Professional IT Services that Andromeda Provides for Hoffman Estates, IL Businesses:

Managed IT Services
Hoffman Estates,IL

Andromeda offers a range of IT support plans—anything from month-to-month "time & materials"-based assistance to fixed IT service contracts that permit "no-brainer" conformance to an annual budget. Beyond the functions you would expect from a full-service MSP, you'll have a dedicated C‑CATs team that includes an Account Coordinator directing the same field and remote technicians day-to-day, month-to-month, and even year-to-year to manage your IT network needs.
This isn't simply a glorified Virtual CIO offering. Imagine the cost of hiring your own CIO AND tech team for this same level of customized service and knowledge of your particular (and evolving) network setup!

Cloud Services & Migrations

Typically, the biggest issue you'll face when initiating Cloud IT services is not the services themselves, but rather the proper migration of your existing IT services to the Cloud without loss of functionality, downtime, and scores of other details that could undermine the whole process. Andromeda has a long history of expertise in physical on-premises systems. Don't make the mistake of turning all your current systems over to a "Cloud expert"; we'll save you from a lot of heartache and pain with a virtually seamless Cloud migration from your current setup— whatever it is.

Data Backup & Recovery
Hoffman Estates,IL

It's a crazy world. Literally thousands of people you don't even know attempt to break or steal from systems like yours every day. Good 24/7 monitoring is a first line of defense, of course. But no matter how great and state-of-the-art your defenses are, you'll almost certainly succomb to a successful attack in time. That's why advanced data backup and data recovery need to be tools that you and your IT partner have at the ready from Day 1. Don't be tempted to "shortcut" this element of your network in the name of expediency or to save a few dollars. Ultimately, you'll lose out on both counts with that thinking. You need a complete and integrated solution that addresses every contingency as well as IT professionals who know how to make that happen.

Cyber Security

Not only do we provide multi-tier approaches to your network security, but Andromeda also provides built-for-you solutions for disaster recovery and business continuity devices. We provide, manage and monitor a variety of devices including physical hardware, Cloud-based and hybrid options. Our team actively monitors over 403 servers and 101 physical backup devices in the field. All with 100% local engineers and technicians.

Onsite/Remote Support
Hoffman Estates,IL

Andromeda's team is completely staffed by local technicians near Hoffman Estates,IL. No matter the hour, your issue is resolved quickly and professionally. In fact, 68% of incoming calls are connected to a live technician for immediate response. When a technician isn't available, our average response time is less than 30 minutes. And if that isn't impressive enough, emergency after-hours support response times average less than 10 minutes!

IT Network Management

IT networks are our bread-and-butter. We have provided these services to clients since 1994. Some have continued to rely on us for their evolving network needs since the very beginning. We stand behind our work day to day and year to year because we foster relationships with our client-partners that absolutely demand that of us. It's in our DNA and how we prefer to do business.

AndroPedia Tech Library

As part of our service, it is important to keep our client-partners well informed on IT developments, news, and best practices. Here is just a sampling of typical items from our AndroPedia^SM library archive:

Why have a Network Security Assessment at least once per year:

Our digital world is being attacked constantly and your corporate network is one of the biggest targets on the market. Why? Because it also tends to be an easy mark.  Year after year we see large scale attacks against corporations, but did you know that the majority of cyber incidents occur against small to mid-size businesses? Ask yourself: When was the last time I had a professional network security assessment? We’ve listed out some of the top reasons why Network Security Assessments are a vital piece of a multi-layered approach to cyber security for your business.

Let’s start by stating something that you might not expect a tech company to express. Being a victim of a cyber attack is inevitable. No amount of effort or software can protect you 100% of the time. The solution is to implement as many precautionary steps as you can to lessen the likelihood of becoming a victim. No approach on the market can guarantee you will never be breached. If you ever run into an IT firm or product that tries to make this a “guarantee” . . . run and don’t look back because this is 100% false.

Now, there are the obvious steps that you can take to protect yourself and make it harder on the criminals:

• Proactive Email habits
• Anti-malware software
• Firewalls
• Proper Employee training
• Professional Disaster Recover (DR) plan/device

However, there is another tool in the arsenal that you should use regularly and that is an annual (at minimum) Network Security Assessment.

What Does A Network Security Assessment Involve?

Your IT support company should perform an initial assessment; after, they should give you a detailed risk report displaying areas that need to be optimized or adjusted. If your IT company does not perform these, it may be time to start looking somewhere new. Cyber threats are more prevalent every day and it is important to partner with an IT company that recognizes this and protects your business accordingly.

We find that our assessment usually uncovers security threats and holes; even when a business has the right practices and has done their research. Cyber security is a daily battle for businesses of every type. When we run our assessment we use the results to constantly improve the defenses of our clients. And that is why, like most things in tech, an assessment should be a regular event.

The Network Security Assessment Is Done. What’s the Next Step?

The network security assessment itself is not the only thing to request though. It is equally important to make sure that your firm supplies you with a report of their findings. This report should be simple to understand, contain an overall score and give you a breakdown of each issue found, along with how serious those specific issues are.  Ask for an action plan that goes over any adjustments in detail for any issues that are found. Why go through the assessment process if you aren’t going to apply any changes with the data?

How important and helpful are these reports?  We are an IT company with a background protecting our partners from risk. We also put protections in place for our partners and still find ways to improve our customer cyber safety every time we run an assessment.

Why? Because cyber security is a dynamic, ever changing landscape and you need to proactively search for issues. Don’t let yourself learn the hard way. You never want to discover there is a hole in your cyber security when it’s too late from an attack or breach.

Interested in a Network Security Assessment?

If this article has you questioning your current setup, or peaked your interest in starting a conversation regarding the cyber security protections necessary for your business, a network security assessment with Andromeda is a great place to start. With this in mind, we will be discounting our network security assessment thru 1/31/19. Fill out the form below for access to our promotional rate and begin a discussion with one of our security experts.

Fill out the form below to receive a $500 discount on a Network Security Assessment valid for the month of January:

The post Start 2019 Out Right – Have a Network Security Assessment Completed appeared first on Andromeda Technology Solutions.

Deploying cloud-based solutions for your business has many perks:  accessibility, live document collaboration, integrations, workflow automation, scalability . . . to name a few.

Some popular software applications like Office 365, G Suite and Salesforce offer robust cloud hosted options and trends point to more and more adoption of these solutions. Software as a Service (SaaS) is here to stay in a big way.

So, if cloud applications are ‘the future’, what does that mean for your business backups and data recovery solutions?

What do you think? Do you need to backup your SaaS applications?

The simple answer is yes. You absolutely need to address SaaS data backups and data recovery for your cloud apps like Office 365, G Suite, Salesforce and here are some reasons:

1. Your data is your responsibility

A common misconception with the cloud and cloud applications is that you can ‘set it and forget it’. Many professionals believe that once their data is in the cloud, there is no longer a need to back it up or consider the security and safety of the data.

In some respects, this is true. When you choose to migrate your data from an on prem solution to a hosted cloud solution such as Office 365, you take the maintenance of your server, licenses and the security of the environment off your plate.

But . . . you are still responsible for your own data.

The reason you are responsible for your own data (and backups) is that vendors in the SaaS space tend to follow what is called the ‘Shared Responsibility Model’. A Shared Responsibility Model is fairly straightforward and means that both parties (vendor and client) have certain responsibilities that they share. This model is pretty much the standard and most SaaS structure theirs similarly-

Office 365 Shared Responsibility:

Your Responsibility: the client is responsible for their data and data maintenance

Vendor Responsibility: Microsoft is responsible for securing the cloud environment. Microsoft is also responsible for functionality, uptime and factors related to the stability of the cloud environment.

G Suite Shared Responsibility:

Your Responsibility: the client is responsible for their data and data maintenance

Vendor Responsibility: Google is responsible for securing the cloud environment. Google is also responsible for functionality, uptime and factors related to the stability of the cloud environment.

Salesforce Shared Responsibility:

Your Responsibility: the client is responsible for their data and data maintenance

Vendor Responsibility: Microsoft is responsible for securing the cloud environment. Microsoft is also responsible for functionality, uptime and factors related to the stability of the cloud environment.

If you use a SaaS application other than O365, G Suite or Salesforce (which is highly likely), it’s a good idea to learn more about who has what jobs/responsibilities when it comes to security and your data.

2. Ransomware and other cyber security attacks can still impact your cloud applications

Cyber criminals are greedy, and they aren’t about to let cloud applications stand in the way of their profits.

Hackers can encrypt your entire email inbox and every file in your SaaS application. Holding your data and your business ransom. What makes this worse is that with the shared responsibility model that we outlined above, most vendors have zero liability to help you resolve a hack or ransomware incident.

Remember, all it takes is one click in a malicious email and a criminal can wreak havoc. We say it all the time, but it must be said again and again – backing up your data is one of the only ways you can actually prepare for, protect yourself from and respond to data disasters.

Without a proper backup solution for your SaaS applications, you remove your ability to avoid the damage from ransomware and cyber-attacks. You are basically left to either pay the ransom or lose the data.

3. Mistakes, Incidents and Accidents happen . . . even in the cloud

There are all kinds of mistakes and day to day errors that a SaaS backup solution can protect you from.

Some example:

• An employee accidentally deleted an important file or email
• An employee quits (SaaS applications automatically wipe and erase data when a user account is disabled . . . this burns many companies)
• Someone edits a file and you need to restore to an earlier version
• A disgruntled employee deletes a bunch of data intentionally
• A Data sync fails or goes through a glitch

SaaS backup applications have certain built in functions and settings to help you with some of the above.

Without a backup, any of the above will mean that your team member or IT staff will have to comb through ‘deleted’ folders/areas to try and find what you’re looking for. This is time consuming, frustrating and it isn’t dependable. Additionally, SaaS applications like O365 and others have limited file retention spans. Many solutions will only keep files that your users have deleted for 30-90 days.

Professional SaaS data backups helps you extend that period to meet compliance and organizational standards.

Whether you are using cloud applications like Office 365, on-premises solutions or even a mixture of both, it is critical to secure, test and manage your data backups.

Andromeda specializes in backup solutions and SaaS data backups for popular applications like O365, Salesforce and G Suite. Give our team a call at (815) 836-0030 or email our team at Contact@WeNetwork.com. We are always available to help!

The post 3 Reasons Your SaaS Applications like Office 365, G Suite and Salesforce Need Professional Backups appeared first on Andromeda Technology Solutions.

Early in 2019, a new strain of ransomware appeared.� Called "DeathRansom," its bark was initially much worse than its bite.� Researchers quickly discovered that the new strain only pretended to encrypt a user's files.

If victims simply removed the "encryption" extension, they could get their files back without doing anything at all.

That ceased to be the case around November 20th of this year.� Not only did the malware's developers begin actually encrypting files, but the number of reported DeathRansom infections surged. That indicated a large scale, highly organized distribution campaign.

Of interest, nobody seems to know exactly how DeathRansom is being distributed, but an anonymous Reddit post offered a tantalizing clue.

The Reddit poster issued screenshots indicating that DeathRansom ransom notes and STOP Djvu encrypted files were often found together in the same submissions to researchers.� That's of interest because STOP has the distinction of only being distributed via cracks and adware bundles. That is a strong indication that DeathRansom is being distributed using the same channels.

However, the software is finding its way onto victim systems, and it has gotten increasingly good at its job.� The current iteration of the malware will encrypt all files on the target machine other than those found whose full pathnames contain the following:

• Programdata
• $recycle.bin
• Program files
• Windows
• All users
• Appdata
• txt
• bat
• ini
• inf
• dat
• db
• bak
• Boot,ini
• dat.log
• db

DeathRansom's creators wanted to make sure their ransom notes were found. So in the latest version of their program, they've made sure that every folder on the victim's machine that contains locked files also contains a read_me.txt file containing the ransom note and a unique "Lock-ID" for that particular victim. All that along with an email address to be used to contact the developer or affiliate for payment details.

An analysis of the most recent DeathRansom strain is ongoing. At this point, it is not yet known if the encrypted files can be decrypted without paying the ransom.

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