Do You Need A Managed Security Services Provider?

Network security worries have gotten way beyond concern over bemused hackers nosing around to see how far they can penetrate to achieve bragging rights among their peers. Cybercrime is now major crime. The goal is no longer the thrill of outwitting the local IT staff. It’s all about the money. If there is something worth stealing, there’s a motive for cyber criminals to target your network.

You really don’t have a choice when it comes to protecting your network, servers and other resources. The only choice you have is whether to do it yourself or outsource it. Outsourced security is often referred to as managed security services or SaaS, Security as a Service.

MegaPath, a major competitive carrier, offers a suite of managed security services that includes a managed firewall, intrusion prevention, anti-malware/anti-virus, web filtering, anti-spam, application control, data leak prevention, managed logging, vulnerability scanning, security information management, file integrity monitoring.

One area where the need for network security is particularly important is for electronic payments. There are millions, perhaps billions of dollars flying through networks as data packets at any given time. The payment card industry that includes all businesses involved in issuing and accepting electronic payments has strict standards in place for credit and debit cards, prepaid cards and other electronic payments. These are referred to as the PCI DSS for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

How confident are you that your retail or other business not only meets the letter of the law regarding PCI DSS but complies with industry best practices? It’s not just the large companies that are being targeted by organized crime. There is easier prey among smaller and mid-size organizations that lack the resources to adequately protect their own and cardholder data.

Don’t feel alone if you are concerned about being stretched thin and perhaps vulnerable when it comes to security resources. In a white paper called “The Compliance Trap”, MegaPath references comments by the Yankee Group that many companies with fewer than 50 employees often don’t even have a dedicated IT person. Companies with 100 employees typically have 2 IT staffers, and companies with 500 to 999 employees have five or fewer people with no security specialists on staff.

Certainly, you can take this as a cautionary tale and move to hire a security staff and the requisite hardware and software to fortify your network. Most companies with little or no security staff don’t have the budgets to embark on a major security upgrade in this challenging economic environment. But that needn’t stop you from improving the situation by getting your security as a service. Hiring an expert company that has already developed the necessary protocols and has trained staff available 24/7/365 can get you up to speed quickly and likely at a cost far below what you would have to spend yourself.

Do you need managed security services? If there is any question in your mind, why not get complementary cost quotes for security as a service and see how it fits your budget. You may decide that managed security is the way you want to go permanently.

Managed Hosting Service

If you run a website or an ecommerce business of any type, you are already familiar with web hosting. But did you know that there are many flavors of web hosting available? Have you heard of managed hosting serves? If not, you may be missing out on more reliable hosting solutions at costs lower than you may experience by trying to do everything yourself.

At the beginning of the commercial Internet, many businesses got their start online by acquiring server software and dedicating one computer to be the Web host. Today, most SOHO and small businesses have abandoned trying to do everything themselves and purchase their hosting service for just a few dollars a month. What they’re actually buying is something called “shared hosting” or “virtual hosting.” They are one of many businesses websites running on the same physical server. At relatively low traffic and business levels, you don’t need all the performance a modern server can provide and you don’t want to spend that much money.

Things change when you are supporting a larger organization or have a popular e-commerce site with thousands or tens of thousands of visitors browsing your pages, making demands on the databases, and placing orders with expectations of snappy response times. The need for the lowest cost hosting service becomes less important when the lost revenue from a day’s or even an hour’s downtime can exceed the monthly hosting fees. You can no longer afford to be at the mercy of someone else on the same server hogging resources or somehow crashing the system and taking your site down as well as their own.

At this point, you are ready for dedicated web hosting. That means that an entire server is allocated to your exclusive use. The question is whether to buy this service or buy the equipment and support the servers in-house. Companies with substantial IT staffs may have the talent and want the level of control that comes with having everything under one roof. Some may find that renting physical space in a colocation center gives them access to lower cost bandwidth and saves considerable cost on things like backup power and physical security. It’s still your equipment and you are responsible for it. It’s just not installed at your premises.

Managed hosting servers are provided by a colocation center and managed by center personnel as well. They buy the server hardware, provide all software updates for the device, ensure the physical security of their premises, have multiple levels of power backup so that power outages won’t even be seen by the equipment, provide fire suppression in the event something goes horribly wrong in those server racks, provide redundant bandwidth connections so that individual line failures won’t make your site invisible on the Internet, and monitor server operation 24/7/365.

One well known and respected provider of managed hosting services is The Planet. They specialize in mission-critical enterprise-class hosting solutions that range from a single physical server to complex infrastructures that can support the largest operations. These are customized to your needs and come with a Service Level Agreement that includes 100% power and network availability, 1 hour hardware replacement and 15 minute critical live-person response time. Their Northstar managed hosting also includes managed backup and data protection, security and patch management, database management and optimization and regular business and capacity planning.

Have your server-based operations become essential to the operation of your business? Do you struggle with having the right level of resources available at the right time? Would you be seriously jeopardized by a server outage? If so, you may be able to benefit from managed hosting from The Planet or other high quality hosting service. Get prices and availability on managed hosting services now.

Colocation Leverages Your IT Staff

Most businesses today, even the largest and most well known, find it hard to justify staff increases in this economic climate. That makes it tough on the IT department. Not only can't they expand to meet increasing demands for their time, but they may be subject to hiring freezes or even across the board staff reductions. Is there any way to keep this situation from heading into a morale and productivity meltdown?

There is one idea that can take some pressure off. What you need is leverage. That's the ability for each valued member of the team to be able to get more done without destroying their own health or getting so overextended that they start creating more problems than they solve. Forget trying to cram more work down fewer throats. Instead, use a technique that can multiply the effectiveness of your IT team.

That technique is called colocation. Basically, it's a way to outsource some of what you do while retaining control over the results. I know that outsourcing has gotten a tarnished reputation, especially among those who have seen their jobs moved overseas. This isn't that. In fact, everything remains nearby. What moves is not the hands-on customer service you enjoy in house or the business strategy that is core to your operation. What you are moving is the mundane, everyday infrastructure needed to run a data center.

With colocation, you move your equipment not your jobs, not your people. You rent rack space or a completely secure caged room where your servers, appliances and their WAN connections will reside. You still operate everything remotely and have access to the physical equipment when needed. What you don't do is provide physical space, main power and backup power, light, fire protection, and security. You can elect to have the colocation personnel do server maintenance and upgrades or just rent server capacity instead of owning it.

But isn't this a zero-sum game? You move the equipment from one spot to another but you still need all the resources you already have, right?

Not really. A colocation facility gains efficiency through economy of scale. A colo center can staff for monitoring, maintenance and security for hundreds of companies much cheaper than a hundred companies can do individually. The same is true for backup generators, data center facilities, and WAN bandwidth.

You may be having trouble getting the bandwidth you need because your facility just isn't located near enough to carrier facilities to make high bandwidth drops cost effective. But a colocation center often has multiple carriers with POPs (Points of Presence) in the building. They have all the bandwidth you could want and you'll get it at a bargain per Mbps or Gbps. The construction costs are as little as running a fiber or copper cable from your choice of carrier to your equipment location. You might pay very little. You might not have to pay anything.

Want to find out what colocation services can do for your business? Simply call the toll free number or enter a quick online quote request for colocation services now.

The Painless Way to Find Network Technicians

Your business is big enough and high tech enough that you have an in-house data network and a PBX telephone system. Perhaps you have even converged your networks with an enterprise VoIP phone system. But what you don't have is the budget for a full time IT staff and certainly not a telecommunications department. You need to hire the services you need as you need them. But is there an easy way to find contractors to do this work?

There is now. It's called the VAR Network. VAR stands for Value Added Reseller. These are companies that specialize in the equipment offered by one or more manufacturers. VARs range in scope from authorized dealers that simply stock and ship equipment to full service companies that offer consulting, sales, system design, installation, training, upgrades and repairs.

The VAR Network specializes in two types of technologies. They are business telephone systems and computer networks. If what you need is help with either of these technologies, then the VAR Network is your place for one stop shopping. The VARs that are part of this network can help you with everything from replacement parts to turnkey systems.

Here's how it works. You simply browse to the VAR Network site and look for the link that best describes the services you need. That could be network equipment, high speed Internet service, phone system hardware, telephone service, or VoIP equipment & service. You can simply start your request by selecting telephone or data networking. Or just put in your zip code and let the site guide you through a structured inquiry.

What happens next? Your request is matched to participating VARs in the database. These are dealers and technicians who have registered to become members of the VAR Network. The are distributed geographically across the United States. You'll only be contacted by VARs that serve your area and have the capabilities that you request. When a VAR calls, you can get into a more detailed discussion or set up a meeting.

How much does all of this cost? Absolutely nothing to you the customer. VARs support the network based on the new business it brings them. They compete to get the best leads by providing superior service that may include both the system and the connectivity you require.

Do you have a need for technical support? Perhaps something you've been putting off because you weren't sure where to get the right help? Here's your chance to get the service you need without any more grief. Simply visit the VAR Network right now and get your inquiry started. The system is available 24/7 online so anytime is a good time to give it a try.

Visible Means of IT Support

What do you do when your computer starts acting up? How about when your server starts acting up? Well, if you work for a large company with a large IT staff, help is as near as an internal phone call. But how about if you are an independent professional or run a small to medium size business? Not so easy, is it?

Most individuals and small business people maintain their own desktops and notebook computers... as best they can. If you are really on top of things you know your system inside and out, probably have an extensive manual collection for your operating system and other software, and are horrified at the thought of missing a patch. If you are not so on top of things, you only get horrified when things come crashing down. Then it's scratch your head time or pack it all up and head back to the store where you bought it.

Even if the store experts really are top-notch troubleshooters, can you really afford to be without your computer for days or weeks? Don't squint like that! I've personally had laptop issues that took the factory depot to fix, and it was weeks. Even if you don't run into a worst-case scenario with failed hardware, even small problems can take hours and hours to isolate and repair. Sometimes it's easier to just do what the less-bright techs tell you and perform a complete reinstall of everything. That can keep you busy for a couple of days.

So is there really a better option? How about preventive care to keep little problems from turning into big ones? If and when you do have a whopper of an issue, it's comforting to know that help is really only a phone call away. You could have that piece of mind right now with expert help from SupportSpace.