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Paradigm Shift

March 29th, 2018 by Michael Gendreau

By Michael Gendreau

Being the newest member of the BTS family, I am constantly listening and observing the people and conversations around me. I came from the electrical contracting world and was like many CFOs in that the company’s Information Technology system was thrown in my lap. My new status with BTS and my past responsibilities place me in a unique position to understand the viewpoints of many of our customers. This in mind, I have learned several things that I would like to highlight for any of my peers that is tasked with the responsibilities of managing a corporation’s information systems, those topics being Managed IT Services, and Information Protection.

Managed Information Technology Services is the equivalent of business liability insurance for your information system. About seven years ago my personal computer (which stored ALL our family data, including pictures, checkbook, and digital music) had a mechanical hard drive fail. I did not have online backup nor any other type of backup to keep my data safe. The outcome was that I had to send that drive in and have the data forensically removed in a lab. The cost was over $1,500.00 (I could have bought a new computer for that…a nice one) just to get the data sent back to me… but my pictures were priceless, so I paid. This was a learning experience. Today, I reminisced about that expensive lesson when I overheard that our partner, American Lumber, could have had a similar problem. Fortunately, since they are a member of our family with Complete Care, we were able to identify that a drive was beginning to fail during the very early stages. Having the luxury of time, we could buy that nice replacement computer and transfer all data with minimal loss in production time and zero loss of data. In fact, the time between when the determination of imminent failure was made and when the problem was solved was less than one day! Imagine the other side of that. What is the value of your computer and the production time lost for it being out of service? The $1,500.00 I paid would be cheap compared to the costs of an unannounced failure occurrence in a corporate computer. BTS’s Complete Care services protect your system from affecting your financial statement’s bottom line through the many types of failures, thereby relieving the stresses and costs of managing your system by deferring most of the risk to professionals who are constantly monitoring your system for weakness.

Weaknesses don’t just occur due to hardware failure; others are caused by vicious attacks from online connections. Data breeches have made the headlines recently, and the targets of those attacks are companies that we (as a country) felt should have been protected. Most small and medium-sized business owners believe that they are immune to these attacks because they are just targeting “the Big Boys.” This is nowhere near the truth. In fact, most ransomware attacks are for small denominations in hopes that not only will the attack get paid, but that the it will go unreported. At my last posting, our small business was attacked with ransomware. The ransom was $1,000 and they would free up our data. Several news sources have reported that if you decide to pay, the system is usually very friendly and quick (yeah… sarcastically); however, I did not have to pay because I was protected. I have learned that the days of static data protection are gone. You need an active, dynamic system to protect your data. You need a product like BTS’s SleepEZ which is actively defending you from threats. The old “off the shelf” virus protection software from big box retailers is the equivalent of putting a screen door on your house without a lock.

BTS has created the systems that have and will continue to offer the highest quality management available on the market today for entire voice, IT and surveillance system (yes, they are all part of the same system now). Our Complete Care is any small or medium-sized business’s solution for overall IT care. The protection of our monitoring, complemented with active intrusion security, places your company under the protection of our highly skilled team of technicians. The costs associated with the licensing, software, hardware, and labor are minimized to an affordable monthly price that is less than a third of what hiring a IT professional (on staff) alone (assuming they have at least 10 years’ experience so they can be skilled enough to run the system), let alone the cost of all the other components. Still have that off the shelf solution? Do the analysis, then give us a call to find out how we can protect you.

Posted in: Cyber Security, Managed IT


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