Professional IT Services that Andromeda Provides for Saint Charles, IL Businesses:

Managed IT Services
Saint Charles,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
Saint Charles,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
Saint Charles,IL

Andromeda's team is completely staffed by local technicians near Saint Charles,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:

Securing your data and your network is a bigger job in 2018 than it has been in years past – and if you’re looking at trends or the news, you can probably guess that network security is only going to get more important and cumbersome in the future.

Cybersecurity is now a common household term and that’s a good thing. The page has been turned on data security and people regularly recognize that we need to protect ourselves both personally and professionally from cyber crime and related threats.

To illustrate where the cybersecurity and cyber crime industries are moving here are a few stats (full article here):

• Cyber crime damage costs are predicted to hit $6 trillion annually by 2021
• Cybersecurity spending to exceed $1 trillion by 2021
• Global ransomware incidents are predicted to hit a rate of one attack every 14 seconds by 2019

The threats to data and networks are clearly going nowhere so it is important that you have a plan in place to protect your business (and yourself).

Different software applications and hardware solutions are designed to address specific security concerns. This means that while one solution may give you complete protection from one threat, it may not be suited to protect you from another.

The solution for these weak points is to ‘layer’ your security and design a solution that covers and protects your network to the best of its abilities.

What You Should Expect From A Layered Network Security Solution

A good layered security solution for your network is going to include the following components:

1. Professional Firewall Solution –

Your firewall is designed to help protect your network from external threats. It does this by blocking access to your network while allowing your users to communicate outside of the network. While a firewall is a great way to protect your network from intrusions, it can only protect your system from outside activity. A firewall cannot prevent one of your users from giving unauthorized permissions or access to programs or other users.

2. Professional Antivirus Software –

Antivirus software is a standard security solution designed to detect and block malware, viruses and other bugs from taking action against your network. An antivirus solution typically depends on a predefined catalog of known issues. The software uses this catalog to block those known issues from impacting you. The issue with this is that new viruses, malware, spyware and bugs are produced daily. If your solution is not actively updating and monitoring the internet for new incidents, it won’t be able to protect you from new threats in real time. Antivirus solutions also cannot always block a user from disregarding a warning and downloading a bad file/clicking on a bad link.

3. Email Spam Prevention/Filters –

Spam is more than just an annoying thing filling up your inbox. A majority of viruses and bugs that get through your firewall/antivirus do so by hiding in email messages. Cyber criminals know that if they send enough emails, somebody is going to click a bad link or download a compromised attachment. By filtering out spam, you dramatically decrease the opportunity for someone to accidentally introduce a virus to the network. Again though, spam filters don’t catch everything so they cannot prevent a user from making a mistake.

4. DNS Filtering/Protection –

DNS stands for Domain Name System. This piece of your network controls email delivery and is the component that allows you to browse websites. When configured, a DNS filter can prevent your employees from accessing specific types of sites. For example, a DNS filter can be set up to prevent employees from accessing social media or other blacklisted sites. This security also helps keep malware or other viruses from spreading throughout your network by masking your devices and server. This is one element of your network security that isn’t heavily impacted by regular users but if it is not set up properly and managed properly it can’t protect you from much.

5. Employee Training & Education –

You may have noticed that almost any of the security layers mentioned above have specific strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, each component had a weakness related to human or user error. The fact is that users and honest mistakes are the root cause of the majority of data breaches, viruses, downtime and incidents on your network. That doesn’t mean your employees and coworkers are intentionally breaking protocol or doing things wrong. Most of the time these are honest mistakes like clicking a link in an email, downloading a file with a hidden virus or visiting an infected/malicious site and unknowingly giving cyber criminals usernames & password information.

 And That’s Just The Beginning…

These are just five common pieces of a layered network security setup. They all work together to help cover different vulnerabilities and behaviors. There are many other software and hardware solutions that can increase your layered network security and reduce vulnerability. Some of those include:

• Encryption
• Dark Web Monitoring Services
• Dual Authentication
• Password Management
• Data Backups
• Disaster Recovery Planning
• Scheduled & Regular Patches/Updates
• Security Protocols for Remote Devices
• VPN
• Network Security Assessments (at least once a year)

The most important part to a successful layered network security setup is to take your individual needs and environment into account. There is no ‘One Size Fits All’ solution and there is no one solution that is going to guarantee 360 protection for your network. Be wary of any vendor who tries to sell you something like that.

The goal should be to protect your environment to the best of anyone’s ability and to educate/train your staff adequately to mitigate risk.

You will also want to make sure and take any specific compliance requirements or regulations for your industry into account. Most any business that has data needs to maintain certain standards for data protection.

To discuss any of the layers for a layered network security solution listed above or your environment please reach out to our team.

For more information on employee data security training go here.

The post Layered Network Security: 5 Components Every Layered Security Solution Should Have & Why Employee Training Is A Must Have appeared first on Andromeda Technology Solutions.

With the average American adult maintaining over 130 different accounts online, the risk of a data breach or data being stolen continues to grow. Between social media, financials, productivity applications, email, business applications, online shopping and countless other accounts online, your “online life” becomes more and more a part of your day to day physical life as time passes.

As more of our lives and data are shared online, criminals are focused on breaking into these databases to steal the valuable info they hold:

• Personal Info such as name, address, dates of birth, social security numbers etc.
• Financial information such as bank info, credit cards etc.
• Social Information on social media accounts

This is a real problem facing consumers globally but the impacts span beyond individual damages and stolen identities (though, those damages are bad enough).

When a criminal steals your password, or the password of a coworker, chances are – they’ve gained access to many pieces of your “online life”.

Here’s an example to illustrate how a third party data breach can lead a criminal back to your business.

Your HR manager helps book travel for employees at the business. He set up a business account at a national hotel chain to book rooms for whatever the business travel needs are. The hotel chain’s database suffers a breach and cybercriminals steal thousands of email/password combos including your HR manager’s credentials.

Your HR manager used the same password he uses for all kinds of sites online when he created the login at the hotel company site. This means that the criminals who have this breached data, now have access to your payroll software, servers and all the other things your HR manager interacts with.

The criminals either use this data themselves or take it to the Dark Web to sell for a few dollars (password/email combinations go for $3-$5 on average on the Dark Web).

Breaches like these happen daily and criminals use the information they steal to do as much damage as they can.

This creates a unique problem for business owners and managers because what can you possibly do to protect yourself from a data breach happening at a hotel chain or some other account online?

Things get even trickier when the average span of time between a data breach and disclosure to the public reaches 15 months. Meaning, criminals have a 15-month head start to get to your business and do damage before your are notified on the 5 o’clock news or your social media feed.

So, how can you defend against this kind of thing?

First, implement a password policy at your business:

1. Strong Passwords Required
2. Change Passwords Regularly (90 days minimum)
3. Dual Authentication
4. Lockout Procedures

Second, roll out a password management tool across your organization.

As mentioned earlier, the average adult in America manages over 130 accounts online. It is no wonder that we have a hard time creating strong and unique passwords for each of those accounts. It would be nearly impossible to remember all of that without writing things down – which isn’t secure.

To bridge the gap between security and memory, implement a password management tool. Look for something that is encrypted, secure and be sure to consider mobile capabilities. We recommend LastPass as a great option to start.

Third, invest in Dark Web Monitoring

Dark Web Monitoring is still a newer service offered to businesses and professionals. This is a monitoring solution designed to scrub different areas of the Dark Web (chatrooms, discussion boards etc.) for data connected to your domain.

If we apply Dark Web Monitoring to the example above with the HR Manager for instance – when the criminals stole data from the hotel chain and went to sell/share it on the Dark Web, the monitoring tool would identify your IT company to have the HR manager change passwords. That way, the criminals have useless data and you are protected well before you learn about the breach 15 months later.

The post How A Third-Party Data Breach Impacts Cybersecurity At Your Business appeared first on Andromeda Technology Solutions.

Another week, another massive data breach.

In this case, Capital One was the target when an unknown individual gained access to the company's servers.

The breach was detected by an independent security researcher, who contacted Capital One on July 19th. Apparently, the hacker gained access via a server configuration vulnerability.

Upon being made aware of the issue, Capital One addressed it immediately, which cut the hacker off from the data. At this time, it is not believed that the hacker has sold the data he was able to collect, but the investigation is ongoing.

While this breach isn't the largest in American history, the scope and scale is still staggering.� More than one million Americans and six million Canadians have been impacted by it. That includes more than a million Canadians that saw their social insurance numbers accessed.

"This information included personal information Capital One routinely collects at the time it receives credit card applications, including names, addresses, zip codes/postal codes, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, and self-reported income.� Beyond the credit card application data, the individual also obtained portions of credit card customer data, including: Customer status data, (e.g., credit scores, credit limits, balances, payment history, contact information, and fragments of transaction data) from a total of 23 days during 2016, 2017, and 2018."

In addition to more than a million Canadian social insurance numbers being exposed, the hacker also gained access to some 140,000 American social security numbers and over 80,000 bank account numbers.

If there's a silver lining here, it is the fact that the US Attorney's Office for the Western Distract of Washington said it had arrested a "former Seattle technology company software engineer" in relation to the breach.� If that proves to be true, then they apparently got him before he had time to post and sell the data on the Dark Web.

If you are a Capital One customer, or if you've applied for a Capital One card or loan between 2005 and 2019, know that your data may have been among the records compromised.

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