problem is, MSPNetworks offers a comprehensive help desk platform. Giving your staff direct access to certified technicians can provide the answers they need or the remote help required to deal with 98-out-of-100 situations. 

Budget Planning

As mentioned above, our people have seen it all. Our consultants can help you plan out your IT budget for the year, to the dollar. In order to get control over your IT budget, you will need to have a strategy to not only support your staff, service the machines that you have in house, and handle your cloud and software vendor agreements, you will need a plan for the future. We can help you plan out every single aspect of your business’ IT, and do it cost effectively. 

MSPNetworks Managed IT: Peace of Mind

The bottom line, if you don’t have managed IT services, you should really consider it, and if you do have managed IT services, you should know that not all companies deliver equal services. At MSPNetworks, we take pride that our New York clients are better for having trusted us to look after their business’ IT. 

 If you would like to learn more about what we can do for your business, give us a call today at (516) 403-9001.

Remote monitoring and management software helps businesses of all sizes avoid issues of equally variable sizes, which is why it is a key facet of the managed IT service model. We wanted to review some of the ways that it benefits the managed service provider, and as a result, benefits our clients.

First, What is RMM Software?

RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management) software is a solution that allows an us to--as it says in the name--remotely monitor and manage a client’s systems. By installing a small software application (known as an agent) into the various components of a business’ infrastructure, we are able to keep an eye on the business’ technology. When we detect an issue via that software, it can be identified and resolved without interrupting the operations of your business, oftentimes before you have any idea that an issue is even present.

How Does RMM Software Help Us?

There are a lot of ways that using RMM software is to our advantage:

• It collects data about your systems, including the status and health of your devices.
• It simplifies the process of updating and proactively protecting your systems.
• It enables us to care for your systems without sacrificing travel time.
• It allows for concurrent mitigation and resolution of IT issues.

So, why should any of this matter to a business? Simple--the benefits that we gain from these tools directly translate to benefits for you. For instance:

• With additional data collected about everything on your network, we can better understand and care for these systems more effectively.
• With updates and proactive protections applied more easily, you can enjoy a more secure computing experience.
• With the need for us to travel reduced, you could see your issues and challenges resolved much more efficiently.
• With IT tasks across an infrastructure resolved simultaneously, you could see improved results in less time.
• With issues detected in their infancy, they can be resolved before they escalate into a larger problem.

Interested in Learning More About RMM?

Reach out to the team here at MSPNetworks. Our expert consultants can help you determine your business’ needs and recommend the IT solutions that best fill them. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 to get started.

As much as we hate to admit it, the first thing that many people still think of when they hear the term “tech support” is the experience that comes with an antiquated approach to technology services: the break/fix method. Fortunately for us, we are seeing many businesses make the better decision, and turn to the clearly superior option, managed IT.

Therefore, as a managed service provider, we know that all we have to do is wait.

The Inherent Issues with Break/Fix Services

When business computing really took off in the 1970s, break/fix IT made sense. Businesses were able to deploy standalone microcomputers or distributed mid-range server systems that operated through remote terminals. Then, in the ‘80s, the personal computer combined the benefits of the two, and really highlighted the benefits that computers could offer a business. When Windows 3.1 was introduced to business users in the 1990s, the computer’s place in business was cemented in forever.

For all this time, computers would have their issues… but it just didn’t make sense to call in for repairs or put an internal IT team on it. If it could still operate somewhat, that was good enough. Should the computer break down completely, IT was brought in to fix it.

So, Were Break-Fix Services Once Okay?

Yes and no. Of course, this situation has always presented all the issues that have led many businesses away from the break/fix strategy today. For instance:

• IT costs could quickly stack up (and up, and up, and up) for a few reasons.
  
  • Recurring issues mean return visits, which mean additional costs.
  • Recurring issues can occasionally motivate insufficient repairs, to ensure repeat business.
  • Longer visits mean more billable time, and more money spent by companies.
• Final IT costs are only clear on the final invoice, preventing accurate IT budgeting.
• It discourages providers from upgrading technology or considering future needs. 

So, break-fix services were unpredictably expensive, and generally prevented any innovation or future planning for the client’s benefit, so issues had the tendency to repeatedly return. However, it wasn’t as though there was another option to compare it to at the time, either.

That option came around in the mid ‘90s, when the amount of technology in the office and its overall complexity increased greatly, with the introduction of fax machines, printers, and other hardware. Computers took much longer to repair when broken. The Internet exploded in popularity, adding an additional element of complexity.

A New Paradigm Emerges: Managed IT

This all meant that break/fix services soon became too inefficient to support businesses properly. Computers were no longer a convenience, but a legitimate necessity in the office, not to mention the other tools and devices that became key components to their processes. Downtime had evolved into something potentially devastating for operations, and expenses ran rampant.

As the new millennium came along, the modern managed service model was brought to the fore. This was thanks to an assortment of developments in information technology, including improved Internet, cloud technology, and automation. Using these tools, some IT providers saw a new opportunity and shifted how their services were delivered.

Gone were the days of waiting for operations to be in jeopardy before doing something about it. 

Now, IT providers have the capability to remotely access and monitor a client’s network from afar, allowing them to more efficiently identify potential issues and mitigate them at effectively all hours—often, before a client ever encounters an issue. The biggest change, however, was how this approach was able to impact the way that managed service providers were able to charge for their services.

Rather than charging at an hourly rate, the nature of the service allowed it to be billed at a very inclusive monthly rate. This simplified matters for the client, as a set-rate service is far easier to budget for. As an added benefit, this also motivated those providers who made the switch from the flawed break/fix approach to deliver a better service to those who signed on to their services.

Service Options Today

With managed services having been around and innovated upon for about two decades, there are even more opportunities for businesses to improve their processes and achieve greater goals. Break/fix is still around, too, but more and more businesses are seeing the comparative benefits of the managed service model and making the decision to switch. Managed services are a source of confidence. You no longer need to be concerned that your technology will bring issues into your business, because someone is there to take care of it for you.

Every so often, a new method is introduced that changes a foundational paradigm. Despite the relatively short time frame that business IT has been around for, managed services did just that… and therefore, break/fix services will eventually be—for all intents and purposes—phased out.

If you want to keep up with all the methods that will improve your business’ operations, reach out to MSPNetworks at (516) 403-9001 today!

Businesses have a lot of technology to manage. While some organizations have an in-house IT department to manage it, many small businesses are limited due to location factors, budget concerns, and countless other variables. In the past, organizations would turn to break-fix IT management for all of their technology issues, but trends in IT maintenance have given rise to a more popular and more sustainable way for small businesses to get the technology maintenance and management they need.

Break-fix IT management was largely considered a waste of resources, as it would mean your organization was waiting until your technology was already failing before seeking assistance. This would mean experiencing downtime while waiting for someone to resolve the issue, which further adds to the cost of the incident.

Preventative managed IT provided by a managed service provider, or MSP, is the better alternative, as it means you are effectively preventing IT issues from becoming problems in the first place. What this does is that it mitigates the possibility of downtime, along with all of its expenses. The problem is that this kind of IT isn’t possible unless you have a team dedicated to making sure that your technology is operating as intended.

Outsourcing this responsibility to a managed service provider is a great way make up for a deficit in your IT management. Some of the services offered by a managed service provider include, but are not limited to:

• Server hosting
• Cloud hosting and management
• Data backup and disaster recovery
• Email hosting
• Network maintenance, monitoring, and management
• Security monitoring and deployment
• And more!

Simply put, a managed service provider manages anything technology-related you want them to. Whether it’s something as complicated as deploying a new software or hardware solution or a task as simple as setting up an email account, you can bet that any managed service provider will be able to provide stellar assistance with any of your business’ technology issues. In many ways, a managed service provider is a company that provides even further solutions, as you’re leveraging the expertise of trained, professional IT technicians who understand fully the amount of trust you are placing in them to manage your technology behind the scenes.

MSPNetworks can be the managed service provider that is right for your business. To learn more about the services we offer, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.