MSPNetworks Blog

"I don’t need to worry about cybersecurity… my business is too small for hackers to target."

This is one of the most dangerous misconceptions a small business can have. If you believe this, you may not fully understand how modern cyberattacks work. Let’s break down why this mindset can leave your business vulnerable.

Your business needs IT expertise, regardless of how much it is integrated into your operations. You need someone on staff who not only understands your technology, but someone who can help you make the most of it to get the leg up on competition. Today, we want to explore how you can hire the right IT professionals for your organization’s specific needs, including both hard and soft skills.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face the challenge of managing complex IT systems with very limited resources. Enter managed service providers, or MSPs, the guardians of IT that can help your business stay ahead of the game. An MSP's approach to IT support delivery offers many benefits that traditional IT support and even an in-house team might struggle to match.

Let's delve into three compelling reasons why our innovative approach is best for your IT support needs, especially if you want to scale up and streamline operations.

Technology frustrations can cause major setbacks for today’s businesses. IT challenges of all kinds can disrupt operations and impact productivity. Fortunately, managed IT services can help solve these common business IT headaches. Therefore, businesses can access a team of experts ready to tackle these issues head-on by outsourcing their IT management to a managed service provider.

With technology being so important for all businesses in at least some capacity, it’s no small wonder that effectively using it (and having someone on-hand to manage it all) is tremendously valuable for any company. This is where a managed service provider (MSP) can be helpful, even for businesses that have a dedicated IT department. All small businesses benefit from working with an MSP.

Operational Benefits Aplenty

An MSP can help your business achieve greater operational efficiency in the following ways.

Proactive Maintenance Leads to Fewer IT Issues

Stopping problems from occurring in the first place is much easier than responding to them when they disrupt operations. An MSP will monitor your network to ensure that any telltale signs of problems are addressed quickly and efficiently. This will minimize downtime and keep your business profitable.

Indeed, the best way to see an MSP’s true value is to look at what you don’t see: technology problems. If they are doing their job right, it will be like they aren’t even there.

Guidance on Technology Implementation

You started your business to provide a good or service that you are an expert in to your clientele, but if that good or service doesn’t include technology, it’s easy to feel like you don’t have the expertise to succeed in this realm of your business.

MSPs can help you overcome this deficit by providing an expert technology specialist for your organization’s needs. They can optimize your technology, work with your vendors, and manage technology over time to ensure that it’s working for your business, not against your operations.

Focus on the Here and Now, But Also the Future

If you want your business to succeed in the future, you need to start planning for it now. An MSP can help you identify what’s working well now and what might pose a challenge for your business in the future. Additionally, they can help your business stay on top of trends and developing technology solutions that will prove crucial moving forward.

How to Choose Your MSP

We think you’ll find our services helpful, but we want you to come to that conclusion yourself. Here are some aspects of an MSP to consider for your company’s needs:

• A dedication to security: You don’t have time to spend on securing your business and ensuring that all regulatory compliance requirements are met. An MSP can keep your business safe while ensuring adherence with industry regulations so your business can focus on profitability.
• Offers educational resources: Security extends to your employees who need refreshers every now and then on how to keep the business safe. A good MSP will invest time and resources into ensuring your team knows how to navigate the often-confusing world of technology.
• They might as well join your team: You might expect an in-house IT team to know your infrastructure inside and out, and an MSP can deliver on this expectation without actually being on your payroll in the traditional sense. A good MSP will be invested in your business’ success considering important factors like your budget and priorities when thinking about technology-related issues for your company.

Ready to get started with an MSP? We know the best in town (hint—it’s us!). Call us today at (516) 403-9001 to get started.

Depending on the size and complexity of your organization, managing technology can easily become a full-time job. If you are only calling a technician when you are dealing with a computer issue, then you might be sitting on a ticking time bomb. Whether you have internal staff responsible for managing your IT, or you rely on a third-party, you’ll want to make sure the following tasks are getting done.

Windows and Server Updates

Microsoft pushes out security updates and product updates for its operating systems regularly. Traditionally, these updates come out on the second Tuesday of each month, but additional updates and patches may be released on a different schedule. On top of that, if you get behind on your updates, sometimes it can take longer to apply them all, or there may be conflicts that prevent you from being able to automatically run updates. These updates are critical, and you shouldn’t rely on your individual users to keep their own laptops or workstations updated.

Software Updates and Patches

While Microsoft has a pretty regular schedule for updates, the other software that drives your business might not. Your IT department will need to be aware of everything being used, and how to check for and apply updates, and in some cases, have a testing bed to run updates on so they don’t disrupt day-to-day business.

Antivirus Definition Updates

Virus definitions are updated on a very regular basis, and for your antivirus to fully protect you, it needs to have the latest definitions applied, and it needs to be kept updated as well. This is usually an automatic process, but the end user can sometimes delay it from happening. Having a centrally managed antivirus solution can help remedy this, but even still, someone needs to be monitoring it, and making sure scans are run regularly and that the utility is doing its job properly.

Daily Backup Checks

You wouldn’t believe how many IT “professionals” skip this. It’s absolutely critical. If your company’s backup device isn’t properly taking backups, it’s not doing you any good. If something were to happen that causes you to need your backup, it would be a nightmare to only discover then that you haven’t been running backups for several months.

It’s important to review backup logs and check for corruption and audit the entire backup regularly. If this isn’t getting done, you may as well assume you don’t have a backup in the first place.

At least once a week, the daily backup check should also involve a random restore to make sure the process is working and that files and directories are actually being backed up properly. Each month, this should be done even more thoroughly. 

Check Event Logs on Servers

This is another daily task that needs to be done, and can catch a lot of potential issues before they start affecting your staff and your bottom line. Server logs will often pick up on problems that are about to become bigger, so reviewing these daily will allow IT to make proactive adjustments and decisions to prevent downtime and solve issues before they escalate.

Check Disk Space Across All Mission Critical Devices

Done for both servers and active workstations, a full hard drive can bring your network to a stop and cause some pretty ugly issues depending on the device and how the drive is utilized. It’s a very quick check if your business has the right monitoring tools in place, and it can save you from a lot of hassle, especially in cases where you can’t simply free up storage and need to physically add more storage to a device.

Review Wi-Fi, Firewall, and VPN Access Logs

It’s important to know who or what is connecting to your network. Understanding network behavior and looking into traffic spikes and other unexpected events can often find problems before they get too big. Not only can this data be used to prevent network slowdown and other bottlenecking issues, but it can potentially detect fraudulent activity on the network and hopefully allow techs to stop it before it turns into something devastating.

Provide Technical Support For Your Staff

This isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, but on top of all of the critical IT tasks above, your IT department (or IT person/company/agency) needs to also be able to handle day-to-day support requests so your staff can continue to do their jobs without getting caught up with computer problems. 

These are just some of the regular tasks that our techs perform for all of the businesses who entrust us to manage their IT. There’s a huge difference between just having a computer person on call to fix issues as they arise, and having a company contracted to fully manage your IT. If you feel like your technology isn’t getting the TLC it deserves, give MSPNetworks a call at (516) 403-9001 today.

Since it first entered the mainstream in the mid-2000s, cloud computing has become a cornerstone of businesses of every size and shape. The big question that remains, however, is what your business could lean on the cloud to do. Let’s go over the multitude of options that the cloud opens up for a business.

To start, we’ll establish just what exactly we mean when we reference “the cloud.”

The Cloud is Just a Decentralized Network of Resources

That’s really the long and the short of it. The cloud is simply a network that many computers and workstations can access and connect to in order to collaborate and share the data stored within. Whether you need software, data, or raw processing power, the cloud delivers access to these resources and/or the infrastructure to host them.

Convenient? Absolutely… as well as cost-effective, and conducive to collaboration.

Of course, to get the maximum benefit from your cloud implementation, it pays to approach it correctly.

You Have a Lot of Options When it Comes to the Cloud

The cloud comes in numerous forms, and can be used to accomplish various things. In terms of the cloud options you have:

Public cloud - The public cloud is that which is provided by a third-party provider, with all the computing resources maintained and delivered by this provider for the business to use. As a result, the business gets all the advantages of the cloud’s solutions without any of the responsibility of upkeep.

Private cloud - The private cloud is one that the business owns and maintains for themselves, using infrastructure that is stored in-house to host and run the services and applications they rely on. While this puts the onus of maintenance and support on the business, it also helps keep data better protected.

Hybrid cloud - A hybrid cloud approach is one that combines private and public clouds, taking advantage of the benefits of each to fully optimize a business’ IT strategy.

You can use any of these cloud models to fulfill a variety of business needs, like:

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) - Rather than paying up-front for each version of an application—and over again each time an update is released—SaaS ensures that you have the number of software licenses you require, fully updated and ready to go.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) - IaaS gives you access to the infrastructure needed to support your IT, similarly to purchasing the servers and other networking equipment, but removing all the responsibility for upkeep and maintenance from you.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) - Subscribing to PaaS gives you access to everything your business will need—from the software to the infrastructure to the specialized tools. This option gives you everything you need, fully managed by your provider.

Interested in implementing the cloud into your business’ IT? We’re happy to help. Give us a call 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.