Times have changed. The tools are better. And small companies can finally have big-company IT expertise.
Managing expenses is critical for small law firms and small businesses. But you can’t neglect cyber security and basic effectiveness of your IT systems. You’re not making money when your computer is crawling – or if your data is ransomed. Plan for success. That starts with knowing your options.
Zac Wilcoxen runs Pretect managed IT services. He brings big-company IT expertise to small businesses – even solo practitioner law firms. Zac sat down for an interview and answered the following questions. You can jump to his answers by clicking on the links below.
Cyber Liability Self-Assessment
What’s the role of the IT team in a cyberattack?
CEOs and presidents of companies often don’t want to get involved until the IT team has confirmed there’s an issue. But employees can get concerned that they’ve been compromised when they may not have been. That’s where the IT team comes in. The IT team can handle the problem, and confirm if there really has (or has not) been a breach before the head of the company is bothered with it.
The IT team creates an escalation protocol and becomes the employees’ first point of contact if they feel they’ve been compromised. They have the most insight into the infrastructure and can most quickly identify whether they’ve been hit or not. If so, the IT team can typically eliminate the threat, restore the data, and get things back to normal before notifying the business owner.
Is a Managed IT service worth the cost?
If you’re a small law firm you’re probably not hiring an in-house IT person because that doesn’t really make sense. There isn’t enough job there to justify paying a system administrator, who is going to cost about $60,000 per year. That’s where managed IT providers like Pretect come in. We do it much more reasonably as a third party. Typically, fees range from $75 to $125 per user per month. Which includes patch management, help desk support, endpoint security, and proactive asset monitoring. You will also want to consider additional infrastructure, such as business continuity.
With proactive asset monitoring, our systems will keep an eye on your computer’s vitals and notify our team when any red flags arise. For instance, if your computer is running at 100% CPU for an extended period of time, our team will reach out to assist, often times before the end user even knows there is an issue. This keeps things running smoothly and efficiently.
While I strongly recommend that even the smallest of organizations hire a Managed IT provider, some will still choose to do it themselves. For these folks, I strongly recommend they educate themselves as much as possible on business continuity so they can mitigate their cyber security risk. The question is “how much risk are you willing to endure?” And the key is to minimize your risk while trying to stay within the IT budget. Just keep the long view in mind. After you get hit by a cyberattack, Managed IT services look cheaper with hindsight.
What are the services offered by a Managed IT provider?
It depends on the needs and the preferences of the company, but there is a wide range of IT services that can be offered. A Managed IT provider can offer infrastructure, patch management, help desk support, endpoint security, consulting, business continuity, asset monitoring, vendor management, and more.
A Managed IT provider might tweak what is done based on the size of the business and the type of work they do. A very important duty, especially for law firms, is applying remote patches. New viruses, malware and spyware are constantly causing problems. With remote patch management, a Managed IT provider can install updates on any software or device within the network. They can monitor which assets are updated and which are not, allowing the IT provider to stay on top of vulnerabilities and make sure they are all patched before they cause serious issues.
For instance, let’s say there’s a new vulnerability that just came out in the last week or two. It’s already been patched by Windows. Who on your current team is making sure that patch gets deployed?
Every week there are new vulnerabilities that are discovered. It’s imperative to make sure all assets in the firm stay up to date. If you don’t have somebody, either an internal IT team or a Managed IT firm, the likelihood of your security vulnerabilities are much higher than they would otherwise be.
How does a Managed IT provider increase efficiency?
A business needs to know if and why their technology isn’t operating at optimal levels. This is why monitoring processes are vitally important. It is common for processes to be stuck and cause a computer system to slow down or stop functioning altogether, which causes the workflow to be slower than it should be.
A Managed IT provider can easily find where the process is stuck, stop it and allow the CPU to resume to its top speed. All of that can be done remotely. Monitoring is like having an IT team that’s looking over your shoulder to assist in any way they can.
Ransomware causes a serious loss of productivity if it’s not caught right away or properly managed. The loss of productivity comes from having to restore the backed-up data from another server and reinstall the necessary applications. Without an IT business continuity plan, that can take several hours or up to several days to complete. That entire time, no one is able to work.
We create business continuity plans that reduce that time to minutes instead of hours or days. A business continuity plan involves a virtual machine that runs continuously in congruency with your core infrastructure. It backups frequently; typically every 15 minutes. In the event that ransomware hits your main application server, we can simply change the hostname of that virtual machine to the hostname of what was that main application server. So, you take what could have been a multiple hour or multiple day downtime and turn it into a few minutes of downtime so the wheels can keep turning.
Is there a way to calculate the cost of downtime from a ransomware attack?
We provide prospective clients with a downtime calculator that shows how much they will save if they have a continuity plan in place. It considers the number of employees as well as other variables. They can see for themselves the cost if they were to be shut down.
Click here to try the down-time calculator.
Yes, a business continuity plan is an investment, but in the event of something like a cyberattack happening, it saves so much money on the back end. You don’t have lost revenue; you’re not paying employees while they’re not working. All of these things add up.
How does a Managed IT provider work with remote employees?
The pandemic supercharged the work-from-home model. But working from home creates a false sense of security. It’s still important that employees lock their computer if they step away. This keeps kids and others from clicking on a malicious link and inviting a cyberattack. Kids are especially susceptible to vulnerabilities. They often download malware or spyware while they’re just trying to play a game.
As the economy starts to open back up, expect workers to work in coffee shops and other public locations. This is when you really need your IT team. They should set up a VPN, proper endpoint security and DNS filtering. The DNS filter identifies and blocks malicious IP addresses.
An emerging problem with public networks is a phishing technique called “evil twins”. This is when a copycat of a well-known network is created by a hacker. If you’re not paying close attention, you won’t see that there are two networks with the same name. If you mistakenly connect to the evil twin, the hackers can extract passwords, sensitive information or anything you don’t want others to see.
Summary
Times have changed. We’re living in an era with more cyber threats. But we’re also in an era where small businesses and solo practitioners can have big-company IT expertise.
Managed IT companies help you navigate these times with a level of sophistication that was previously out of reach. They monitor your computers to identify and fix performance issues – without having to call IT. They also provide risk mitigation strategies for the eventual cyberattack. Because it’s not “if”, but rather it’s “when” you get hit.
Plan in advance and keep your business running and generating revenue.
Bio
With a lifetime spent in IT, Zachary Wilcoxen has seen it all. He started young as an agent doing on-site service calls for Computer Nerdz, before taking a position at a data center in the network operations center. There he maintained the infrastructure most people refer to as “the cloud”. Honing his craft, and studying computer science, he eventually took a software engineering position working on a popular cloud storage platform.
After a number of years in the workforce, building a skill set, Zac set off to start his own business which today is known as Pretect Managed IT Services. We offer 24/7 help desk support, proactive asset monitoring, cyber security, and automation.
Disclaimer
Daniels-Head Insurance Agency (DHIA) seeks thoughts and insights from a variety of individuals and organizations in the industry. The guest content on this blog represents the individual opinion of the author and not that of DHIA. Nor is it the opinion of DHIA’s underwriters and business partners. Neither DHIA nor DHIA’s business partners are recommending, endorsing, or sponsoring any companies, or third parties mentioned in this blog.
