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What does an IT Support Company do?

Choosing an IT support company is one of the most important decisions you can make for your business. With the amount of technology innovation over the last ten years, it’s imperative that organizations focus on their infrastructure improvements not just on business strategies for growth. To remain competitive businesses need to update their IT strategies along with internal processes.

But what is an IT support company?

Also known as Managed Services Provider (MSP), an IT support company is built around a group of IT specialists who make up the core of the company’s IT team. This team provides support for several different organizations serviced by the IT support company or MSP.

Their experience in cloud services such as server hosting, desktop hosting, file storage, or backup and disaster recovery services, not just one company but they share that support cost across hundreds of businesses in the area they support. With a pool of knowledge workers, an IT support company can offer comprehensive services at a fraction of the cost of hiring a cadre of technology employees. With on-demand helpdesk, your employee’s can submit tickets or call the support line for immediate attention to problems faced in working with technology. Keeping your employee’s productive and reducing internal needs, you can focus on what makes your business grow.

What does an IT support company do?

There are two facets to IT companies support plan. The first is fixing issues with technology, but they go one step further. They look to remediate the underlying problems with technology systems to alleviate additional calls. Correcting core issues drives productivity on the organization side and helps drive profitability on the IT services side.

A good MSP or IT services company will provide a monitoring service for all desktops and servers to report on issues before they are widely known, think of this as an early alerting system that gives the technology support company time to address the issue quickly.

Another facet of IT support is creating a ticket. Some companies provide ticket submission via email or a portal; another great offering is allowing employees to call with quick issues to talk to a live technician to tackle easier problems quickly over the phone.

Preventative Care for your Network

Much like medical care is focusing more on managing risk rather than waiting for unmonitored issues to become full-blown problems, IT services work with your company to co-author technology solutions to stay ahead of current trends before they become a problem. If you work with a business application that has a substantial upgrade, you’ll want to know if your current desktops are ready to handle the new application needs before the update occurs. Understanding how your organization does business is another critical component, so services and trends match your business goals and create alignment between both agencies.

Preventative planning also includes providing great backup services or full disaster recovery plans to keep your data safe in the event of a simple power outage, ransomware and malware, or something much more devastating.

Other preventative care services:

• Server Virtualization
• Offsite Cloud Backup
• Business Continuity
• High Availability

There are several services offered by IT support companies.

• Workstation and Server – patching and optimizing systems consistently for security and stability.
• Infrastructure planning – understanding of components like servers and switches but also of cabling and connecting those systems.
• Employee turnover planning – having a cookie cutter routine to follow when employees move or change is critical to reducing costs.
• Ethical phishing – training employees to become human firewalls, protecting organizational data at the source.
• Email migration and hosting – converting from internal email systems to external or from one service to another it’s important to have a partner that has the depth of skill for a smooth transition.
• IT projects – if you aren’t ready to go full outsourced IT or you have a fully trained staff currently IT services organizations can deliver project management for any infrastructure or connected environment projects that may be too large or time consuming for your current team.

What happens after you decide to hire an IT support company?

The IT support company will need to access your existing systems and processes to make the best recommendations for a mutually beneficial agreement. The assessment may be a review of your current systems, servers, desktops, or firewall and switches, or a complete scan of all devices to understand what condition they are currently in and what needs to be updated or corrected to move to a preventative care solution with an IT support services company. It may seem daunting at first but after the initial assessment things can move quickly and your organization can start realizing improved support services right away.

For additional information, please contact us today for an assessment of your environment.

How Can We Help?

Are you interested in Managed IT Services, IT Support, IT Consulting, Network Cabling, Structured Cabling, Network Security, Business Intelligence, or other Tech Support in and around San Antonio?  We’d love to help. Get in touch today by calling (210) 828-6081 or clicking here for a free quote!

Seven Benefits of partnering with the right Managed Services Provider

Managing IT services in the organization can be a real headache. Trying to stay ahead of technology changes while staying within a budget is difficult to manage even if you have internal staff. Day to day support and moving projects forward can be overwhelming even if your IT department is fully staffed.

As a leader in the SMB market, partnering with the right Managed Service Provider (MSP) can be the secret to your IT success. With a good Managed Service Provider partner labor costs can be greatly reduced, and IT services can be delegated. This will allow your internal staff to focus on projects and frees their time from “putting out fires”.

Managed Service Providers have a variety of tools that allow them insight into managing your network from monitoring services like internet connectivity or critical services stopping to managing patches or rolling out new software updates. Affordable options that help to streamline your processes and managing your network that takes staff can be delegated to a Managed Service Provider to provide a proactive level of support by creating tickets for these issues automatically and addressing problems often before your users are aware of an issue to prevent lapses in productivity.

Managed Service Providers can provide all or a portion of network services, so you can hire internally with help, or they can run your entire infrastructure. Often full services can be offered for less than hiring an internal staff with unlimited potential for access to several techs with a broad range of experience.

So how can partnership with a Managed IT Services like Rx Technology help you?

1. IT experts available 24/7 – Stuff happens, not every day but when it does you want to be ready. If the server crashes Saturday night most organizations will find out Monday morning as staff realizes they are unable to log in. Rx will notify you as soon as the server goes offline to get access and remediate.
2. Enhanced Security – Managing simple tasks like patches for operating systems all the way to managing the firewall proactively and watching for anomalies in network behavior are the bread and butter of our Managed Service Provider. Economies of scale give us unlimited potential in sophisticated systems at a fraction of the cost of a single organization to acquire the tools independently.
3. Vendor Management – Rx takes the burden of managing multiple vendors and systems which can save you money and time. We’ll take over contacting the ISP or other support vendor to allow your staff the time to focus on internal services rather than sitting on the phone tied up with one issue. You have access to a team of experts to address different needs of your infrastructure instead of one person trying to be the “Jack of all trades”, simultaneously being able to address needs within multi-location sites with diverse infrastructure environments.
4. Cloud Solutions – As more applications are being deployed in the cloud, you need a partner that understands the complexity of cloud integrations and management. Rx serves as your cloud expert, providing support, analytics, and integrations. Rather than relying on internal resources to become experts on how various applications you can count on Rx to have the experience from thousands of cloud deployments to insure successful launches and ongoing support.
5. Affordable access to the latest hardware and software – Rx can save your business thousands of dollars while ensuring that you are up to date on all the latest and greatest hardware and software. We become an extension of your organization and can anticipate which applications and integrations you will need to optimize your business. Because of our relationships with a wide range of vendors and their status as a value-added reseller, we can negotiate the best price for whatever you need.
6. Cost Savings vs. a dedicated internal IT team – Budgets are tight for SMBs, and having a dedicated staff on hand to solve complex issues can be expensive. Under-staffing IT can lead to constant issues and unexpected downtimes, while having internal IT staff sitting idle wastes critical company funds. By giving your support to a trusted Managed Service Provider, like Rx Technology, you receive enterprise class support well within an SMB budget. Imagine getting an entire support staff dedicated to maintaining your network for less than the cost of hiring one IT person!
7. Peace of mind – Having a dedicated Managed Service Provider that streamlines your business and serves as a single point of contact for all your vendors provides invaluable peace of mind. With the right Managed Service Provider partner, small and mid-sized business leaders can rest easy, knowing that their network is secure. They will always have the software and hardware they need to run efficiently, and there will always be someone on hand to help when systems go down.

Your Managed Service Provider partner can also help design a cloud solution that utilizes technologies to improve your day-to-day operations without the need to hire and train your own internal IT team. A high-value Managed Service Provider partner like Rx Technology takes care of all your IT issues so you can focus on running your business.

Rx Technology is the best IT Support company in San Antonio. To learn more about how a partnership with Rx Technology can help streamline your business, call us today at 1-800-698-6081. You can also contact us using the form or chat function below.

How Can We Help?

Are you interested in Managed IT Services, IT Support, IT Consulting, Network Cabling, Structured Cabling, Network Security, Business Intelligence, or other Tech Support in and around San Antonio?  We’d love to help. Get in touch today by calling (210) 828-6081 or clicking here for a free quote!

Outsource your IT or hire internally

As more companies move towards a managed IT services model to service their technology needs there are still questions on how best to implement that technology. Some companies struggle with the decision whether to outsource their IT or hire someone internally. We’re sharing a few of those concerns below to help you decide your support future.

What are some benefits of outsourcing your IT vs. hiring an internal team?

IT hiring can present a company with some rather unique challenges, many of which are accomplished by working with the right managed services provider. These include:

• In cost comparisons, companies found that outsourcing their IT staff saved money over full-time employees. The cost to hire, train, and reimburse for certification programs outweighed any contracts. There are no soft costs or taxes involved with managed services contracts either.
• Training internal IT staff to support your network also takes considerable time and effort. If any member leaves, there is a gap that comes where that training and the knowledge exchange occurs. A managed services organization builds out a repository of documentation surrounding your environment so that each member can pick up where another may leave off.
• Managed service providers also staff a deep bench of talent that is skilled and experienced in different areas of network support. Hiring an individual with skills in every network environment is unlikely or going to be very expensive.

“Won’t internal IT support respond to my requests for support faster?”

It is a common misconception that having someone on staff will respond quicker to technical issues than a remote staff. A good managed services partner will have monitoring tools that will detect and correct or create a ticket automatically to address issues with desktops and servers. Often before an end-user is aware of the problem. When several issues occur at once, they are also able to delegate resources to multiple issues rather than tackling one at a time.

“What if my managed services contact cannot resolve the issue?”

Much like internal IT staff, any single technician will not have all the answers. Sometimes technology will be outside their realm of understanding or expertise. A managed server partner with a larger support staff will often have the leverage to escalate issues to techs or engineers that have the experience to resolve the issue.

The alternative would be to hire expensive consultants to come in and resolve the issue if the internal staff is unable to resolve.

“If I outsource my IT, will I have to dissolve my internal staff?”

Even if you go with a managed services model, there are several reasons to keep part of your internal staff. Resolving issues that don’t require specialized knowledge of a certain technology and acting as the point of communication between the managed services team and your staff brings great value to the relationship.

We leverage internal staff to handle low-level calls and escalate issues outside of their understanding to our teams. We get a great synergy and bring a huge value to having not just an onsite resource that aligns your IT plans with your business objectives, but it gives your organization the leverage of technology experience and capabilities while controlling overhead costs.

“If I outsource IT will I be introducing risk in an environment where we have strict compliance and security policies?”

If you take the time to find a reputable managed services organization you won’t risk non-compliance. With the ability to share costs among several organizations, managed services organizations can leverage the economy of scale to offer HIPAA, PCI, and Security monitoring and compliance at a fraction of the costs for companies to purchase directly. Technicians are screened and monitored just like any other job.

Determining those security concerns up front allows the provider to set controls for accessing certain information or systems without supervision. With monitoring and feedback systems the outsourced, IT team can detect anomalies within the network and report on end-user behaviors, logins, and what individuals have access to network locations and devices. Reporting on any activity can be tracked and delivered to your organization on a regular schedule.

There are benefits to outsourcing IT, but it’s important to spend time finding the right organization with the right staff and abilities to leverage success with your business. Rx Technology has been in the support and technology field since 1995, offering best in class solutions, with certified and seasoned engineering staff to meet your goals and objectives.

Contact us today for a network assessment and discover how we can help your organization.

How to Protect Yourself from Phishing, Malware, and Ransomware Attacks – at Work and Home

We’ve all heard horror stories from friends or co-workers about Ransomware and locking files only to find out that backups weren’t effective, or worse those backups became corrupted by the infection. At least once a month we hear from organizations looking to recover files without paying the ransom and often it just isn’t possible. It gets worse, after paying the ransom, ransomware administrators send the wrong keys or nothing at all to unlock those important files. Since they ignore any regulations, they aren’t going to respond to requests for support, leaving your files damaged for a complete loss.

We’ve seen other variants in the wild now that appear not only to encrypt files, but they upload your files and databases to their servers before encryption. Effectively stealing clients lists or accounting information. Holding your documents and accounting data or client lists hostage if you refuse to pay. They may even opt to sell your data even after you pay the ransom.

Protecting yourself from Ransomware isn’t difficult, but you have to remain wary of every email you receive. There are ways to help you succeed without worrying about every link or attachment. Since some emails sent to specific users with a familiar “from” address, it is easier to trick users into thinking it is a legitimate source. The weakest link in any organization sits between the keyboard and chair. An effective training plan can help mitigate disasters and reduce the headaches of restoring files and disrupting your productivity.

First up we recommend you use a password keeper that stores all of your passwords in an encrypted container. Most of these systems use a single password that you have to remember to gain access to all of your information. This application will only fill in login information on the correct sites to prevent you from entering credentials on pages that are trying to steal your passwords by imitating a legitimate financial or important site. Automatic password filling applications are the best way to protect against entering credentials on misleading sites to expose your passwords.

Emails are frequently used to try and trick employees and sometimes even personal users. With requests to update passwords, wire transfer funds, or to update “important” information. These emails can appear to be from legitimate users by masking their identity, appearing to be from a person or organization by spoofing or faking the email address. With further examination, you can uncover a fake by replying and looking at the email address that appears in the reply line. Also hovering over links will show you the actual site that the link directs you vs. where it appears to point. These links often appear legitimate, but upon further review, you can see they are different, and that should give you a good reason not to click on any link in the email.

The subterfuge used to trick you into clicking links or files has been perfected by years of practice. If you are duped into clicking a bad file or link, do not feel like it is a failure on your part, hackers can produce some very believable emails to lure in the unsuspecting. With a proper backup, employee training, up to date firewall, spam filter, and anti-virus definitions you should be able to avoid a bulk of the scams circling the web currently.

Rx Technology provides Managed Security Services for the San Antonio, Austin, and surrounding areas. With all of the weapons to fight phishing or email scams, we can offer another level to account security and guide you in the process of not only securing your network but training your employee’s on best practices to avoid common mistakes. Contact us today to see how we can help your organization achieve your security goals.

A strong case for Managed Security Services

As you probably have heard Equifax was hacked and up to 143 million people have had their Social Security numbers and other data stolen. Aside from the fears and problems this brings about, let alone the fact that this is a company that along with two other credit data storing organizations, controls your financial future which puts you in a risk management mode. Do you freeze your credit with them? How do you find out if you were affected? With that many affected users, if you have a credit score, you probably were affected. Make sure you visit their site to get the latest information.

The other issue at stake is how good was their security? Many internal IT teams struggle to maintain a budget that allows them to meet growth challenges and struggle further when they ask for additional funds to shore up security concerns. Sometimes those concerns are easily fixed with patches that are readily available to download and install to protect yourself, but Anti-Virus and Firewalls aren’t going to catch all the threats as they come along. It’s simply impossible with so many new attacks developed daily. UPDATE: Today it was announced that it indeed was a patch released in March almost two months before the attack in mid-May occurred. Sad times for Equifax as this is going to affect most of us and has created a huge issue where most of us will have to monitor our credit reports actively week over week to stay ahead of any trouble.

Another attack, unrelated but chilling, is that the Argentina division of Equifax had a firewall connected to the internet that had the default username and password still assigned. A router like what many of us have in our homes was in use and the login which can be made from anywhere in the world was left as “admin” as the user and “admin” as the password exactly how it’s shipped from the factory. It’s difficult to come up with a scenario that many of us face daily that would paint a picture of how bad this is. It would be akin to a key fob for your car coming in from the factory with a default passcode and the dealer didn’t change them, they simply handed you a fob and you drove off only to find out later that fob opened several other cards like yours. You simply could walk the parking lot clicking your key fob and cars would unlock all around you. The only other difference is you can find those routers much quicker scanning the entire internet from a basement rather than driving to a parking lot to find a similar vehicle.

Basic security is just that, default passwords and patches should be the very least we should all practice whether at home or work. In todays connected world security through obscurity just doesn’t work. We can’t depend on the fact that billions of connected devices will hide us from predators when they can scan millions of devices per day to see if you forgot to change your password upon installation. It’s forgivable at home where many non-technical individuals are learning to live in a rapidly changing technical environment but in the workplace, with companies protecting private individuals’ personal information there is no room for a mistake like this. Two hacks to Equifax in the same week is the biggest news in security this week. I hope it’s the worst thing we hear about for years to come but it’s not likely to occur.

Business owners and executives in charge of their infrastructure should seek to shore up their internal systems. There are affordable ways to deal with monitoring and controlling access that don’t have to eat up revenue and profit. Consultants and Managed Security Services are great at sharing costs amongst all their customers to provide a service that would go far beyond most SMB’s ability to support.

For now, let’s look ahead and start thinking how we can all help to mitigate disasters like this by asking organizations we trust and work with how they are handling security to protect your data stored on their servers. By demanding security for our information, it will become paramount for organizations to protect their environments more carefully. Until then keep checking your credit report until the end of days if you’ve been exposed. There just isn’t a good ending to this story, or an ending at all.

Cybersecurity for Small to Medium Business

As we rely more and more on technology to run our organizations, it is becoming imperative to learn how that technology is also used against us. A secure environment to protect our customer data is our mission in IT support, and it is a never-ending challenge to evolve with threats as they emerge. There are a few ways you can focus on securing your data without compromising ease of use for your employees.

Most security recommendations initially start with changing your passwords frequently, usually every 90 days, but this seems to be the opposite of making it simpler for users to protect data. Frustrating employees who are inundated with remembering more passwords with increasing perplexity that leads to sticky notes plastered to monitors. It doesn’t take much thought to realize this is a horrible practice, but one that can almost be forgiven understanding the current restrictions!

There are several ways to overcome this problem, the first is obvious, simply extend the length of time between password updates. We recommend using “passphrases” vs. passwords simply because end users can more easily remember a phrase or sentence than a complex password like “Pa55w0Rd1SE4”. Consider a phrase like “Cole’s Law is thinly sliced cabbage!”. It has 36 characters, includes special characters, spaces, and most of all it’s silly and wouldn’t be something included in a brute force attack dictionary. Brute force dictionaries are lists of phrases and words that are created by hackers to insert into the password field repeatedly until the attacker gains access to an account. Brute force dictionaries include words like Password123, 12347890, even one-word names like Benji or Jesus. Using your login name, they constantly push a different password via the dictionary until they find a hit to gain access to your network.

The Top 25 Most Common Passwords

There are other ways to prevent intrusion by spending wisely on a firewall that will detect an attack by watching for the use of repeated attempts at a password for an account or signs of remote attack on the organization. These scans look for common programs or flaws in the operating systems to gain access to the system. Think of a doorbell that announces to the entire world that no one is home and to try the back door. What a disaster that would be! But that is exactly what happens in situations like these.

A good firewall, with a great monitoring and support, is a sure fire way to prevent most attacks. We don’t recommend consumer grade hardware that you find at discount electronics stores for this purpose since they are not built to handle the number of requests that even a small business produces. This will inevitably cause problems like network slowdowns, causing you to reset the router frequently. Invest in your infrastructure to protect your data, with several entry-level products that will give you superb protection for a reasonable price.

Another suggestion is to partner with a Managed Services organization that has the experience and knowledge from protecting thousands of networks to handling your network security. With the level of knowledge they provide, you can leverage shared resources to protect your network at a fraction of the cost vs. hiring an information security officer or additional IT staff to manage these external facing devices.

Another simple way to keep employees productive is to provide a Single Sign-On service (SSO) to manage all application logins from a single interface. Login in once on the company intranet and get signed into all of your business applications with one password. These services have added hundreds of applications to their repository over the years and are quite effective at managing passwords and logins making employee password management a breeze to maintain. Whatever direction you choose for your organization it’s important to remember that there is always more than one way to stay safe, without sacrificing a huge budget to achieve your security goals.

Rx Technology has been providing physical and network security solutions for San Antonio, Austin, and the surrounding areas for over twenty years. If you would like a security assessment, please use the contact us page or the chat box below to get started.