3 Ways Managed IT Keeps Your Business in Business

In the natural course of doing business, an owner/operator will have to face many difficult situations, but none of these situations are as difficult as asking them to determine whether or not to close the doors of the business for good. Many problems could cause a business to fail, but it has to hurt the failing owner a little more when the solution for the problem was not only within his/her reach, it was affordable.

When we talk to our clients, they are normally well adept at managing (and mitigating) risk. They’ve taken quite a bit of it on by opening a business, and many of them understand that negligence in any aspect of their company can mean curtains for the business. We like to think that’s why they choose us, we work hard to improve their operational capabilities with properly-functioning technology; and, we have the solutions they need to ensure that if something unfortunate were to happen with that technology, that they are protected.

Managed IT services; or, the outsourcing of IT support and services is not a new concept, but it is one that not enough small business owners consider. You’ve all seen the statistics, cybercrime is way up and businesses of all types are firmly in the danger zone as they often hold assets that cybercriminals are looking to acquire: financial information and Personally Identifiable Information (PII). This is exactly why small businesses deal with over 4,000 cyberattacks a day; and, why you absolutely need to have a cyber security plan for your business, as well as a continuity plan if things end up going south. Here is what Directive supplies to ward against this type of tragedy:

Proactive Monitoring and Maintenance
No need to fix a problem that isn’t a problem in the first place. Small businesses today deal with all types of malware, social engineering, and other attacks that aim to steal your client’s data, breach your network, and decimate your relationship with your customers. With our remote monitoring and management tool, we are able to proactively monitor and maintain your business’ network and every piece of hardware attached to it. This way simple (and unavoidable) issues like a failing hard drive won’t become problems. Maintaining functioning technology can go a long way toward bridging the gap between breaking even and being profitable.

Comprehensive Threat Management
Every small business needs to understand what they are up against. It’s not pretty. With thousands of cyberattacks a day, some so powerful that they could potentially take down the entire Internet, businesses have to have (at the very least) a cursory threat management platform in place. A strong multi-layered approach, equipped with an enterprise-level firewall, spam protection, content filtering, and VPN access can go a long way toward keeping intruders out of your network.

Backup and Disaster Recovery
If you don’t understand the value of a backup system for your company’s data, let us spell it out for you as simply as possible. If you lose your data in some sort of cyberattack (or for any other reason), and you don’t have a reliable backup solution in place, you can flip a coin to see if your business will survive. It is that dire. To protect your business from something as benign as employee error, you absolutely need a backup solution. Our backup solution is special in that it only backs up changes to your files, and does it as frequently as every 15 minutes. This provides a fast, reliable product that backs up your data both onsite, and offsite in the cloud. By leveraging cloud computing to protect your business’s digital assets, you can forge ahead with the peace of mind knowing that if something terrible were to happen to your data, the process of restoration is fast, limiting profit-sapping downtime.

Our certified and knowledgeable technicians can help you build efficiency in several aspects of your business with our full cache of products and services that clients enjoy for a simple and affordable monthly price. For more information about Directive’s managed IT services, or any of our services that are designed to help your business be more secure and efficient, call us today at 607.433.2200.