What are Managed IT Services? You?ve more than likely heard about the ?as a service? business model. A lot of companies utilize this these days, ranging from Netflix to Microsoft. What this model essentially entails is that you pay a monthly fee for goods or services rendered. In the case of Netflix, you pay per month to get access to its video catalog. For Microsoft, you might pay for access to Microsoft Office 365 and all of its solutions. Either way, you are paying a small monthly fee that is easier to afford and fit into a budget than paying for the products outright. In this context, you can see how managed IT services might fit into the picture. Companies that don?t have the resources to hire full-time technicians might instead choose to outsource this responsibility to a local IT provider like White Mountain IT Services. It is much easier to fit a monthly payment into an operational budget than multiple full-time salaries, something that any organization hiring technicians would have to consider. Another major benefit of managed IT services is that they can be leveraged remotely without on-site visits. This is a huge benefit for your business and your budget. Instead of paying technicians for the time they spend traveling to and from your office, you will get proactive support from a staff of certified technicians.  Let?s Look at Some Examples Managed IT is so practical that if you can think of it, you can make it happen. Chances are that just about any service that an in-house IT technician can provide can also be outsourced to a managed service provider. Here are just a couple of examples to get the possibilities flowing: Network management and maintenance Security management Data backup and disaster recovery Hardware and software deployment Email hosting and management Mobile device management And so much more! Get Started with Managed Services Today! If you are one of the countless businesses that worry about technology management and maintenance, White Mountain IT Services can help your organization focus on what it does best instead of being paralyzed by the thought of your infrastructure collapsing. We can help your organization effectively manage IT without breaking your budget. To learn more, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.

Filing Cabinets How many filing cabinets do you have in your office? You know, those big metal cabinets that are filled with paper documents that may (or may not) have been used in the past six months? These have traditionally been used to keep files in safe locations, but the fact of the matter is that they simply have no place in the office environment these days?at least not in the same capacity as they used to be. Instead, the cloud and document storage systems can effectively replace filing cabinets, offering safe digital environments for documents to be stored. When you consider that filing cabinets take up a ton of space and are impossible to move on a whim, it just makes sense to store these documents in an online environment, where they take up significantly less physical space and are easy to transfer to whoever needs them. Conference Room Gatherings Trying to corral your entire workforce into one room may have been easy when you were a startup, but as your business grows, so too does your number of employees. It might have been possible once, but with so many different people and schedules to work around, it can be difficult to get everyone together for meetings in this way. Thankfully, technology has offered solutions for this, too. Video conferencing allows you to hold much larger meetings from the comfort of your desk, again removing the need for the physical space to hold such large-scale meetings. Furthermore, since these video conferencing solutions often also come with schedule integration, you can get a bird?s eye view of everyone?s availability before scheduling a meeting, allowing you to make them more inclusive. Traditional Work Desk Accommodations The normal workday might involve your employees sitting at their jobs, getting up once in a while to have a discussion with others, or generally performing their duties from the same space all day long. They might use their work desk to do this work, making use of smartphones or laptops when out of the office, but more and more, the latter tends to be the new normal for businesses. Thanks to remote technology, employees are no longer tethered to their desks and can now do work from any location, provided they have the solutions needed to complete their day-to-day tasks. The pandemic has proved that most jobs can be performed remotely, so you can prepare employees for this and perhaps reduce your own expenses in the process. Landline Telephones Imagine picking up a landline in today?s business environment. It?s pretty hard to imagine, right? There is a good reason for this, as is the case with most outdated office technology. Adding new handsets to an infrastructure often involved running new wires throughout the office, a process which was both time-consuming and costly, depending on its setup. Thankfully, modern business technology has offered alternatives here, as well. Voice over IP systems offer yet another way for organizations to eliminate unneeded or outdated office conventions and establish more streamlined systems specific to their needs. Voice over IP lets you eliminate your landline entirely and replace it with a telephony solution that runs on your Internet connection, slimming down your infrastructure and cutting unnecessary costs. Since it comes with many of the features you would expect of business […]

First, let?s consider the big question: is Discord a good option for businesses to use? Is Discord a Solid Business Solution? As you?d expect, the answer to this question isn?t so clear-cut. It really depends on what you intend to use it for. As Discord servers can?t be individually separated by privacy settings, they aren?t well-suited to businesses that need a tool for both their internal and external communications. There is also no guarantee that your messages will be accessible in the future, making it less than ideal for keeping a record of your communications. Furthermore, the automations built into Discord (called ?bots?) offer effectively nothing that could serve any practical business utility. However, while it can?t effectively serve as a single solution for all of your communications, it does offer a few features that make it an effective tool in the right situation?and it doesn?t hurt that the basic version is free. Adding users is a simple, one-step process, and you can even grant these users different roles that dictate what they can see on your server. Speaking of the server, it is also important to acknowledge what it resembles more than anything else: a live conference call line to the rest of the office. Does this help to recreate the open office environment amongst a remote team, in terms of just speaking up to start a conversation? Absolutely? you just need to keep in mind that the practicality Discord offers is somewhat limited. We leave the decision of whether or not to use Discord to you. In case you do, here are a few tips you might find useful: How to Create a Discord Server In Discord, look to the left side column. This is your dashboard, and it is the place where you can open a new server by simply clicking the ?+? button. Name it, select your region, and click Create. You?ll then want to define the roles that different users on your server can have, which is how you can effectively mimic access controls. How to Send Customized Invites Once your server is created, you?ll want to add your users. From your new server (or from the message that pops up when you first create it) select the Invite your friends option. This can be found in the dropdown menu at the upper left of your window. Select Invite People, and you?ll be given the option to search for someone by their username, invite one of your existing friends on the platform, or (most fitting to our needs) send them a link to your server.  Under the displayed link, you?ll find the option to Edit invite link, which gives you the ability to set an expiration date, a maximum number of users who can click it, and the option to kick anyone who uses it out of the server again once they disconnect unless they have been assigned an official role. Once you?ve customized it to your liking, Generate a New Link, Copy the link by pressing the button and paste it into any message you send your intended user. Mind you, this is all assuming you?re working from the desktop. So, let us know: have you tried using Discord as a business tool? If you have, what did you think? Are you interested in […]

Let?s dive into the details and see what can be learned from this ransomware attack. What is Kaseya? Kaseya is a software vendor that works closely with managed service providers (MSPs) to provide IT solutions. The software designed by Kaseya is meant to be used by managed service providers and large enterprises to manage and support technology across multiple networks. As reported by ZDNet, at least 40,000 companies worldwide use at least one tool created by Kaseya. The attack in question leveraged a vulnerability in Kaseya?s VSA service, which is basically a remote monitoring and management tool.  Since Kaseya plays such a key role in connecting IT companies to the businesses that they support, it should come as no surprise that such a ransomware attack could have profound effects on both the MSP service industry and the countless businesses that are supported by them. If your IT provider happened to use this particular software, there is a good chance that you were unlucky enough to become a victim of this attack, especially if other countermeasures weren?t in place. The Attack?s Timeline To give you an idea of how this attack has progressed, let?s take a look at the timeline, as it was reported by ZDNet: July 2, 2021: Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola announced that the company experienced an attack against the VSA that was limited to ?a small number of on-premise customers.? Voccola also urged users of the VSA service to disconnect all servers hosting the solution in an effort to prevent further infections. Kaseya informed those potentially affected by the attack, as well as shut down their own SaaS servers as a safety precaution. July 3, 2021: Kaseya released a Compromise Detection Tool to help customers determine if they have been compromised by the ransomware or not. The tool analyzes the endpoint or server to see if there is any indication of compromise on the system. July 4, 2021: Kaseya declared that they had become a ?victim of a sophisticated cyberattack,? and brought in external security experts, including Mandiant, to aid in learning more about the attack and resolving the issue. July 5, 2021: Kaseya issued the following update: “We are developing the new patch for on-premises clients in parallel with the SaaS Data Center restoration. We are deploying in SaaS first as we control every aspect of that environment. Once that has begun, we will publish the schedule for distributing the patch for on-premises customers.” The attack itself is thought to have been administered via an automated malicious software update, bypassing authentication and executing commands remotely. More information on this attack can be found in Kaseya?s briefing on the incident here. The Takeaway Since this particular issue was caused by a zero-day vulnerability (a previously unknown vulnerability) in a provider?s systems, it is hard to fault anyone in particular for this hack, but it does further reinforce the importance of monitoring your system for irregularities, as this attack was only uncovered as a result of such monitoring. Imagine the damage that could have been caused by this threat if it were to remain undiscovered for an extended period of time. It just goes to show that even businesses that do everything right can still become victims of ransomware attacks. While there are countermeasures to prevent ransomware attacks and […]

Security The biggest and perhaps most noteworthy issue that arises with cloud migration is security, and it?s easy to see why. When you move data or applications to the cloud, you are essentially letting it live in an online environment where it can be accessed as needed. This presents all sorts of complications that must be considered. How is it accessed? Where is it stored? What kind of cloud is the best fit for the security needs of this particular data or application? A good example is the public cloud versus the private cloud; while the public cloud might be great for accessibility and ease of use, the private cloud will enhance security considerably by giving you more options. Traditionally, the public cloud does not allow for the dynamic security solutions that businesses might want for their cloud infrastructures, but private clouds do. Compatibility Whether or not you should migrate to the cloud is a serious question to entertain, as well. Just because you can move applications or data into the cloud doesn?t mean that you always should. Sometimes it?s better in terms of privacy regulations to keep data stored in-house where it is ?safer? and easier to centralize compared to the cloud. You also might need to consider whether or not the applications that you want to host in the cloud are compatible or user-friendly in a cloud-based environment. Some resource-intensive applications might require significant amounts of bandwidth in order to function properly, and it might turn into a question of whether the convenience and ease of access is worth the monetary investment. Scalability How easy is it for you to add more data storage, more users, or more features to your cloud-based applications or storage solutions? You will want to have a solid understanding of each of these for every application of the cloud you have for your organization. It also helps to plan for change and scale for growth in this regard; failing to do so could lead to your business spending too much time and too many resources than anticipated, potentially killing your budget and increasing the cost of implementation far beyond what you had initially expected. If you are unsure of how to progress toward cloud migration, White Mountain IT Services can help your business navigate through these challenges. Most important of all, we can do all of the work of migrating your data to the cloud so that you can instead focus on the process of keeping your organization?s operations in proper working order, minimizing downtime and the risk of a botched migration. To learn more, reach out to us at (603) 889-0800.