Managed IT Services Blog

Over the last two years, 60 percent of companies that suffered a breach determined that the culprits were systems that were not updated properly, according to research from Dark Reading. The practice of patching software, servers, computers, and other endpoints has long been one of the most tedious, albeit most important, things an IT team needs to do. The report from Dark Reading just emphasizes that point. In fact, in an age when most updating and patch management is able to be automated, there is little excuse for so many breaches to be attributed to this cause.

According to Statista, small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are expected to increase their spending on technology to $684 billion by 2021. This is a significant uptick from the $602 billion spent in 2018. However, as SMBs continue to spend on new technologies, they often run into the issue of not having someone on staff who is able to effectively manage that new technology. Having to rely on outside resources is a growing trend, and IT services in Boston are in high demand as a result. Finding the right partner to help with managed IT services takes a bit of work, though. Knowing some of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to managed IT services can help you find the right team to come in and assist.

When it comes to data breaches, the numbers don’t lie. The most recent Cost of a Data Breach Report from Ponemon shows that the average cost of a data breach is $3.92 million, and the average size comes in at over 25,000 records lost.

SMBs are no longer safe from the crosshairs of cybercriminals, either. According to Fundera, 43 percent of cyberattacks target small businesses, and three out of four SMBs don’t feel they have the personnel to properly address IT security.

Managing IT in an organization was never a simple task. No matter the size of the organization, being an IT staff member has always required a comfortable level of knowledge and experience with technology. However, the complex nature of today’s technology solutions has caused many businesses to take a different approach to providing Boston IT services. IT systems are growing so complex that 76 percent of CIOs are worried that the increased complexity will make it hard to manage IT solutions, according to a report from Dynatrace.

Over the years, technology has grown increasingly complex. Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) could, at one time, have a small IT staff or rely on a consultant to handle their technology needs. A deep knowledge of products from vendors is the new norm because a deep base of knowledge and expertise is required to configure and manage these technologies.

The 2018 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report showed that businesses with fewer than 250 employees were the victims of 58 percent of cyberattacks. It has been a trend for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to be targeted by cybercriminals for some time now. To them, the SMB represents low-hanging fruit. A lack of security knowledge and inadequate security technologies help fuel this trend. 

This is where Check Point Software Technologies, a partner of Rutter Technologies, can help. When combined with a knowledgeable team of professionals from the right managed service provider (MSP), your organization has the tools in place to stop malware and other cybersecurity threats before they do damage to your network and reputation.

Statista expects the size of the managed services market to reach nearly $300 billion a year by 2023. This growth, up from an expected $190 billion in 2019, is due in part to the fact that so many organizations realize the value a good managed service provider adds when it comes to their IT needs. 

However, if you are looking for Boston IT companies to help with IT in your company, you need to make sure that you find the right partner. As in any industry, with growth comes more competition. And not all Boston IT companies are the same. To ensure that you bring the right partner on board, avoid the following mistakes when vetting managed service providers. 

More and more businesses are turning to managed service providers (MSPs) to handle the complex IT solutions required to stay competitive in today’s marketplace. However, some still view the MSP as the guy who fixes the computers when they go down. The role of the MSP has evolved since the days of the single consultant who would come in and reconnect the printer or remove a virus from your computer. 

It’s extremely frustrating when you lose the data on your personal computer. Yet as annoying and time-consuming as this type of data loss is, it is nothing compared to losses that could be suffered by a business that has no IT disaster recovery plan in place. In fact, for a business, such a loss could mean the beginning of the end; more than 90 percent of businesses that lost their data for more than 10 days filed bankruptcy within one year of the data loss. 

Virtualization technology is nothing new. Popularized in the early 2000s, the technology that virtualization is built upon actually dates back to the 1960s, when IBM aimed to increase the efficiency of computers through time-sharing. 

Time-sharing, a process of sharing computing resources, laid the groundwork for modern-day virtualization where resources from a single computer are divided into multiple virtual machines. For example, a single server may be split into three separate servers, each one utilizing a third of the CPU, storage, and other resources.  However, modern-day virtualization allows for much more than that. Hypervisors, the software that enables virtualization, help organizations rely on virtualization for data, desktops, servers, operating systems, and network functions.