Are you treating your network with painkillers or vitamins?
Many people take painkillers for a temporary fix. It may be to relieve the pain of a headache or an injury or to provide temporary relief from back pain caused by weak back muscles. And yet others instead believe in taking vitamins, exercising, and avoiding health problems, and consequently, pain. One behavior is reactive. The other is proactive. It’s the difference between going to the doctor for annual physicals and check-ups and only going to the doctor when there’s a problem you can no longer tolerate.
These approaches are not unlike how many treat their business networks
Do you call an I.T. tech company only when there is a problem on your network? Perhaps your server’s hard drive failed. After hours of agonizing pain with your systems down (employees unable to work, unable to answer customers’ questions, losing revenue by the hour), do you finally call someone, hoping they can quickly relieve your pain? You gladly pay for the painkiller and hope that the pain doesn’t return. But it does. Maybe not tomorrow or next week, but perhaps next month. This time its a malware infection on one of the PCs. Pornographic images popping up when trying to access legitimate websites, maybe even a ‘Microsoft Warning Alert’ pop-up box with a voice stating ‘warning, your computer has been infected’ over and over again. So you call the computer geek back and pay for the painkiller, grateful that its not so bad; certainly nothing like a ransomware attack that the computer geek warned you about.
Or are you taking the vitamin approach to proactively managing your network?
Are you using the services of a Managed Services Provider (MSP) who will work to keep your network healthy, actively monitoring your device’s vital signs to jump in to repair before an unplanned outage, making sure your devices are patched and anti-malware software up-to-date? Do you rely on your MSP to stay abreast of new threats or issues affecting your business operations? Are you confident that your backups are working because you know your MSP is monitoring them daily?
If you’re a financial planner you’re watching the pulse of the markets, keeping an eye on your client’s portfolios to avoid downturns when possible. If you’re an accounting firm, you’re keeping an eye on tax regulations and matching them to how they affect your client’s returns and operations. These are all vitamin approaches. Shouldn’t you be doing the same for your network?
If it feels like you’re just popping one painkiller after another, I would say it’s time to bring in an MSP, like Golden Consulting, Inc., to begin the remedies for your network, getting it healthy again and keeping it healthy.
