Be Careful Who You Trust When It Comes to Remote Access to Your Network

Enabling remote access to your network—even if it’s to a trusted internal team member—should never be done lightly. For Oneonta businesses that have yet to explore the potential of working with a managed IT provider like Directive, the concept might be a little foreign to you. 

Remote access is actually crucial for us, because it allows us to do our jobs more effectively. We can monitor your entire network and solve problems before they affect your team when you work with us. There is a fine line, however, between carefully granting someone access to your network and opening up a whole can of worms.

First, let’s approach the crux of the whole issue: why we would want remote network access in the first place.

Why Would Tech Support Need Remote Access to My Network?

Before we answer this, let’s consider today’s reality: businesses move fast—too fast to be able to spare any more time than absolutely necessary to remediate any issues that arise. Unfortunately, threats also move just as fast.

Now, let’s do a bit of algebra:

Malware Variant A can do x amount of damage to your productivity each hour. If it takes 4 hours before an IT provider can get to the office, how much will Malware Variant A cost an infected business before any steps can be taken?

To solve this problem, it would help to know what value x represents, but if we’re being honest, four times whatever it is can’t be good. Plus, that’s only part of the cost… to find the total cost, you would also need to know y, or the time it would take to identify and fix the problem once the IT provider arrived:

Cost = 4(x) + (xy)

Alternatively, let’s consider the same problem, with the caveat that the business has enlisted the help of an MSP.

Malware Variant A can do x amount of damage each hour. If it takes a few minutes for a managed service provider to remote into the business’ network, how much will Malware Variant A cost an infected business before any steps can be taken?

See the difference? This one change immediately turns the equation above into the following:

Cost = (xy)

By cutting out the travel time, managed services can save a business a significant amount of time… and as a direct result, the costs associated with the extended downtime a business experienced would be diminished significantly.

You need to look at IT problems as if they are draining profits (let’s face it, they are). If a single computer goes down, and that user can’t be productive without it, then you are losing out on what you are paying that employee, plus you can usually factor in some type of revenue loss from them not being able to do their job. If you have ten computers go down because malware spread across your network, suddenly you can start seeing thousands of dollars every hour fly out the window.

This Increased Speed (and the Cost Savings) is Just One Benefit of our Remote Capabilities

Working with us as your IT provider will contribute to many other benefits for your business and its operations. Not only does it enable us to prevent various malware infections, annoying computer issues, and other day-to-day problems through proactive protections and preparations, it helps us catch any that may have already made their way in so they can be expeditiously resolved.

On top of that, if a user is stuck trying to get their job done, but can’t quite figure something out, we’re but a phone call or support ticket away. Our techs are eager to help users through their tech support questions.

When NOT to Allow Remote Access

We’ve talked about the benefits, but there are cons to letting a third party into your network. It’s typically less about letting someone in, and more about who you let in.

There has been a widespread trend the last few years where both Oneonta residents and businesses have received phone calls where the caller claims to be from Microsoft Support, or IT support, or some other generic tech support company. The call usually goes something like this:

“Hello, we’re from IT and we noticed that your computer is experiencing a problem. We would need you to help us get in so we can solve this problem for you.” First and foremost, if you can detect a problem on a PC, you are already in the PC.

These calls are just assuming that you’ll fall for the bait and help them get in so they can do harm to your device, plant malware or ransomware, or simply charge you money to fix a problem you probably didn’t have.

If you’ve made it this far in our blog, we typically assume you wouldn’t fall for something like that, but it does happen. Otsego county residents reportedly lost over $70k to these types of scams during the first half of 2019. And while you might not fall for it, what about your employees?

It’s also important that your remote access is set up in a way that it is secure, and that information that is being sent and received is encrypted, so it can’t be intercepted or stolen. Everything we do starts with cybersecurity, so we make absolutely certain we don’t open up your network to known risks when we work with you. After all, when you are one of our clients, we’re the ones that have to call all hands on deck if you were to get infected with malware.

We essentially treat our clients’ networks like our own, and security and following best practices are a huge part of our core.

Work With Us for a Full Complement of IT Services and Support

Take advantage of 24/7 remote and onsite technical support with the help of Directive, your friendly neighborhood managed service provider, so you can enjoy a number of operational benefits:

• Help desk support available to your users, any hour of any day, through our NOCOLOGY client portal.
• Unlimited phone support, also available whenever you need it, any hour of every day based on your agreement.
• On-site emergency support, also available at all hours of the day, based on your agreement.
• Remote access solutions that enable your team members to securely access their work PC through the Internet.
• Managed security solutions, including antivirus, spyware monitoring, maintenance, and removal.

In addition to these benefits, remote access also allows us to keep an eye on your technology so that any expiring software or hardware solutions can be identified and preparations made to update them according to a preplanned schedule.

On top of that, we can help you with virtually any of your other technology needs, from business communications, phones, software, printers, physical security, cybersecurity compliances, website design, and a whole lot more.

Give Your Team the Resources They’ll Need

Remote maintenance is the key to businesses’ long-term success and we’ll be there to assist them with whatever they are having difficulties with, providing help whenever they’ll need it. Give us a call at 607.433.2200 to learn more about our services today.