Month: August 2018

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Tip of the Week: Cloud Software for File Sharing

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Businesses have a lot to gain by personal file storage and sharing, but then again, so does the individual user. After all, even the most ambitious business owner has a personal life and people to share information with. How can you share files with people without leaving them vulnerable to data theft and worse? Here are some options that you can use for your personal file sharing solution.

 While there are a lot of products on the market for this purpose, some of the best are those that can also be utilized for business purposes. Most of these file sharing services take advantage of the cloud so they can be used more readily for collaboration or sharing. Here are some of the most popular storage systems at a consumer level.

Google Drive
Google Drive is an extremely helpful tool that can be used by both businesses and personal users alike. It makes it very easy to share files and collaborate in a cloud-based interface. You can share documents, spreadsheets, images, videos, and just about any other file you want to share with other people. You can control permissions for these files as well, controlling who can do what with it. This includes sharing and editing, among other things.

As far as pricing goes, the average user with a Google account can take advantage of Google Drive free of charge, with the option for increasing storage space for a modest fee.

Microsoft OneDrive
Just like Google Drive, Microsoft’s flagship cloud storage system OneDrive is a great solution that integrates Microsoft office applications with their OneDrive cloud storage. The neat thing about Microsoft OneDrive is that it can sync with your Microsoft Office to always update files that you might have stored locally on the device you’re accessing it from. Just like Drive, OneDrive can be an excellent tool for both a business and individual user, with many different plans available for both power users and casual users alike.

Ultimately, the choice is yours on how to proceed with a cloud service for your personal needs. Let us know which one you decide on in the comments below.

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Reduce Your Costs By Outsourcing Your IT Management

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Your business deals with all types of troubles, but one trouble that can be extraordinarily costly is when your organization’s technology doesn’t work properly. That’s why many businesses hire an IT staff who work to mitigate technology-related problems. One issue you should be cognizant of is cost. Typically, IT professionals have training, certifications, and experience and demand an above average salary. If you have a small or medium-sized business that is working with tight margins as it is, it can be extremely difficult to take on new personnel costs; especially ones that don’t directly result in bringing revenue through the door.

A popular solution to this quandary is to outsource your organization’s IT management to a managed IT services provider (MSP), like COMPANYNAME. Our certified technicians will first assess your business’ information systems to get a good idea where your inefficiencies lie, then they’ll go to work devising a customized technology and management plan to fit your business’ needs. Starting a relationship with a baseline of knowledge we can deliver value through our cost-saving managed services that include:

  • Hardware & software support: We are the IT guys after all. We have relationships with some of the most notable vendors in the industry so our clients can get the hardware and software solutions they need to be the best version of their business. We’ll also ensure that any software you use will be up to date with the latest threat definitions.
  • Around the clock monitoring: In order to provide the ROI we intend to, our services have to reduce or eliminate your organization’s downtime. That’s why we monitor and proactively maintain your network and infrastructure with our state-of-the-art monitoring software. In doing so, if there is a threat to your network, or your hardware, we’ll know about it immediately, and we can take steps to remediate the issue. This allows you to get more from your hardware and avoid the operational problems that comes when you have to stop to deal with network and infrastructure issues. 
  • Backup and disaster recovery: Your business’ data is an extremely valuable asset, and as such, it has to be protected against situations that arise where you may lose it. Anything as benign as a storm could wipe out a lot of hard work. Our backup and disaster recovery platform not only backs up your data periodically, it creates copies that are sent off-site into the cloud, so that no matter what is thrown at your business, your data will be safe. 
  • Network security: Along with our monitoring and management program, we also ensure that your network is secured from the literally thousands of threats that face it every day. From malware to corruption to infiltration, our network security platform keeps your data available and your network working properly.
  • Vendor management: Along with having access to a myriad of top industry vendors, we also can help you manage your vendors, whether we use them or not.
  • Around the clock IT support: We offer a comprehensive help desk where technicians who have remote access to your end-points can solve situational computing problems for your staff 24/7.
  • Options: We also offer a whole cache of powerful IT solutions including cloud computing, communications, printing, conferencing, and physical security solutions that work for any-sized business.

If you are looking for a way to get the technology that can help you grow your business, you are just looking to reduce your IT management costs, or you are thinking of attempting to get your footing on a new IT initiative, call the IT professionals at COMPANYNAME today at PHONENUMBER.

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Why It’s Great that Managed Services are Managed

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One of the key benefits of managed IT services is right in the title. It’s managed, meaning that you don’t have to worry about maintaining or configuring your systems. Many small businesses see these kinds of advertisements out in the world but don’t necessarily understand what services are being marketed to them. We’ll take a deep dive into what you can expect from “managed” services for your organization.

Defining Managed Services
Managed services are any services your organization takes advantage of that aren’t managed directly by your company. Perhaps the best example is comparing it to the way the average consumer uses their email. Let’s say you use Gmail as your preferred email service for personal use. Do you manage the mail server running Gmail? Probably not, making the average Gmail user a patron of managed services. If you think about it in this sense, any service that your organization doesn’t manage on its own could be considered a managed service.

In the case of managed IT services, the term “managed” means anything that’s not hosted on your infrastructure or maintained by your on-site employees. This can be anything from cloud-based data storage and web applications to entirely hosted hardware infrastructures that are accessed virtually through the cloud. If you can think it, you can build it–the technology infrastructure of your dreams, without all of the frustration of managing and maintaining it on your own.

The rise of managed IT services has its roots in break-fix IT, where businesses would take their technology to a specialist in order to get issues resolved. This approach meant that they didn’t need employees to maintain the technology on-site, but it also came at a steep cost. Break-fix IT companies would take advantage of businesses that came to them in this fashion, taking care of immediate problems without taking measures for the long term. This meant that businesses would often experience even more issues without addressing the overarching problem, leading to wasted dollars and wasted time.

Now, back to the “managed” part. When a business isn’t managing its own IT, they don’t have to worry about these issues because they are being addressed by a company that A.) Knows how to take care of technology, B.) Takes proactive measures to ensure issues don’t reoccur, and most important of all, C.) Can save your business precious time and resources that can be better spent on other tasks. Imagine having enough time to invest in new outreach initiatives for potential clients, or finally having enough in your budget to not only invest in new technology solutions but implement great ways to increase your bottom line.

COMPANYNAME specializes in providing small businesses with the managed services they need to stay competitive with larger organizations. Managed services often come at a better price point than hiring an entire internal IT department, making it an attractive option for both businesses that don’t have resources to maintain an on-site infrastructure and those that have enough of a staff to manage one, but not enough to maintain it properly. We can either supplement your current help or function entirely as an outsourced IT provider. All you have to do is reach out and ask what we can do for your business.

To learn more about the managed IT business model, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

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Casserly Consulting Blog

Know Your Tech: Encryption Key

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Security is a necessity. Every technology professional will tell you this, but in an age where employees are taking information on the go, it’s trickier than it’s ever been before. Encryption is one of the ways that businesses are attempting to shore up their security, but this also requires having an encryption key. This week’s technology term is all about encryption, as well as how encryption keys protect your business’ data.

Defining Encryption and Encryption Keys
Encryption is the act of scrambling your organization’s data so that it can’t be seen by prying eyes. Anyone who doesn’t have the encryption key will see nothing but a bunch of nonsense. Through the use of algorithms, these keys are guaranteed to be unique, meaning that there are no two patterns that are alike. Of course, depending on the type of encryption being used, there could be one or two keys needed to decrypt information.

Symmetric algorithm: Symmetric algorithms are often called secret key encryption. This uses one key to encrypt and decrypt data. Since this makes for an efficient encryption method, it can be used to encrypt large amounts of data. The bad side of this encryption is that it only uses one single encryption key, so you need to make sure that it remains in your possession at all times.

Asymmetric algorithm: Asymmetric algorithms are commonly used in public/private encryption, in which there are two keys involved. The public key–the one used to encrypt data–can be shared, whereas the other–the private key–is private, and used to decrypt the data later. Asymmetric is considered the more secure of the two options, since the private key that decrypts the data isn’t actually shared.

What Are These Keys Used For?
Encryption keys are used for a variety of objectives, but the ultimate goal is still the same: security of both the data and the encryption keys themselves. The strength of the encryption key depends on several variables, including the length of the symmetric keys and the algorithm used to create it. These keys usually have short shelf lives called a crypto-period, meaning that you should understand details about how the encryption key will be used before committing to it and expecting it to work for you indefinitely.

  • Data encryption keys: These keys prevent data from being read by anyone who isn’t authorized to view it. These keys are also held onto for a bit past their crypto-period.
  • Authentication keys: An authentication key is used to determine that the data encrypted has not been altered at all while it’s in transit. This is ideal for sending and receiving data so that authenticity is guaranteed.
  • Digital signature keys: Digital signature keys are similar to authentication keys, but they take it a step further by applying a digital signature to the user. This means that someone who digitally signs a document can’t actually deny that they’ve done so.
  • Root keys: The public key infrastructure is used for authentication and digital signatures, and the root key is the highest level of key in this infrastructure. Due to the importance of this key, it’s generally protected by a hardware security module.
  • Master keys: A master key can be used to encrypt multiple other keys. This means that they need to be extremely secure with a hardware security module, and they should last for a long time, if not forever.
  • Key encryption keys: These keys can transport other encryption keys. They should be long-lasting and unchanging.

Does your organization want to take full advantage of encryption? To get started, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.