What is the single most expensive mistake most business owners make when hiring an IT consultant?

Over the years I have done literally hundreds of network audits and reviews. Over and over again that thing I see most is incompetence and the responsibility. The worst offenders are non-existent backups, security loopholes, shoddy reporting, and sent systems that cost more to maintain and really don’t help the business that much.

Since I started this business we have not had one week where we did not get a “911 crisis call” and these are major technical disasters and worse they could’ve been prevented.

This has bothered me so much that I sat down and wrote a report about what people can do to protect their computer systems. My goal is the educate business people about what to look for in an IT consultant. Just so we’re clear, many of these systems that were not properly set up and maintained already had a so called, “IT Consultant” working on them or having worked on them in the past.

Just so we’re clear about this, many of the “Emergency Calls” we get are because other IT Network companies don’t answer their phones and return phone calls promptly. We do.
There is a Free Offer inside this Report, it’s titled “16 Critical Questions You MUST Ask Before Hiring Any IT Company.”
So go get a copy of this report, remember there’s something that’s free inside the report.

You can get the report here: http://www.manage-point.com/offer-2/

Businesses, local governments, and universities are now reporting being attacked by the Gumblar computer virus.

What is this virus and what does it do? This virus has a criminal intent, it can steal credit card numbers, user IDs, and passwords. In other words it’s another form of identity theft.

How does it work? When people visit an infected website they are redirected to another site that installs this malware onto their computers.
The virus spread around the world last spring and had several variants so the antivirus companies have had an opportunity to put some checks in place.

This is the third wave of attacks for this particular virus. The first two waves were in 2009 and at that time the virus made visitors computers send spam e-mails.

This new variant is much more malicious with its ability to gather credit card numbers and other financial information.
What can you do?

First, make sure your virus software has been updated, right now or at least last night, if not, update now.

Second, if you think something is wrong with your system and your anti-virus list is updated, do a scan.

Third, if you think your system may be infected contact a reputable IT company they can do a complete scan of your system. They can also do a complete check to make sure that all of your firewalls, antivirus programs and all of the other security programs on your servers is working correctly. This is probably the most important thing you can do to keep your systems from being infected.

If you need a regular IT Team, then please consider this, ManagePoint (our company) can be your Milwaukee Computer Network IT Team. That’s what we do. Please call us today, let’s talk about your very valuable information.

Please call 414-456-9837.

There are studies that show a 70% increase in spyware and malware attacks at companies around the world. What’s troubling about this is that the attacks are being launched through social networks.

Companies report Facebook has the biggest security threat and this isn’t unusual because many companies now have a Facebook page.

One of the solutions to this is many companies are now monitoring their employees use of company computers to log on to the social networks.

Facebook has become ubiquitous and widespread through all age groups around the world. Internet criminals, in typical fashion, are taking advantage of this widespread infatuation with social networking and they’re using it to commit identity theft on both a business and personal level.

According to one study that was done in 2009 businesses and organizations of every type and size have reported intrusions through social networking.

One of the solutions is to promulgate a policy that employees are restricted from accessing social networks on company computers. Without some type of monitoring more enforcement that may be just an empty policy.

At the very least, one of the most important things a company can do is to make sure that all of the company’s servers have all of the current security protocols in place and operating correctly.

If you need a regular IT Team, then please consider this, ManagePoint (our company) can be your Milwaukee Computer Network IT Team. That’s what we do. Please call us today, let’s talk about your very valuable information.

Please call 414-456-9837.

Facebook has a virus and unfortunately it’s not the kind you take 2 aspirin’s, drink lots of fluid and get some rest to cure.

It works like an attachment in an email, and the way it spreads it through the links on your Facebook wall.

What happens is that once it has infected your computer it sends out links to everyone on the friends list.

Security Programmers have said that it’s a very different type of virus and that it works differently than a computer worm.

Here’s the part that is particularly concerning, it attempts to steal credit card numbers, passwords and other info, in other words it’s identity theft with a financial motivation.

What can you do?

This is another email that gets sent from someone you probably know, so the good old advice to, “Never open attachments from a stranger,” just doesn’t work this time. Most really effective anti-virus programs will check attachments and either render the virus ineffective, or alert you. Please, always be careful with email attachments.

First, make sure your virus software has been updated, right now or at least last night, if not, update now.

Second, if you think something is wrong with your system and your anti-virus list is updated, do a scan.

Third, if you think your system may be infected contact a reputable IT company they can do a complete scan of your system. They can also do a complete check to make sure that all of your firewalls, antivirus programs and all of the other security programs on your servers are working correctly. This is probably the most important thing you can do to keep your systems from being infected.

This virus affects Windows based computers and at the moment is not affecting Macs.

If you need a regular IT Team, then please consider this, ManagePoint (our company) can be your Milwaukee Computer Network IT Team. That’s what we do. Please call us today, let’s talk about your very valuable information.

Please call 414-456-9837.

“Dave, What’s this ‘Cloud Computing’ I’ve been hearing about?”

First the simplest explanation: the ‘Cloud’ is the internet, the web.

Now, that’s what I call a good question, mostly because it deals with the kind of stuff we talk about here all the time.

Instead of giving you a scientific and geeky explanation I’ll give you a really good example.

One of my friends has his own business and what he does is work on the internet. You might be thinking that he can just sit home in his pajama’s in front of his computer and do his work on the web. Oh no. He has to travel, all over the country. Like many of us he has a ton of info on his desktop at home, and almost every time he travels he needs some of that info.

He could use a portable hard drive, a flash drive, they’re both small and can handle a lot of data, and in fact he does use both of those. But, here’s the trick, like most of us he has tools, the most common of which are word processor, spreadsheet program and data bases. He has other tools that are specific to his business, programs for checking web sites, that sort of stuff.

So here’s what he did. He can get all of his email on the web. There are several programs that are web based, word processors, etc. He has been able to upload almost all of his tools onto the ‘Cloud,’ the internet and when he travels he’s able to just log onto the web and do all of his work. He also has a couple of secure places on the web where he’s able to store is data.

How common is this? Very and it’s getting more and more common. The government is beginning to use The Cloud, the Air Force is building ‘military-grade’ cloud networks with the help of IBM. Many large corporations are jumping into this.

Is this something you should be doing? The best answer there is that there are many of the same concerns about this as having physical servers in your office. Security, viruses, hackers and all of the usual concerns apply to Cloud Networks.

Recently we’ve helped several of our clients with Cloud Virtual Servers, sometimes this saves money and that’s one thing we are all looking at.

Recently a friend of mine called me and said, “Hey, you are scarring me to death with all this talk of viruses, hackers and stuff.”

You’ve probably already guessed that my response was, “Good. My objective is not to scare you it’s to get you to take action before they get to your system.”

Here’s why, it will cost him much less to take some proactive measures right now than to have my team come in a repair the damage caused by malicious activity on his system.

A client of ours emailed me and said, “Dave, you keep singing the same song, over and over, what’s up with that?”

I wrote him back and said, “Look, as soon as everyone gets on board and tells me they’ve had their protection checked and their systems are tight, then I’ll sing a new song.”

But, I got the message. I know most people don’t want to hear the same thing over and over.

Most of you know how serious I am about what we do, it’s an important cause with us.

I don’t want to sound too self-important, but if we can help our business clients keep their businesses running then things are just better for everyone.

Our small and medium sized businesses are what keeps this country going, we make sure that people have jobs, pay the rent, and takes care of their families.

So we’re just doing our small part in keeping things running, we like doing this.

It’s quite interesting that when someone of some note, like a news reporter or an elected official has a computer virus or their system gets “hacked” the news story will give 11 to 25 different things that, “you can do to protect yourself and your personal information from cyber-intruders.” Don’t get me wrong the “tips” are all good. It’s what they leave out.

None of these stories say, “Contact a reputable IT company and get help immediately.” Most of the stories are written with the home computer user in mind, even though the person who was affected is telling a story about their business computer. Most home computer users will never do the 11 or 25 “tips” that are suggested in the story.

If you’re curious what stories I’m referring to just enter, ‘computer virus’ into a news search on a search engine. On Google I got over 60 stories, just today.

If you’re thinking that this post is self-serving, well yes it is. Helping our clients guard against malware is what we do. It’s only part of what we do. Often we get called to clean up a problem.

More importantly we reach out and do our best to educate our potential clients that having us monitoring your servers and computer systems at your business is as necessary as putting gas in your car. Actually our “maintenance services” make us much less money that when we go in and repair the damage that hackers, viruses or even just failed equipment cause. The bills for making those repairs can run into the tens of thousands of dollars.

How much does computer network maintenance and support cost? Well, what we offer is a fixed monthly rate and it depends on several factors. Here’s what I can guarantee you, you will pay us much less to do network maintenance on a monthly basis then you’ll pay to have us come in and fix a problem that takes your systems down.

Computer viruses, hackers and malware are growing in number, it’s not getting better, it’s getting worse. Most people don’t see a lot of equipment failure because for the most part computer parts work like they’re supposed to, but they’re mechanical and man-made parts, they can and will break.

For less than $200 ($3 less than $200 it’s $197) you can get your computer system checked out by us, and in February when you schedule this check we’ll give you an Uninterrupted Power Supply for your system. You’re not spending the money on a luxury item, it’s more like making sure your car is going to get you to your destination on that 1,000 mile trip, it’s just a smart thing to do.

ManagePoint (our company) can be your Milwaukee Computer Network IT Team. That’s what we do. Please call us today, let’s talk about your computer system.

Please call us today 414-456-9837.

Most everyone has heard that backing up the information on your computer system is important. Like many other parts of our lives we put it off. Very few people look forward to an annual physical from their doctor. What if there’s something wrong? Some people actually don’t want to hear the bad news. When someone who cares about us says we need to go get our teeth cleaned or get that medical check-up we often say, “I know, I know, I’m going to get around to it one of these days.”

Here’s the thing, imagine that you have a chalk board or a white board hanging in your office (you might have one so you don’t have to imagine very hard). Write down all of the most important information your company has on that board. OK, now put some important personal info on that board, like dates that are important that you don’t always remember, your bank account numbers and ATM pin codes, oh yeah, go ahead and put your Social Security number on the board along with your mother’s maiden name.

You’ve undoubtedly figured out that we’ve got two things working here.

Number 1. Imagine that this is the only place for this info. Maybe you have it stored in a vault somewhere, but this is the only easily available place it resides.
Number 2. The info on that board could, if it fell into the wrong hands, could be used and abused.

So, the “not so evil scenario” is that the janitor comes into your office, and in a fit of making sure everything is clean, erases the board. Oh dear.

The “evil scenario” is that the trustworthy regular janitor is out sick and his evil brother-in-law is substituting for him. Now we’re in big trouble, the info is copied, then erased, then used and abused. Personal Identity Theft as well as Corporate Identity Theft is now the order of the day. More than Oh dear.

The next morning you’re saying, “I wish I’d gotten my teeth cleaned yesterday and had my “White Board IT Team” do a check on my security and back up.”

If you don’t have a dedicated “White Board IT Team” or even a regular IT Team, then please consider this, ManagePoint (our company) can be your Milwaukee Computer Network IT Team. That’s what we do. Please call us today, let’s talk about your very valuable information.
Please check out our site, you’re there now or call 414-456-9837.

Have you ever lost an hour of work time on your business computers? The first response is usually frustration. “Hey, what happened to that spreadsheet I just spent the last 4 hours entering data on?”

“Gone, what do you mean gone? What do you mean the ‘server’ has crashed?”

It’s not like a waiter dropping your prime-rib dinner on the restaurant floor, this server has all of your hard work on it. What’s worse is it has everyone’s hard work on it.

What’s the usually response you ask? “This could never happen to us!”

Yep and portable little hand held phones will never catch on.

So first, let’s address the issue of, “What’s this going to cost us to fix?”

We’ve seen repairs, on average costing between $9,000 and $60,000, that’s just the repair costs and that’s an average.

What’s the “other” cost? That’s the really startling part.

Unfortunately this is not just “one hour” lost. When there is a failure of your computer systems, it could be anywhere from 8 hours to days of down time, depending on just what the situation is.

By now you’re wondering, “OK, what do we do?”

That’s the easy part. There are preventative steps that you can take to make sure that this situation either gets caught before it cripples your system, or just does not happen.

Some businesses have access to an IT person who can run the diagnostics and checks to make sure the system is not going to crash.

If your business doesn’t have a dedicated IT person, then your next best option is a company like ManagePoint, and of course ManagePoint itself.

There’s no reason for your business to lose one minute of productive time or one dollar, let alone thousands of dollars, to a systems crash.

To schedule your free Hacker Prevention Security Audit you just need to call 414-456-9837. You’re going to want to do that as soon as possible because this offer ends January 31, 2010.

Two weeks ago my very expensive shaver stopped working. I took it to the shaver repair store. The guys who work here are older and a little bit gruff, sort of like the guys who work in every shaver repair store. This is the part where I was totally floored, I handed my shaver to one of the repair guys and expected him to say, “That will be $20 to see what’s wrong with your shaver.” Instead, he took the shaver apart, hooked it up to a couple of machines and told me that the motor was broken. I just stood there staring at him, waiting for the $20 service-charge shoe to drop, again. He then said that the battery was weak and to replace it would be $40 and the motor would be $60 to replace, so I would probably be better off just buying a new shaver than getting it repaired. So now, I’m standing there with my mouth open waiting for him to grab a shaver off the shelf, present it to me and begin a high-pressure, razzle-dazzle sales pitch. He just smiled and handed me back my nonworking shaver.

So what’s the point here, you must be saying? In these days and at these times with the world economy being in so much trouble it seems like every business is doing “whatever it takes” to make a sale. That includes high-pressure, lying, cheating, misrepresenting the product, the warranty, and generally doing everything except sticking a gun in your face and demanding your money.

So, what if the company said that they would do a free security audit of your computer system? Would you suspect that they were going to get into your system find a bunch of things wrong and come back and say that’ll be $2,999 to fix everything that’s wrong? And yes, that does happen.

What if a different kind of company, ones that just does the right thing, said they would do a free security audit of your computer system and then just like my shaver repair guy, they tell you what is needed to protect your system, gave you a big smile and say, “Okay, where would you like to go from here?” My guess is you’d be standing there with your mouth open.

During the month of January Manage Point will do a free, no strings attached and you don’t owe them any money, security audit of your computer system, called “Our Free Hacker Prevention Security Audit, a $197 Value.” When they get done you can be assured that they’re not going to pull out their high-pressure sales script. You’re in control of the situation and you decide what needs to be done.

To schedule your free Hacker Prevention Security Audit you just need to go to www.manage-point.com or call 414-456-9837. You’re going to want to do that as soon as possible because this offer ends January 31, 2010.