All posts by SystemsNet Administrator

Backup Disaster Recovery (BDR): Disasters Do Not Take Breaks During The Summer

Data Backup, , , ,
Business man in summer heat on laptop wishing he had a Backup Disaster Recovery (BDR) plan

Planning ahead is key to minimizing the impact of data loss

Summer can bring a variety of things your way, including great weather, long days and nights, and the occasional sunburn. Those things should be at the top of our list of concerns during the summer, right? Unfortunately, there are many other things businesses have to be concerned about during the summer. There always seems to be a major difference between how we think things should be and how they actually are.

Business owners should always make it a priority to backup files so no information will be lost in case there is an unexpected event or emergency. If any information is lost during an event, the files can easily be recovered when you have your files backed up. Unfortunately, too many businesses fail to have a Backup Disaster Recovery(BDR) plan. The commitment to creating a Backup Disaster Recovery(BDR) plan seems to disappear during the summer. We encourage business owners to dedicate some time, energy, and effort into preserving all their data.

You Will Never Know When Disaster Will Strike

Many business owners fail to put as much energy into a BDR plan in the summer because they feel that they only have to worry about certain disasters during the winter or various areas of the year. While the winter does bring its own threats, summer can also have devastating impacts on businesses. Summer brings extreme heat, floods, hurricanes, etc.

Snowstorms can result in power outages, but floods, storms, and heat waves can also result in power outages. If your business is not ready for the impact of a power outage, you can find yourself in a situation that will not be easy to get out of.

It is important for business owners to remember that natural disasters, threats, and the risk of data loss can take place during every part of the year. Natural disasters can have a significant impact on your business, especially due to their ability to increase downtime due to data unavailability.

In addition to natural disasters, hackers do not take breaks during the summer. Businesses are the targets of half or more than half of attacks. As a business owner, you are not able to predict when a disaster will strike, but you will be able to control how your business will be able to make a recovery if a natural disaster or threat to data does strike.

Why Is A Backup Disaster Recovery Plan Important?

Your business’s BDR needs will not be the same as the business’s next door. A BDR will involve multiple processes that will include planning, testing, and monitoring the responses to various types of threats and failures. When you are thinking about taking a vacation to the beach, we encourage you to make some room to think about BDR. It may not be fun to think about now, but if you are ever hit by a disaster, you will be glad you took some time to create a BDR.

You do not want to be added to the list of businesses who lose nearly millions or over millions of dollars trying to recover from a loss of data. Many businesses also have to close their doors for good because they were never able to recover from the data loss. Constantly engage in BDR discussions and ensure that all information that is essential to your business can be recovered easily and quickly.

Disasters and threats can occur throughout the entire year, and it is important that you take the necessary precautions to ensure that losing data will not result in losing your entire business. Contact us today when you are ready to ensure your data will always be available.

Can Your Customers and Leads Get in Touch with Your Salespeople?

VOIP, , , ,
Customer and/or lead getting in touch with salesperson over VOIP

How complicated is your business auto attendant?

Sales funnels are fragile things. When your company is in the process of converting a lead into a paying customer, a lot of events and interests have to line up just right. One of the most important factors people look for, whether you sell business to business products or you market to individual consumers, is a personal experience. Customers want to know that your company is available on their schedule. Communication needs to be prompt, professional, and easy, no matter what medium they’re using. If your salespeople handle a lot of calls, they need to have the right tools so their leads can reach out to them with questions and call them easily when they’re ready to make a purchase. Here’s how Voice over IP telephony services, or VOIP, can help:

Keep your extensions and company directory organized.

Before VoIP combined your telephony and administrative systems, keeping track of extensions was difficult. Every incident of employee turnover would have a few months of confusion as extensions get associated with a new phone owner. Voice messages required a complicated array of button pushing, and there was no centralized control over how to access specific employees.

But a VoIP system is easily edited. You can fill in the details of different employees, their extension, and their schedule. The information is added to and filled in through a computer program rather than through a patchwork of phones. Not only does this give easier control to a central authority, like someone in the human resources department, those profiles can also be visible to internal employees and, on a limited basis, on your company website. Everyone benefits when the contact details are easily changed and updated live.

Route calls between desk phones and cell phones based on your employees’ in-office schedules.

The line between in-office work and office work is changing. Whether you personally want a bright dividing line between work and personal hours, many salespeople are starting to migrate to a looser schedule. Lots of sales are made based on off-hours conversations and easy accessibility. Instead of the older method of giving valuable clients or leads two different phone numbers, your VoIP system can handle the schedule. Each employee can establish when phone calls should go to their office phone and when calls should go to their cell phones. They can also designate true off hours when calls should go straight to voicemail. Not only is that easy on prospective customers, but employees don’t have to tell anyone their cell phone number.

Make messages easier to customize and standardize.

Voicemail and automated messages can make or break a customer experience. Having basic, clunky messages that are made up of a template and added details sounds dated. They also sound bland and generic when you can’t add company-specific wording across every extension.

But VoIP message interfaces make it easier to upload sound bytes. Whether your company has a seasonal introduction message or promotional content that needs to be added to every telephone “signature,” VoIP makes it easier to manage. The system administrator can also distribute a sound file for mass upload and customization. This makes it easier to manage a standardized presentation style while still allowing for custom messages. Even better, you can run a report to see who hasn’t updated their recorded messages and make sure everyone’s on the same page.

VoIP systems don’t just help your customer service department. They’re an easy system that helps your salespeople reach out to new clients and ensures more callbacks. Even an online interface for telephone profiles makes everyone more accessible, gets rid of incorrect data, and improves your customers’ experience. Go to SystemsNet to see what that interface looks like.

Kovter Strikes Computers Everywhere

Anti-virus, Security, , , , , , , ,
Removing Trojan Kovter Malware

Are you prepared for when disaster strikes

Every year, there are high-impact viruses that plague individuals and businesses alike. One of the newest that has wreaked havoc on the world of IT is known as Kovter. It’s affecting a number of computers and there are a lot of people that have been impacted by its destruction.

What is Kovter?

Kovter works as a Trojan. It has acted as a ransomware downloader as well as click-fraud malware. It is disseminated using malspam email attachments that contain malicious office macros. One of the ways that this fileless malware has been able to evade detection is by hiding inside of registry keys.

There has been a number of reports that indicate the Trojan infections receive updated instructions from a command and control infrastructure that serves as a remote access back door. When this happens, the hackers will have an access point into your computer or server.

Kovter showed up several years ago and continues to be the biggest threat throughout 2018. Part of this is because it has evolved significantly. It may use code injection as a way of infecting the target and will steal information so that it goes back to the command and control servers.

How to Look for Kovter

Kovter is really good at hiding itself. It generally infects a computer using an attachment that comes over as a micro-based spam. Once the attachment is opened, it will install on the computer and hide within the registry entries. Most of the attachments are compromised Microsoft office files.

Since it is fileless, it can be difficult to detect. However, you want to make sure that your organization is aware of how to protect against email threats. Use various anti-spam filters so that malicious emails can be blocked before reaching the endpoint user. You also want to make sure that security updates are applied as soon as possible.

Who Has Been Affected?

A number of people throughout the UK, US, Canada, and Australia have been affected by the Trojan. Many people found the virus through a malvertising campaign or Traffic Junky. People were sent to a pop-up that told them they needed to install an update to their browser. By doing so, they unknowingly downloaded Kovter to their computer.

It’s unclear as to how many computers have actually been affected – though the number is easily into the tens of thousands since one version or another has been around since as early as 2011.

What You Can Do

You need to be sure that you have a high level of security within your business. You want to make sure that you are protecting your servers and workstations so that they stay free of viruses and Trojans. Otherwise, malware can render your computer absolutely useless or result in important data being lost or stolen.

Webroot Antivirus is a 20-time winner from PCMag. It provides you with the antivirus protection on all of your devices so that you can enjoy a greater level of peace of mind. You get advanced threat protection and the security is always on. You can stop ransomware and enjoy real-time blocks on harmful sites. This way, no matter how much you teach your employees not to go to specific sites, you can ensure that dangerous sites are blocked to avoid various problems. Additionally, based on the antivirus protection that you choose, you will also be able to monitor your firewall and network connection and secure various smartphones and tablets that are used by your employees.

Learn more about Webroot Antivirus and how it can protect your servers and workstations by contacting SystemsNet today. Our various packages will monitor your systems and help you with all of the various components of your IT infrastructure. As geeks, we work hard to help you protect your systems

Is It Time To Make Adjustments To Your IT Help Desk?

Manage Service, , ,
IT help desk professionals in control room

Using a managed service company can help your internal IT resolve issues faster

For businesses, the IT help desk or service desk is an essential component. If your employees are constantly being slowed down due to problems with technology, productivity and efficiency will be slowed down as well. Businesses that have a good IT help desk on their side can keep everyone equipped to be efficient and productive. When everyone is productive and effective, this will result in less downtime.

At one point, having a “good” help desk was more than enough. However, things have changed significantly. Unfortunately, there are many businesses that are still operating a help desk that would have been better suited a few decades ago. One of the most common approaches to management today is measuring an IT help desk on customer satisfaction, the number of answered calls, and the number of resolved calls. Unfortunately, using this type of strategy or approach lacks foresight.

There are a few signs that will indicate your current IT help desk model is not headed in the right direction, including the following:

You Are Only Looking At It As Another Expense

When someone calls into your help desk and shares any type of information and feedback, this is giving you free and useful intel on how your help desk is operating. When you are able to discover this information and use it to provide feedback to the rest of the organization, you are tapping into the power of an IT help desk. Using this intel and using it to improve the IT help desk is also one of the best ways to reduce the call volume. If you are not doing any of these things, you are wasting an opportunity to use one of the biggest resources you have in your workplace. Your IT Help Desk can provide you with feedback from real users.

You Have No Solution For The Mobility Problems

In many workplaces, employees are given the freedom to commute and work remotely due to the power of mobile devices. Mobility is a growing trend in the business world, and sometimes employees will need assistance when they have mobility issues. If you have not dedicated any of your technology to solving mobility issues, now will be a great time to do so. Not every IT expert will be specialized in remote devices, mobile applications, mobile headsets, etc. This is where you will need the assistance of mobility experts who have the skills to solve mobility problems. If you are not currently equipped with an IT Help Desk that can solve mobility issues, it is not too late to get one. If you cannot maintain those skills and specialties in your workplace, you can consider outsourcing your mobility help desk.

The Calls Are Not Being Managed Properly

We know that you are logging your phone calls and categorizing them, but what else are you doing? If you are not doing more, you are not doing enough. Some calls that come into your help desk will contain vital information about technical problems, downtime, outages, etc. Taking the time to assess this information and prioritize it will allow you to provide feedback to others. You will want to do more than provide the basic information that is on the call log.

If your IT environment is currently struggling, there are ways of getting it back on track. You will not have to become experts overnight and you will not have to go above and beyond to completely modernize your IT environment. You can make some improvements to your current environment to modernize your processes, and you will be able to accomplish more than you think.

If your organization is experiencing any of the above signs, it is important that your management team embrace the fact that changes need to be made. Are you ready to rethink and re-imagine your IT help desk? Please do not hesitate to contact us today for more information.