How to Handle an Employee-Caused Security Breach
Employee-caused security breaches happen daily. In fact, 92% of data breaches are caused by human error. If you own a company or oversee a technology department, you should fully expect these things to happen and have a plan to both prevent these incidents and solve them quickly when they happen.
Point North Networks is the trusted IT partner for businesses that embrace technology. We’ll leave it up to your HR department to handle employees, but we can step in to solve security breaches if things go wrong, as well as help to stop them from happening. Here are some ways we help to handle employee-caused security breaches:
#1 Training that empowers
What if your employees knew how to mitigate errors that could harm their personal data and the company’s data? Point North Networks has employee cybersecurity training programs that empower them to stay safe from threats.
#2 Contain the breach
When a breach occurs, moving quickly is essential. Contain the situation by shutting down systems, changing passwords, and isolating affected devices. This can help limit the impact of the problem.
#3 Notify management
This is not the time to prioritize the fear of getting in trouble. A good IT department knows these things happen and it benefits everyone to know as soon as possible what happened so they can make informed decisions.
#4 Communicate with affected parties
Whether it’s your customers or partners, or businesses you share data spaces with, you need to be transparent and tell them all the information they need to know, including how you’re solving the problem.
Having a plan for security breaches doesn’t mean the situation is perfect, but it puts you in a significantly better position than you would be without a plan. Work with a team like Point North Networks to be prepared for these incidents in the best way possible.
5 Reasons to Ask an MSP to Help With Microsoft 365 Migration
As one of Minnesota’s top MSPs, we have helped a lot of companies migrate to Microsoft 365. It provides a plethora of benefits for employees and has top security features that businesses need. However, technology department leaders often begin this process with hesitation, mostly because the task seems incredibly daunting and they naturally worry how much of a chore this will turn out to be for themselves. That’s when Point North Networks comes in.
Here are the five reasons technology leaders should work with an MSP to facilitate Microsoft 365 migration for their organization.
- To minimize disruption – A good MSP will try to minimize the amount of downtime for your business as much as possible. They often can perform the migration outside of your business hours so that your team can continue on without interruption.
- To stay secure – An MSP will use the latest security protocols to make sure your data is protected during the migration process. A DIY method can leave your data extremely vulnerable.
- To save you the research and learning time – Find an experienced MSP who understands the complexities of Microsoft 365 migration so that you don’t have to study it all right away. A helpful MSP will do its part to guide you through the process so that you gain the understanding you need as you go.
- To save money – MSPs try to find you the most cost-effective solutions so that you don’t end up making costly mistakes.
- To have someone to lean on – At Point North Networks, we offer ongoing support when we perform Microsoft 365 migration so that we can answer your team’s questions, troubleshoot issues, and keep your environment up-to-date.
Contact Point North Networks today to make the transition to Microsoft 365 in a streamlined and safe way.
How Technology Companies Can Effectively Manage Supply Chain Risks
Introduction
Digital transformation has its pros and cons, with the major con being increased vulnerability to cyber-attacks. Many businesses fail to realize that cybersecurity is something that affects your entire supply chain, as well as the people and processes that make up their whole operation.
The supply chain, a global marketplace worth $15.85 billion is the blood that keeps the manufacturing and retail industries running. Almost 57% of companies are said to believe that supply chain management increases their competitive edge, while 70% believe that it increases their productivity.
A supply chain disruption can bring these industries to a standstill and break the commercial world down. This is why it is important to handle supply chain risk management to minimize supply chain disruption and supply chain risks. Trish Regan, an American TV presenter summed it perfectly saying, “Anytime there’s a disruption in the supply chain, any time people cut back on spending, there will be a recession.”
Proper supply chain risk management helps business, both small and large, utilize the tried and tested strategic steps that mitigate supply chain risks and result in business continuity.
Adopting that mindset and taking these measures can help your technology company manage supply chain risks and stay ahead of the curve. As Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth puts it, “Global supply chains have many constituents and responsible parties. Everyone in the supply chain has a responsibility to act in a way that promotes effeciency in the supply chain.”
1 – Enforce Supply Chain Security
Your employees cannot simply address supply chain risks as they come, or else chaos will ensue. Apply daily security policies so that employees know how to both mitigate and respond to risks.
This can look like a security checklist, daily measurements of performance, and defining responsibilities for holding all parties accountable. Point North Networks offers employee cybersecurity training to create and develop better supply chain resilience.
2 – Adopt International Standards of Supply Chain
For those who exchange and store vast amounts of data like medical records, financial data, and more, regulated access is a must. International IT standards like GDPR and HIPAA ensure organizations manage this data securely and document it.
When selecting a SaaS vendor, find out if they are SOC 2 or ISO27001 compliant to meet security standards.
3 – Have a Layered Security System
Managing multiple third-party vendors makes it a little harder to predict threats. Layered security protects each level of your infrastructure with a unique solution. That means if one fails, others can step in to help.
“If the global supply chains are too fragmented, they’re more vulnerable to shock. And that presents a threat to businesses everywhere,” says Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr, CEO of Mayflower-Plymouth. Having a layered security system will require your employees to be trained and tested regularly to identify the threats at each level.
4 – Implement PPRR Risk Management
This is a popular supply chain risk management technique used globally to ensure that minimum supply chain risks are faced by businesses. It includes prevention, preparedness, response and recovery for managing supply chain risk.
It is all about taking the right precautionary measures, having a contingency plan, executing it properly and resuming operations and bringing things back to normalcy as soon as possible.
5 – Managing Environmental Risks
Managing environmental risks or natural disasters came to the fore after the global supply chain was majorly disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, a large number of retailers depended on China for supplies. Once the pandemic hit, the entire global market and the global supply chains saw a dwindling of potential risks that the pandemic brought.
With limited workforce and supplies, several retailers were forced to relook at their strategy of depending on a single supplier. A multiple suppliers system evolved during this time that gave the retailers multiple options for getting their supplies and enhancing their delivery processes and supply chain management.
Retailers across the globe follow newly developed strategies to ensure that their supply chain risk exposure is involved in supply chain risk management. Multisource, nearshore, implementing stress tests, building inventory buffers and increased capacity, and investing in product and plant harmonization have emerged as the go-to risk management steps for retailers to handle such situations.
Today, risk management is an important part of global supply chains. It helps companies maintain supply chain efficiency and develop a risk aware culture to be prepared for all sorts of potential risks.
6 – Having a Robust Cyber Supply Chain Risk Management
Today, the Internet of Things and other similar technologies have become an integral part of maximizing supply chain operations. However, it also brings along the element of online threats, exposure to ransomware, malware, phishing and even hacking.
Such threats can, however, be minimized by implementing a robust cybersecurity system. You must have a compliance system for all third party vendors. Establish a controlled access system where only authorized or limited number of users can access the system.
Vendor risk assessment, implementing data stewardship, and installing software that reflects all user activities in your systems can also provide a strong protective covering from threats, further cementing your risk management.
You must provide comprehensive training to all employees about all kinds of cybersecurity protocols and work with vendors from your network for a unified disaster recovery plan. Establishing backup controls and regularly updating safety walls and antivirus systems are also good options for minimizing risk factors and supply chain disruptions.
7 – Enhance Your Supply Chain Visibility
Research show that only 6% report complete visibility on their supply chain. Knowing everything about your supply chain partners can help mitigate risks and help you take better decisions and enhance risk management. Factors like the financial stability of the suppliers will help you choose the best ones.
There are several credit rating agencies that predict the financial report of a supplier from a list of suppliers, helping you reduce the risk of choosing the wrong partner. This can reduce your vulnerability and supply chain risk.
Investing in technology that will provide higher product and shipment visibility will help you give your customers more accurate delivery time or develop a contingency plan in case of delays. Such technological support comes in handy in risk management in last-mile situations where third parties take charge and risk factors like losing sight of your shipment can arise.
8 – Track the Carrier Metrics
Irrespective of where you are in the supply chain, you must keep a track of where your freight carrier is and when the delivery will be made. Any delay in the delivery processes, even if it means a delay of a single item delivered late can disrupt the supply chain, increasing the supply chain risk.
So, you must keep a tab on your freight carrier by evaluating its efficiency if you are embarking on a new collaboration. However, regular evaluation of the ones that you have been already working with is also a good idea. Following are the metrics you must track:
Keep a tab on the transit time, that is the total amount of time it takes for a freight carrier to reach its destination. Taking the number of stops a carrier takes on the way is also something to be accounted for. The higher the stops, the longer will be the transit time. Even if it stops only once, if it’s a long halt, it can delay the assignment.
The average loading time is another aspect that you must account for. This includes the amount of time for loading the carrier and completing the paperwork. Also, ensure that the carrier is maintained regularly so that there are no unwarranted breakdowns.
Route optimization is another important factor. A well-optimized route will save time and fuel, two very important factors in supply chain risk management.
9 – Have a Contingency Plan for Supply Chain Risk Management
Business continuity is imperative for any company and having a contingency plan is an important step in supply chain risk management. Risk assessment, accounting for known and unknown risks and risk mitigation, etc. are important factors to look at.
Additionally, map your supply chain to know the key component that might be vulnerable. Take account of your primary supplier and your secondary suppliers and develop mitigation strategies around them. A good way of doing this is by diversifying your suppliers.
Regularly audit your suppliers and what contingency plans they have. Establish a crisis management team to come into action during emergencies. Keep all communication channels seamlessly integrated. Document all processes and develop a single source of information.
Stay updated with the global scenario and keep your contingency plan open so that it can be redeveloped according to the changing global scenario. Have alternate contingency plans.
10 – Train Your Staff – Risk Awareness Training
One sure way of having a competitive advantage over others is to keep your staff well trained. Providing risk awareness training will keep them agile and aware of what kind of risks can impact the supply chain and what actions are required to mitigate risks.
Your training module must include risks and challenges involved in supply chain management, best practices of supply chain risk management, and improving cybersecurity awareness by providing computer and internet training. Risk assessment software training should also be included in the module. Case studies show that supply chain attacks have increased by 78% since 2017 and almost 58% of such attacks happen on small businesses.
11 – Risk Monitoring
Supply chain risk will present itself at one point or the other. It is one thing that you are prepared for risk mitigation and it is a completely different thing to monitor risks and adopt a proactive approach. There are internal supply chain risks and external supply chain risks, and monitoring risks can create a risk aware culture and keep the entire company better prepared to manage things.
Most companies assume that their process is risk free, but that is never the case. Things can change for the worse at any time. That is why regular monitoring is important.
To Conclude
The best way of doing it so implement a digital retail solution that can be scaled as your business grows. Such a system will automate the monitoring of different aspects of the supply chain. This will help streamline your business operations while providing you with peace of mind.
Need solid supply chain risk management support? Contact Point North Networks today to work with a partner who will identify all the ways you can mitigate supply chain risks to your business.
3 Ways to Ensure You’re Downloading Files Safely
Downloading files is simply a part of life. We all have to do it, but not everyone knows how to do it safely. Cybercriminals have taken advantage of this and now it is too easy to download a virus straight onto your computer. Here are some tips for staying vigilant.
Understand what personal data is being collected
Did the site ask you to submit any information before accessing the file? Many websites require an email opt-in in order to receive a download and that is pretty common practice. However, if you’re noticing extra steps that need to be taken, you may start to question its legitimacy. There should be no reason to submit other personal information to get a simple file.
If the file is sent via email, consider the source. Is the email address it sent to you a jumbled mess of letters and not attached to a standard .com website? Many email platforms also have virus scanners within them that can tell you if the file is safe.
If the download is something you have to pay for, then it should be from a trusted website that you have set up an account with. Setting up an account with a website will allow the site to collect more personal data about you over time, however, trusted e-commerce sites should have the correct measures in place to protect their customers’ data. Many are required by law, after all.
Consider the source the download is coming from
With that said, how do you know the website you’re downloading from is a trusted source? There are a few things you can look at to decide.
- Does the website have an SSL certificate?
- Does the website have a privacy policy?
- Check website reviews.
- Search for the Official Sources.
- Check domain age.
Again, if the file comes from an email, be sure you trust the sender and check the address it is coming from.
Use a scanner
Your email platform should be able to scan files and will give you a warning message or an option to do this when you click on the file. We recommend using it as often as you can.
For a file from a website, there are many online scanner tools which you can copy the file download link into to check its safety.
At Point North Networks, we make it a goal to empower and educate employees about how to protect themselves from cybersecurity threats. Just contact us to learn more about our training and to add a trusted partner to your team that will protect your company from cybercriminals.
Digital Data is Amazing, Part 2
Last time, we broke down how much data is stored in a typical book, and how much data every book in the Library of Congress contains. This time, let’s really show you what that data consists of, and some other really neat comparisons to put things into perspective. Buckle up!
A Piece of Data is a Bit, but What Is a Bit, Really?
Last time, we mentioned that data is composed of ones and zeroes, called bits. There are 7 bits in an English character, and 8 bits in a byte. Why do we break down bits by simple ones and zeroes?
Throughout most of the last 70 years, and technically even before that, we’ve stored digital information in a very simple, easy-to-comprehend way. Imagine a row of 7 lights. Any single light can either be lit up, or dark. There is no in-between. A one, or a zero. Depending on which lights are lit and which lights are dark, gives you a different character. It could be a number, it could be a letter, or it could be a symbol. Now multiply that row of 7 lights thousands, or millions, or billions of times, and you’ll have a massive array of lights that can convey large quantities of data.
For the last 70 years, most of our data storage has used this concept, mostly by using magnets.
Inside the traditional mechanical hard drive are multiple spinning platters. To the common eye, they look sort of like CDs stacked on top of each other. They spin incredibly fast, usually at 72,000 RPM. On these platters are billions of tiny little magnets. There’s a little arm that floats just over top of the platter as it spins, and it reads and manipulates the magnets as you read and write data to the drive.
The sensitivity of this device is absolutely incredible. Imagine taking a single human eyelash, and holding it in the palm of your hand. Your hand wouldn’t even recognize its weight, right? If we were to cut that eyelash into 100 little pieces, and place one of those pieces on the arm of a hard drive, it would dramatically bend it. This arm is designed to detect forces billions of times smaller than that.
Kinda makes you realize the importance of data backup, right?
This miraculous little marvel of engineering has been the cornerstone of data storage in every single computer over the last several decades.
More recently, modern computers have started using Solid State Drives (SSDs) which store data as an electrical charge in tiny little transistors. These drives don’t rely on mechanical movement or magnets, which is much better for mobile devices as it uses less electricity and can survive being jostled around much more in your pocket compared to a mechanical drive.
Either way, these devices contain billions or trillions of pieces of information.
How Much Data Can I Hold in My Hand?
Last time, we came up with the amount of data of all of the books in the U.S. Library of Congress. It was about 51 Terabytes based on our estimates. We said that, right now, you can’t really hold that much data in a mobile device. You could, however, hold that much data in the palm of your hand.
Take a look at the image above for this blog post. That’s a Micro SD card. Many digital cameras, smartphones, and other mobile devices use them to store data. At the time of writing this blog, you can purchase a Micro SD card that stores 1 Terabyte of information in a form factor that is about the size of your own thumbnail. 1 Terabyte could hold just under a 50th of the entire Library of Congress.
One of these tiny little cards can hold about a million books.
Dozens of these little Micro SD cards can fit into the palm of your hand—you could easily keep hundreds of them in your pockets.
If you weren’t the reading type, you could use your 1 Terabyte Micro SD card to hold:
- 200,000 songs
- 250 full-length movies in full HD
- 5 million pages of PDF documents
- 250,000 photos taken with a 12 megapixel camera
- Essentially every video game from the 80s and 90s.
- Or you could store 10,000 copies of Windows 95 and Microsoft Office 95.
How Much Data Has Humanity Produced?
As of the end of 2020, the entire digital footprint of all of humanity is 44 zettabytes. That would require 44 billion of those 1 TB Micro SD cards. By the end of this year, that number will have doubled. By 2025, it’s estimated that our digital footprint will be higher than 200 zettabytes.
We produce a massive amount of data. With more than 62 percent of the world population on social media, and 300 billion emails sent every day, information is constantly being moved around.
Every single minute, 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. That equates to approximately one of those 1 TB Micro SD cards every minute.
Data is Critical To Your Business
Every day, your business generates data. Your staff sends and receives emails, produces documents, updates and stores customer information, and so much more. That data is fundamental to keeping your business operating smoothly.
That’s why data backup is so important. It’s so easy to lose all of your data. Ensuring that your data is properly backed up will ensure that you can continue operations in the event of a mistake, hardware failure, or major disaster.
If you want to discuss properly backing up your organization’s data, give us a call at 651-234-0895.
Digital Data is Amazing, Part 1
Do you ever think about how incredible technology is? In a world where it’s easy to take advantage of technology and devices that were practically inconceivable just a few short decades ago, it’s really amazing to just look at how far we’ve come, and how something so small can fit so much information.
Breaking Down What Data Actually Is
Let’s go back to before there were modern computers and smartphones. The prominent form of data storage throughout the centuries has been the book.
A typical novel has somewhere between 60,000 and 110,000 words (unless you are reading something by Brandon Sanderson—his novels tend to be three or four times that).
How much data is that though? If you want to parse this down into smaller numbers, we can look at one of the most common forms of bite-sized information on the planet, the text message.
A text message has a maximum length of 160 characters. You can usually squeeze 1-3 sentences into that on average. Characters in the English language are 7-bits. A bit is represented by a 1 or a 0. The letter “A” is translated to 01000001, and “B” is 01000010. We’ll get back to this shortly.
A text message can contain a maximum of 160 characters, or 1120 bits (1120 ones and zeroes). There are 8 bits in a byte, which means a text message is 140 bytes.
There are 1,000,000 bytes in 1 Megabyte. Figure that the average word is around five characters, so a novel could have somewhere between 300,000 and 550,000 characters
Take 550,000 characters and multiply that by 7 (the number of bits in a character) and then divide the result by 8 (the number of bits in a byte) and you’ll get 481,250 bytes, or 0.48125 Megabytes.
That means a book on the larger side of things is technically around half a Megabyte of information. Once you add some of the hidden meta information, the cover, and some other data, a typical ebook sits around 1 Megabyte. If there are illustrations or images, then there is a lot more to calculate, so we’ll just assume that we are dealing with text for this thought experiment.
How Much Data Does a Library Hold?
Many books are much larger than the average novel, considering that there are textbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, massive reference books, and a lot of other larger format texts out there. Plus, it’s easier to work with round numbers, so let’s just assume that on average, a book rounds out to about 1 Megabyte.
A typical library tends to hold somewhere between 5,000 and 500,000 books. The world’s biggest libraries tend to put their book counts in the millions. The US Library of Congress holds more than 51 million books, and 75 million manuscripts, plus millions and millions of other items.
Let’s assume those 51 million books are all text. How much data would that actually be?
51 million Megabytes is 51 thousand Gigabytes, which translates to 51 Terabytes. It’s pretty common to buy 1 or 2 Terabyte drives for a home PC, so if you were conservative about your data, you could easily fit the entire Library of Congress book library in a pretty small office with 25 or so computers. Of course, you could just put multiple 2 TB drives into your workstations and store the entire Library of Congress on fewer machines too, or build a media server with an array of high-capacity drives… you get the idea.
We’re not quite to the point where a mobile device can hold that much information, but we’re getting there.
Keep in mind, this is just assuming we are taking the text. If instead, you wanted to scan every single page as a grey-scale image, you would be looking at an average size of around 8 Megabytes per book, so it would take about 408 Terabytes to store the Library of Congress. At that point, you’d be looking at a large rack-mounted device or a very small section of a data center.
How Much Data Does Your Organization Produce?
We’re going to make this a two-part blog since there is still a lot more to talk about! Next time, we’ll break down how much data human beings have ever produced, how much data you can fit into the palm of your hand, and more! Be sure to subscribe and bookmark our blog and keep coming back for more!
3 Things to Know About Hosted Desktop Solutions
We’ve seen a lot of technology leaders appear hesitant to hosted desktop solutions because they want to keep their team close and committed to their workspace. But we’ve also seen that when workers are given the freedom to take their work elsewhere, productivity often increases. Hosted desktop solutions, also known as Desktop as a Service, or Daas, is essentially a cloud-based service designed to enable the functioning of a desktop environment on a virtual machine hosted in a local, private data center. Point North Networks provides this to a number of local businesses and these are the top things we like our customers to know about this solution:
They can reduce your cost
Many assume that implementing a hosted desktop solution is an extra expense, but the investment can save your business in the long run. When your workspace goes remote, you’re eliminating the need to spend thousands of dollars on high-end desktops and laptops. We just charge a low monthly fee for the computation.
You’re extra protected
Putting your data in someone else’s hands can be scary but security is our top priority, especially these days. Point North Networks’ hosted desktop environments are backed up several times daily to off-site encrypted storage with 90 days of retention. Customers can restore lost or deleted files within minutes. Additionally, our environments are built with controls for physical, network, and application security such as multi-factor authentication and a dedicated security engineering team.
Your team will thank you
A hosted desktop service allows your employees access from anywhere: home, office, coffee shop, etc. The whole Microsoft Office Full Suite is installed so they can still use Word, Excel, and all their favorite products they’ve grown accustomed to. Life has its demands and when an employee isn’t tied to their physical workspace in order to complete their job, they have a lot less to stress about. On top of that, the access is truly hassle-free.
Contact Point North Networks today to explore expanding your office to the cloud and opening up more possibilities.
3 Bad Results of Outdated Business Technology
We recently asked our LinkedIn audience how frequently they find themselves having to work with technology that doesn’t, well…work. 43% of our respondents said they encounter this problem every single day at work.
At Point North Networks, one of our major roles, when we partner with a local business, is to ensure their technology is up to date and that they have the best possible functionality and ability to scale. This is a priority to us because we know what effects outdated technology has on a business. Here is what we most often see as a result of old technology:
Decreased employee morale
When employees have to use equipment that is faulty or slow, it does not make them feel valued. They will begin to question whether they are valued at their company if the company cannot invest in setting them up for success with working technology. We prioritize listening closely to employees’ needs when it comes to being able to do their job effectively in order to make worthwhile recommendations on technology upgrades, while balancing the company’s budget needs.
Lost productivity
Just about anyone can attest to the experience of wasting an entire morning’s time dealing with technical difficulties instead of being able to do their jobs. Spending hours with customer support teams can be downright infuriating. At Point North Networks, we aim to prevent this from being a need in the first place. We keep this in mind when advising the businesses we work with about what technology they should invest in.
Not only can updated technology increase productivity, but think about the money saved when technology works just right. Replacing technology may seem like a large upfront cost, but it offers huge savings in the long run.
Not progressing
A business that does not keep up with the times does not survive. A company has to adapt to new technologies if it wants to keep up with its competitors. A smart IT partner will help you stay on track with or ahead of industry standards.
Contact Point North Networks today if it’s time for your business to update its technology.
3 Tech Tips to Improve your Hybrid Work Environment
Hybrid work environments are the new reality for companies all over the world. After functioning a couple of years in the work-from-home environment, employees have formed their location preferences and it seems no company can please all of them. What does please everyone, however, is flexible options that actually make switching between the office and work from home totally seamless. Here are 3 ways you can improve your technology to make the best of your hybrid workspace.
Make your most-used applications work on a web browser
Point North Networks has solutions that allow companies run Windows applications on Web, iOS, Android, and ChromeOS without the need to install or configure any client-side software. Your employees don’t even have to bring their work computers home, they can access these applications from any device and continue to multi-task and even print from wherever they may roam.
Move your infrastructure to the cloud
Long before a pandemic shook the world, it was still important to give team members a way to access their network from anywhere. Now that it’s necessary for so many, technology has just made it easier and more secure to do so. There are remote desktop solutions that can mix browser access to VDI, VM’s or RempoteApps as well as Unix machines. Point North Networks has private cloud hosting services that make remote access safe.
Increase your project security
So many IT leaders are skeptical about the security of their data when they don’t know where or when their team is accessing it, which is a legitimate concern. Luckily, remote desktop solutions are advanced enough to have authentication processes in place to enforce policies by either groups, users, or devices. You can set Single-Sign-On schemes with a number of identity platform options or use protocols to create a 2FA experience.
Do you need to improve your hybrid work environment that is still adjusting and evolving in many ways? Contact Point North Networks today to improve your IT setup.
What to Look for in a Good IT Consultant
Companies everywhere and of all sizes are bringing in IT consultants to better evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of their existing operations. A good IT consultant wants your business to succeed and will identify opportunities for you to save money while exceeding objectives. Here are 3 qualities to help you decide whether a consultant is the right fit for your business operations.
They keep up with digital transformation
A good IT consultant knows that technology changes constantly and that they cannot afford to recommend the same thing year after year. They have to keep up with change and seek out opportunities to improve upon systems your company has adopted, even if the change did not happen long ago.
They have years of experience
It goes without saying, but the most seasoned IT consultants utilize their tech expertise for the better, always. As frequently as technology might change, a lot of the same problems ring true for companies over the years, especially growing pains. A good IT consultant has helped companies get through the most common problems time and time again, even if the way he or she has done so has evolved.
They communicate
If you have a good IT consultant, you shouldn’t be left guessing whether your business operations are set up in the best way possible. Your IT consultant should instill confidence in your systems and be checking up on them frequently. A little bit of communication and knowledge-sharing goes a long way, especially when it comes to your business’ technology.
Contact Point North Networks to start talking to an IT consultant today.
