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:

There are likely many kinds of devices and many different elements that makeup the unique network infrastructure at your manufacturing, logistics, transportation or distribution (MLTD) business. You probably have many of the standard devices we see across most of our IT clients – firewalls, routers, access points, switches etc. 

Not to mention any connected devices related to your production, staging or shipping processes.  

In recent years, the MLTD industries have been heavy targets for cybercrime and cybercriminals. This has been largely attributed to the way these businesses use technology and the fact that many businesses in these industries are leaning on older systems and technologies that are specific to their business models.   

Criminals have caught onto this issue and are attacking known weak points, disrupting production, and grinding businesses to a halt.  

One important step you can take to defend against this is to segment your networks and add layers to protect the different networks of your business.  

What does it mean to segment my network?  

Essentially, all this means is separating different groups or functions at your business into different networks so that you can control them individually.  

The most common network segmentation we perform and encounter in the MLTD market is between the operations network (back office) and the production network (on ‘the floor’ of your facility) and the BYOD Network (for guests and staff devices).  

Why do I want to segment my network?

Segmenting your network helps to keep all of the appropriate activities in their appropriate lanes. For instance, you don’t want your employees surfing the web on their cell phones on the same network that your primary business functions on.  

Imagine an employee accidentally clicked a bad link and infected/shut down the whole network – you’d likely want this to happen in an area that didn’t impact the entire business. Instead, if you segment properly, the impact would be restricted to the BYOD or Guest network and your employees couldn’t use WIFI on their personal devices until you got things cleaned up.  

Now, imagine this same example hits your back office. An employee opens an email and unknowingly gets infected with ransomware. That ransomware now spreads throughout the office and all PCs are down. With proper network segmentation, you have an added layer that will help protect your production floor from being infected. With a good <<business continuity plan – Link to that other article on business continuity>> your team can work on resolving the issues in the office but the production network would not be impacted.

The post Importance of Segmenting Your Network in Manufacturing and Logistics appeared first on Andromeda Technology Solutions.

Microsoft Teams helps professionals connect and stay productive by bringing all documentation, communication and collaboration into one space. If you are like us, most of your day-to-day communication and activity is somehow tied to Microsoft Teams.  Like many other software as a service programs, Teams users benefit from real-time product updates and feature rollouts. That means that the software responds to user needs and is constantly being updated with new features.  

Here are the awesome new features that have been added to your Teams app that you might not have heard about. 

1 New Meeting and Call Pop-outs – When you join a call/meeting in the desktop app, it will pop out into a secondary window instead of confining your meeting to the main Teams interface. This allows you to have a meeting on one screen and the full Teams app open on another screen etc.   It should be noted though, to use this Teams setting, you must turn it on in your general settings.

2 Book appointments with Bookings. The Bookings app inside Teams is an easy way to schedule virtual appointments. You can manage multiple calendars, as well as communications with internal and external attendees, from a single source. The virtual appointments are then held via Microsoft Teams Meetings.

3 Raise your hand in a meeting. This is especially handy when you have a large gathering and don’t want to interrupt the speaker. You let people know you have something to say with the new raise hand feature in Teams. While in a meeting, select the hand icon in your control bar. This will highlight your hand icon on your video feed to let the rest of the attendees know that you’d like to speak. Once you have been allowed to share, you just click the icon again to lower your hand. 

If your team is ready to start using the full Office 365 suite of products and you need a partner to help implement it at your office, give us a call and we can help manage the process and installation.

The post 3 Teams Updates You Might Have Missed & How To Use Or Access Them appeared first on Andromeda Technology Solutions.

Apple has been historically very good at keeping malware out of their app store, and they're constantly improving their security protocols on that front. In fact, since February of this year (2020), all Mac software distributed outside of its Mac App Store must be notarized by Apple. The developers must demonstrate that their products are capable of running on macOS Catalina and above.

Any software developed for macOS goes through a multi-stage approval process, with the first step being automated. It is designed to scan software for code-signing issues and malicious components. Assuming the submitted code passes through this security checkpoint, the apps are put on the macOS Gatekeeper list. The list signifies that they've been scanned and it has been determined that they don't pose a security risk.

While this process was designed to give users greater peace of mind, it's not bullet proof, as Peter Dantini recently discovered. He found notarized Shlayer adware installers that were being distributed through a variety of fake websites. These installers could run on any machine using macOS Catalina without being auto-blocked when they tried to launch.

The worst part about this is the fact that since these installers bear Apple's "seal of approval," users are bound to trust them without question, which means that the malware developers' payloads can spread like wildfire through the Apple ecosystem.

Legendary security researcher Patrick Wardle confirmed all of the above and reported it to Apple direct. Apple tends to take reports from Mr. Wardle seriously, and the company responded immediately by revoking those certificates. That means that any installation attempts will be auto-blocked by Gatekeeper.

Unfortunately, it appears that the Shlayer campaign is still ongoing, the hackers having simply shifted gears and are now serving new payloads, notarized on the same day that Apple revoked the initial sample's certificates.

As Patrick Wardle notes:

"Both the old and 'new' payload(s) appears to be nearly identical, containing 'OSX.Shlayer' packaged with the Bundlore adware. However the attackers' ability to agilely continue their attack (with other notarized payloads) is noteworthy.

Clearly, in the never-ending cat & mouse game between the attackers and Apple, the attackers are currently (still) winning."

Indeed. Best of luck to Apple, and if you're a mac user, stay safe out there.

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