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By the DynaSis Team

Proactive IT administration—where specialized technology continually scans a company’s networks and systems to detect and promote resolution of potential issues—is becoming increasingly popular among organizations seeking greater availability and employee productivity. With these technologies, small software “agents” installed on the systems scan for problems and either fix them automatically or alert technicians (often at a third-party provider’s location) who can step in and perform any necessary work.

The question for firms that haven’t adopted proactive IT administration then becomes, “Is this service really worth it?” For companies that can tolerate a lengthy amount of system downtime without having their business disrupted, the answer might be, “No.” However, most firms consider significant downtime unacceptable, making the theoretical benefits very attractive. DynaSis provides this service to its customers, so we thought it would be interesting to examine the hard-dollar benefits of proactive IT monitoring and management.

We found a 2010 survey, conducted by a leading provider of the software that enables services such as these, that indicates the ROI is very appealing. In the survey of 100 companies using proactive administration technologies, 60 percent reported that the solution proved its worth within 60 days of purchase.

A closer inspection revealed that the savings were significant in reduced IT expense, alone. Productivity gains for IT-specific functions amounted to 55 minutes a month, and included a reduction in the time to perform backups, system upgrades and patch installs, regulatory and compliance checks, and more.

Furthermore, these systems can also help with automated power management—where electricity flowing to idle machines is reduced. As a final “sustainability” bonus, proactive IT administration cuts down on technician visits to resolve problems, which reduces miles driven and, therefore, corporate carbon footprints.

These benefits were calculated completely independent of the “business downtime” metric we mentioned initially—the one that most companies consider in their decision. We see, nearly every day, how proactive system monitoring and management makes a major difference in IT outcomes in this area. For example, without a proactive monitoring solution in place, overloaded hardware can go undetected for months, until it causes a major outage that must be resolved with a lengthy technician visit. With proactive administration, technicians are alerted immediately, and they can often fix the problem remotely with a few clicks of the mouse. Users have no knowledge of the activity and company operations continue, unaffected.

The unobtrusive nature of proactive IT administration is one of the variables that sometimes makes it hard for us to illustrate the benefit of this service to our potential customers. If you have questioned the value of having remote intervention before trouble starts, we hope this information has helped. To learn more about proactive IT monitoring, management and administration, or to explore the services we offer in this area, we invite you to give us a call.

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By the DynaSis Team

In last week’s article, we briefly mentioned virtualization in the context of our discussion on disaster recovery. For those unfamiliar with the concept, virtualization involves portioning one or more physical servers into multiple virtual machines (VMs), each of which can have its own file store, overall purpose and operating system and be isolated from the others. (Think of a VM as a sophisticated version of a partition, e.g. the C: or D: drive, on a PC.)

Virtualization greatly enhances operating efficiency and can provide a much more secure environment than a traditional server setup. Because each machine is discrete, with virtualization it can be easier to segregate and protect data of all types.

However, virtualization also increases security challenges, because there are more machines to manage―and potentially more ways for a cybercriminal to find his way in. This week, we’ll talk about a few challenges that business owners face in protecting their data in virtual environments.

1. Sprawl: The ease of creating VMs is leading to sprawl― much like a suburb that blossoms because land is inexpensive and home building practices are more efficient. This potential for expansion makes effective management and security a greater challenge, especially if “tech-savvy” users can access systems and create their own VMs.
2. Density: Current technologies enable a few physical servers to handle a very large load of virtualized servers, but firms focused on efficiency often virtualize those servers to maximum capacity. If not properly configured, these servers may lack the capacity for IT management functions, including security.
3. Big Data: Compounding this issue, the explosion of data―and the need to save so much of it to a permanent storage location―is causing data stores to explode, with multi-terabyte data stores not unusual. Keeping tabs on―and ensuring appropriate security for―this much data is a daunting task.
4. Application Integration: With the increase in virtualized applications, companies are challenged to provide the same level of protection and security that they could on a physical server.
5. Granular Recovery: In the early days of virtualization, the traditional backup recovery approach was to remount an entire machine from the backup. In today’s environment, companies want file or object-level restores, but the security challenges of controlling such selective access and retrieve operations are considerable.

Fortunately, an appropriate combination of automated monitoring and hands-on management makes it much easier to ensure visibility, management and security of VMs. DynaSis has spent nearly three decades perfecting its approach to managing and securing IT systems at all levels, from mobile devices to servers, including virtualized environments.

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By the DynaSis Team

With fewer than eight percent of companies (of all sizes) adopting Office 365 (per a May 2014 Bitglass survey of 81,000 firms), we have to ask ourselves, “What is holding organizations back?” Office 365 is a great product, and its subscription model makes it affordable for firms of all sizes while eliminating the hassle of licensing upgrades. Yet, adoption has been slow.

Based upon investigation and our experience, we postulate that several factors are impacting organizations’ decisions. One reason may be concerns about cloud security. Per the Bitglass survey mentioned above, 42% of companies are currently eschewing cloud adoption due to security concerns.

We find this development unfortunate, because the cloud absolutely can be safe with stringent security mechanisms and a reputable provider. However, that is a discussion for a different article. For the purposes of this discussion, it is evident that even this amount of “cloud concern” cannot be the only factor hampering Office 365 adoption.

In our opinion, another issue is the complexity of the move, itself. Office 365 is a great productivity tool, once it is up and running. However, implementing it is more involved than most organizations realize and ongoing operation is not completely hands-off. Consider these key tasks involved in the migration:

• Determine which versions of on-premise Office are running and who is using them. Decide if everyone is a migration candidate.
• Choose an Office 365 model. There is a variety of price points for the offerings, each of which includes a different set of applications and tools.
• Install the on-premise versions of all applications on user’s machines and devices (up to five per user), potentially with hardware upgrades being involved.
• Document all email accounts and confirm which ones should move to Office 365. If they are web-based, determine if they should remain open and accessible individually (Office 365 will sync with rather than replace them) or if the users can migrate to Office 365’s email service completely. Back up the email stores and import them into Office 365. Notify all contacts of new email addresses, if appropriate.

After migration, the organization will also need someone to administer Office 365 and provide Help Desk support. Commonly requested support issues include resetting passwords, setting mailbox and/or folder permissions, and more.

We suspect (and have heard from others) that many companies run the Office 365 “trial” with the intention of adopting it fully. Then, they realize they do not have the time and expertise to merge all their Office resources and set up Office 365 completely. Alternatively, they end up with a partial migration that creates a mess and so abandon the product. In other words, they cannot manage a do-it-yourself move.

Microsoft recently initiated a program, called Fasttrack, designed to help companies get Office 365 up and running smoothly. Unfortunately for small and medium sized business owners, it is optimized for installations of 150 seats or more, and all of the help is remote or online. It also cannot start until a company purchases Office 365. Taking such an approach extends adoption time, because organizations cannot work with a tech team to perform advance planning.

For any company wishing to adopt Office 365, we recommend working with a local IT expert that has technological competence with Office 365 migration and management. We just happen to be one of those firms, so if you would like to know more or discuss such a solution, please fill out our inquiry form or give us a call at (770) 569-4600.

By the DynaSis Team

The results of a survey, conducted this year at an IT support conference, indicates that corporate IT departments are stretched way too thin and at the same time constricted by lack of budget (36 percent), resources (24 percent) or team skills (20 percent). Furthermore, 44 percent of IT managers polled for the survey said lack of technological awareness at the executive management level has created a divide between the board room and the IT department, in terms of priorities.

If you are an IT professional reading this, you are probably nodding your head in agreement. If you are a small or medium-sized business (SMB) owner, you are probably thinking, “That doesn’t apply to my firm.”  This disconnect is precisely where the problem lies.

According to the survey, if given free reign over IT decision-making, 58 percent of IT professionals would prioritize long-term, back-end infrastructure investment. Another 24 percent would pursue virtualization, and 18 percent would add more storage. Yet, according to survey respondents, none of these long-term investments topped the priority list at the upper management level. The executive priority most often cited by survey respondents (20%) was upgrading productivity software―such as Microsoft Office.

We’re not discouraging anyone from upgrading their productivity software. In fact, DynaSis is behind Office 365 (Microsoft’s new subscription-based licensing model for Office) 100 percent. We even offer a solution package for this product that includes planning, migration and support.

We are suggesting that the ability of many companies to operate effectively and competitively is being hampered because overtaxed IT professionals are trying unsuccessfully to run shoe-string operations with stressed out, often insufficient or inadequately skilled IT teams. In some cases, they’re trying to do everything themselves.

Technology is simply too important―and too much of a productivity builder―for executive leaders not to listen to their IT managers and work towards giving them the budget and resources to do their jobs. This doesn’t mean that organizations have to hire and train more workers or make major directional shifts.

At DynaSis, we have long assisted companies in a “back-up” capacity―coordinating closely with IT managers and taking over important tasks, such as help desk support or hardware installation, that they do not have time to manage effectively. In doing so, we give them the “breathing room” they need to focus on planning, coordination and strategic initiatives.

Of course, at some point business owners also must increase their budgets and give their IT managers some measure of control over decision-making to achieve the best outcomes. Frequently, we find that once business leaders stop and really look at the bottom-line benefits that more technology can bring them, they find those increases aren’t as painful as they expected.

If you are a business owner (with or without an IT manager), we would be happy to sit down and talk with you about what your next step should be. If you are a frustrated IT manager, we can help pull together the metrics you need to persuade executive leadership to see things your way. We can also back you up, wherever and whenever you need help. For more information, fill out our inquiry form or give us a call at (770) 569-4600.

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By the DynaSis Team

In our last article, we talked about some important technology assessments and their value to your business and IT success. In this article, we’ll talk about another type of IT assessment― establishing a workable goal for the level of “uptime” (technology continuity) you require.

Ultimate availability, in the technology world, is 99.999% uptime. At that level, companies should have barely five minutes of unplanned downtime (system outage), per year. In reality, obtaining such an uptime figure is prohibitively expensive for the average business. Even dropping a decimal―to 99.99% (approximately an hour of yearly downtime)―doesn’t reduce the cost substantially.

So, how can you decide where your business falls, on the scale of attaining maximum uptime and productivity? In our viewpoint, a more realistic goal for many businesses is 99.9% uptime or better. At that level, a company can anticipate fewer than nine hours of unplanned downtime each year.

Some companies decide they can live with even more downtime. At 99% downtime, businesses experience approximately 87 hours of downtime, per year. We don’t recommend any business set its bar so low, especially if it relies heavily upon technology. Nevertheless, every business owner has to decide what is appropriate for his or her firm. Some business owners find a happy medium by opting for higher availability for mission-critical systems like email, but accepting a higher level of risk and downtime for information they can go a day or two without.

Beyond deciding how much downtime you can live with, also consider how much business disruption you can tolerate. Given that the work day consumes only one-third of each 24-hour period and most firms are closed on weekends, most business owners might assume that with 99% uptime, they would experience far less than one-third of their 87 hours of downtime during the working day. In many cases, they would be wrong.

The reality is that systems tend to fail when they are under heavy load. In many cases, issues can arise at night or over the weekend, but only when workers start using their systems do those issues cause trouble. If an IT provider proactively monitors your network and systems 24/7, troubleshooting and resolving issues as they arise, there is a good chance most of your downtime will happen when the office is closed.

If your provider doesn’t guarantee after-hours monitoring and problem resolution, then system glitches and issues may result in office-hours disruption while you wait for a technician to arrive. Furthermore, your availability figures may be skewed unfairly in the provider’s favor, because the provider also may not be monitoring your availability after hours or on weekends. As a result, no downtime that occurs outside business hours will count in any performance penalties you negotiate.

Finally, many IT providers exclude “planned” downtime (such as system maintenance) from their uptime guarantee. Before you sign with a company that takes that approach, be sure they’ll perform your system maintenance after hours or on weekends, or your total downtime figure could soar.

In the final analysis, finding your “sweet spot” for system availability requires more than deciding what level of unplanned downtime you can live with. It also involves partnering with a provider (or hiring an in-house team) that supports your goal in the least disruptive manner possible.

If you’d like to learn more about how the IT industry approaches downtime, as well as other considerations for achieving IT continuity without unpleasant surprises, fill out our inquiry form or give us a call at (770) 569-4600.

By the DynaSis Team

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In our last article, we touched a bit on mobile security as part of our larger discussion of mobile email adoption. We thought you might appreciate a follow-up discussion of the mobile device practices you should be putting in place to protect your company and personnel.

As corporate users continue to access business data and applications on their mobile devices, they blur the lines between company and personal use. Yet, numerous studies indicate that requiring employees to use a “company only” device lowers productivity and engenders user dissatisfaction.

Furthermore, at least one study found if workers are not allowed to use their personal devices for work, a large percentage will find workarounds to sneak corporate information onto personal devices in defiance of corporate policy. Those who engage in this practice generally aren’t corporate saboteurs―they’re simply frustrated employees that want to check email or perform other work tasks on their personal devices.

So, what’s a small or medium-sized business (SMB) to do? Engage in mobile device management (MDM), which lets organizations tightly manage mobile apps, secure mobile access to enterprise data, protect business data no matter where it is accessed or stored, and maintain auditable control over mobile devices.

Such robust MDM used to require a dedicated server that generally supported only one device platform (BlackBerry was the most common, in the past). Such solutions were beyond the capabilities (both in price and in complexity) of most firms.

Today, however, it’s possible to enjoy device-agnostic (any platform, within limits) MDM as a service. With such a solution, SMBs pay a fee for access to a platform that will ensure corporate protection. (Solutions such as these should provide all the support a company needs and completely alleviate the need to develop a solution in house or bear the burden of purchasing and configuring an MDM server.) The best of them combine desktop and device management under a single service, creating a “single pane of glass” view into all of a company’s user-run devices.

Many Managed IT service vendors provide such services, but all offerings are not created equal. Following are some key features to look for in a solution for your own firm:

• Track location of mobile devices based on location history or in real time;
• Trigger an alarm sound to help track a lost or stolen device;
• Lock, wipe and reset lost or stolen devices;
• Maintain a catalog of required apps and a list of banned apps, with remote app monitoring to ensure compliance.
• Configure email and settings―for any monitored device―remotely and automatically.
• Collect detailed inventory information as part of a complete network view.

At DynaSis, our offering combines desktop and device management, rolling MDM (smartphones and tablets) in with support and protection for corporate PCs (desktops and laptops). It incorporates all the best-practices protections we have discussed here, and more, and is included with many of our solutions. To learn more, fill out our inquiry form or give us a call at 678.218.1769.

By the DynaSis Team
[featured_image]Across the board, IT experts recommend that organizations conduct quarterly business reviews (QBRs). Whether these transpire with internal IT staff and key company stakeholders or between third-party IT providers and those same stakeholders, they are crucial to keeping an IT plan on track.

Why is this? To be most effective and help a company drive productivity and ROI, firms need their IT plans to be proactive, not reactive. IT plans need to reflect what is on the company’s horizon―and where leadership wants the business to go. With this information, IT staff and consultants can help a company make better decisions during budgeting, or when unexpected purchasing opportunities (such as a hardware failure or expiring software license) arise.

QBRs are also a time for company stakeholders and their IT staff and/or vendors to reevaluate priorities, and reflect on how emerging trends or interesting new developments might change the trajectory of the firm and its IT plans.

So, how do they work? For DynaSis’ customers, Quarterly Business Reviews take place with their Technical Account Manager (TAM). During the QBR, the TAM asks about the firm’s current and future business initiatives to determine how DynaSis (and technology, overall) can best support them. At the conclusion of the event, the TAM has collected enough information to ensure DynaSis is up to speed on your business goals and can help the firm align its IT programs and plans with those goals.

QBRs are not a forum to discuss upcoming projects, or ticket resolution or any other detail of your service plan. And they are certainly not a time when a vendor should try to sell a firm on purchasing more products or services.

We have discovered that when DynaSis stays informed about its clients’ long-term plans and objectives―and when we learn, early on, about any shifts in their business directions―we can better help them plan for that future. This often includes preventing IT missteps or making advance decisions that avert unnecessary downtime and expenditures.

If you are not conducting QBRs, we urge you to incorporate them into your IT calendars. And, if you are a DynaSis customer, when your TAM calls to request your next QBR, we hope you will look forward to the discussion and be excited about scheduling a meeting.

To learn more about QBRs (or to initiate a meeting if you already work with us), please fill out our inquiry form or give us a call at 678.218.1769.

By the DynaSis Team

[featured_image] Week of April 7, the tech world was in a frenzy with news of the Heartbleed bug. Websites scrambled to close the flaw and notify their users that they were protected. Some security experts proclaimed that everyone, everywhere, should change all their Internet passwords―but not until each site was safe. Internet users looked on with confusion, not sure exactly what they should do.

Here at DynaSis, because our servers use Windows SSL and not OpenSSL (the security protocol that is vulnerable), we didn’t need to worry about it. For the handful of our customers that are running the Linux operating system and have a secure (https) website, we patched their systems as soon as the fix came out. Those patches took only a few minutes to install, after which time we confirmed that they were working. Mission accomplished.

The Heartbleed bug―which was not a virus, worm or any other type of malware introduced by criminals, but rather a coding flaw in the software itself―highlights the importance of regular system updates and patches. These types of security flaws are not uncommon in software code, and vigilant developers issue “repairs” as soon as they become aware of them.

The patches and updates that we and others receive from software developers contain these fixes. At DynaSis, most of our services include what we call “proactive network and server management,” which includes application of all patches and updates, so our customers never have to worry about patching their systems. (This service also includes a host of other benefits, but that’s not the topic of this blog.)

The real question, of course, is should you be worried? A study released last week by the U.S. Energy Department’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says they cannot find any evidence of a Heartbleed-based attack since January 2014. The researchers also suggested that any attacks in the two years prior to discovery of the Heartbleed flaw would have been uncovered by now.

However, now that the bug has been so widely publicized, it may become a target for cybercriminals. The top 1,000 most heavily trafficked sites have patched their OpenSSL installations, but millions of smaller sites have not. Researchers at the University of Michigan are maintaining a Heartbleed Bug Health Report which lists the top 1,000 most vulnerable sites and maintains updates on activity surrounding the flaw. Furthermore, a handful of Android mobile devices use the version of OpenSSL that contains the Heartbleed bug. Those concerned about the security of their information on the Internet or their Android device can take a variety of precautionary measures, many of which are covered in this article.

If all of this sounds like too much to process, much less handle on your own, the technical experts at DynaSis will be happy to assist. Just fill out our inquiry form or give us a call.

By the DynaSis Team

[featured_image]The weekend before we posted this article, news broke that Google’s DNS server had been hacked. The DNS (domain name system) is a system that assigns and keeps track of the Internet addresses for every Internet-connected resource. A DNS server uses this information to translate the domain names we associate with websites into their numerical equivalent (called IP addresses) to allow Internet users to reach their destinations.

For 22 minutes on Saturday, March 15, Google’s DNS server was under the control of hackers, who had the ability to redirect traffic to any domain they chose. In this case, millions of users who used Google were redirected to British Telecommunications’ Latin American division in Venezuela and Brazil―but their connection could also have been routed through any other Internet server along the way, exposing their connections and information, en route.

This news comes at the same time the media are announcing that Target ignored advice from its cybersecurity firm before its historic holiday 2013 data breach, and shortly after Bitcoin exchange MtGox filed for bankruptcy, saying it had lost some 8.5 million Bitcoins to hackers. (Bitcoins are a form of currency used for various online transactions―users deposit real money into these exchanges to keep Bitcoins readily available in their accounts for later use. All of them may have lost their investments.)

These stories once again underscore the vulnerability of even the largest merchants, Internet providers and financial institutions. In the case of Target, the news also reinforces the notion that companies can be culpable in the event of bad decision making―possibly leaving them deeply liable for their negligence when security breaches occur.

For this reason, DynaSis urges all its blog readers―customers and others―to have security assessments done and to ensure their networks are as robustly defended as possible. Furthermore, based on the recent spate of news, we encourage companies not to consider large entities or their Internet sites and services to be “safe.” As this news illustrates, any company whose personnel used the corporate network to access Google for searches or Target to purchase office items could potentially have put company IT assets at risk. Stout security defenses may be able to prevent such redirection, and, if not, they can certainly prevent attackers from accessing company information during the redirects.

We also remind our customers to upgrade all their Windows XP computers before the end-of-support deadline on April 8, 2014. At that point, Microsoft will no longer provide security updates for that operating system (OS), exposing to attack both the Windows XP computers and the networks to which they are connected. Upgrading your office systems to a new OS may require hardware upgrades, as well, so companies should not wait until the last minute to engage in this effort.

Our technical experts can perform a network assessment for your company, complete with a full software inventory, to identify and let you address every instance of Windows XP running on your network. To learn more, fill out our inquiry form or give us a call.

By the DynaSis Team

[featured_image]In last week’s blog, we talked about the upcoming end-of-support date for Windows XP (April 8, 2014) and touched upon the two migration options―Windows 7 or Windows 8 (8.1 is the most recent release). Although Windows 7 will “look” more familiar to users, Windows 8 helps companies make a huge leap towards the largely mobile world predicted for our business futures.

If your company is going to undergo the effort of a widespread operating system (OS) migration, you owe it to yourself and your business to fully consider the benefits of jumping straight to Windows 8. Some of the issues to consider as you are making your decision include:

1. Mobility: How many of your employees currently use, or will soon use, tablets? What about smartphones? Windows 8 was built from the ground up for mobility, and it is likely the best choice for companies that currently have―or intend to have in the next few years―a largely mobile workforce.

Even if your users are already running iOS (iPhone; iPad) or Android (“Google” devices, often by HTC or Samsung), there is a benefit in migrating to Windows 8 for your desktops. Windows remains the OS of choice for business usage, by far, and some (but not all) devices running the iOS or Android OS can run Windows 8. In cases where this is not possible, adopting Windows 8 for compatible desktops and mobile devices now―and changing platforms incrementally with planned upgrades in the future―lets companies eventually standardize on a single platform. A single OS streamlines user governance and training, and it facilitates the “Three Cs”―connectivity, communication and collaboration.

2. Legacy Equipment: Are your PCs running Windows XP old and outdated? If so, you will likely need new desktop PCs (or a shift to virtualization) in order to run either Windows 7 or Windows 8. Such a move requires thoughtful planning and resource allocation. If you are undergoing a major IT project like this, anyway, it makes sense to upgrade to the most recent version of Windows, now.

3. User Uptake: When Windows 8 came out, its highly mobile-centric interface elicited frustrated comments from many early adopters. However, with Windows 8, Microsoft added many elements of the “classic” Windows interface back into the user experience. Without any modifications, users can click one of Windows 8’s “tiles” to shift from the mobile-optimized interface to the classic Desktop.

It’s also possible to make the classic Windows user interface the default for Windows 8 machines and to disable the mobile-centric interface entirely, either through system tweaks or via a third-party applet. This approach lets employees enjoy a largely classic Windows experience as long as necessary to facilitate user adoption.

There are other considerations, of course, and DynaSis’ virtual CIOs can discuss these with you, helping you evaluate your business and user needs and create a workable roadmap for adoption. The takeaway here is that, while Windows 8 does involve a learning curve, this curve leads to the future of Windows-based computing. With Windows 7 (as much as we all love it), there is no comparable benefit. To evaluate your options, or to order a network assessment (during which we will identify exactly which OSs your users are running, and where), fill out our inquiry form or give us a call.