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Los Angeles IT Support: What To Expect With Mobile Device Help When Out In The Field

December 5, 2015 by eric

Finding good IT support in Los Angeles is never easy, especially for mobile technology as you start to allow a Bring Your Own Device policy into your workplace. If you’ve been trying to figure out a way to let your employees work out in the field to avoid being tied down to the office, BYOD policies are certainly worthy. In some cases, though, it’s necessary for your employees to use mobile devices to do business while on the go.

No matter what purposes they use those mobile devices for, it’s a complicated web of potential technical mishaps and security issues. Some companies become complacent to this because they figure it’s impossible to manage multiple mobile devices in and out of the company. You may think the same thing and figure pre-installed firewalls are all you need to stay safe.

The above isn’t always true without good management at the helm. With management comes dependable IT support to help you through the worst possible problems.

Here at GeekTek IT Services, we offer a superior IT support system in part for your office or for mobile. We want you to see how a quality IT support system can help your mobile employees deal with various situations so there isn’t any confusion on seeking a quick-fix.

Dealing with Unexpected Downtime

As convenient as mobile technology is, providers of the service can’t always guarantee their service stays perfect at all times. Call dropouts happen much too often, and other tech problems could occur during a critical business situation.

Some of your employees may do business transactions on things like tablets or smartphones. It places their mobile devices in a position where a massive tech failure could potentially hurt your overall sales.

Suppose some of your mobile devices in the field had tech issues and their operating systems shut down. Would your employees have a good IT management team to turn to in an instant to help them get back on their feet?

Downtime is a serious problem causing thousands of dollars in damages for all businesses. You don’t want downtime for very long with your mobile devices if you depend on those for making company profit.

All good IT management systems have IT support to get you on the right track. However, with management already in place, preventative measures get put forward to safeguard against the worst mishaps.

Having Mobile Device Problems During Off-Hours

Many of your employees perhaps use mobile devices for their company work during off-hours, including at home. What happens if a tech issue occurs on a weekend or even on a holiday? Because your employees can take their work with them, a problem could occur on Christmas Day, or on a Sunday when other IT professionals aren’t usually available.

Using a good IT management system, IT support is available 24/7, including weekends and holidays. They can gain access and get the problem resolved so any overtime work isn’t defeated.

Security Issues

While your employees are out using mobile devices, they may have to use public Wi-Fi networks to get connected in specific places. Without proper security, some of these Wi-Fi networks aren’t always trustworthy and could easily result in someone stealing personal customer data stored in your device.

Once you have IT management at the helm, your remote team keeps watch of what happens with your mobile devices so hackers get blocked. Employing top-tier encryption and better firewalls can give you more confidence in storing customer information.

IT support is there to alert you to these problems so you don’t have to contact them whenever you see a problem occurring.

Contact us here at GeekTek IT Services to find out more about our own excellent IT support system that’s part of our comprehensive management solution.

Image Credit To: Johan Larsson, Sam Churchill and Anne Worner

Meeting The Challenge Of BYOD-Minimizing Risks With Managed IT Services

November 18, 2015 by eric

With the advent of cloud computing and the widespread use of smartphones and tablets, companies today must deal with the issue of employees utilizing their personal mobile devices to conduct company business. According to analyst estimates, the enterprise BYOD adoption rate in 2014 was anywhere from 40-70 percent across all industries. In 2015, the trend continues to grow.

Research released by Osterman Research reveals that for every corporate-issued mobile device, there are now two personally owned iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. This statistic illustrates the fact that BYOD trends are likely to continue.

Inherent risks with BYOD

If the thought of data risk with BYOD adoption keeps you up at night, you are not alone. The possibility of data breach is real and immediate. As more employees use their personal devices for company business, risks can escalate quickly. What are some of these risks?

1. Lost or stolen devices: According to The Security for Business Innovation Council, a group of Global 1000 Information security leaders, the number one concern with BYOD adoption is lost or stolen devices. A smartphone left in a hotel room or taxi may contain sensitive company information. Found by the wrong person, this could represent a data breach nightmare. Osterman Research estimates that less than 1 in 4 devices like this can be remotely wiped by the device owner or the company whose sensitive data may be involved.

2. Vulnerable software: It is likely that your company has a policy to ensure that its internal hardware and software is regularly updated with the appropriate security patches to ensure safety and compliance with applicable regulations. Can the same be said for the personal devices of your employees? Employee failure to apply software security updates can put your company at risk. Third-party applications that are running on the devices of your employees allow you little or no control over software coding errors that can potentially expose your sensitive information to unscrupulous individuals.

3. Unprotected email: How many times a day do your employees check company email with their personal devices? If the employee does not have a PIN code to lock their device, anyone using that device automatically has free access to emails, even those containing sensitive company information.

4. Hotspots: Many employees may use devices that are set by default to identify and connect to open wireless access points when available. If this default setting is not changed appropriately, the device becomes vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

5. Storage Solutions in the Cloud: Dropbox and similar cloud storage solutions can potentially be vulnerable to unintentional data leakage issues. If your company is not providing a specified, secure storage solution for employee use, it is likely that your employees will, for the sake of convenience, use a less secure storage option which will put your data at risk.

Recommendations for BYOD agreements

If your company allows employees to use their personal devices for company business, it is imperative to craft policies and procedures to ensure the safety of your data and minimize risk. The Security for Business Innovation Council, in their report entitled, “Realizing the Mobile Enterprise”, recommends the following checklist:

Ensure that your employees are responsible for backing up personal data.
Clarify lines of responsibility for device maintenance, support, and costs
Require employees to remove apps that might contribute to data leakage at the request of the organization
Disable access to the company network if a blacklisted app is installed or if the device has been jail-broken
Clearly specify the consequences for any violations to the company BYOD policy

Help is available

Because of the inherent risk involved, you may be less than thrilled with the prospect of allowing a BYOD policy. However, the truth of the matter is that convenience is a key motivator for employees to use their personal devices. Simply put, BYOD is likely a behavior that is here to stay. This being the case, having a well-defined company strategy to manage BYOD risk is essential.

The good news is that you do not have to navigate these waters alone. A professional managed service provider can provide you with the tools you need to address the risk.

What managed service can do for you

Here are a few things that GeekTek IT Services can do to bolster your security efforts:

Design and configure a policy to manage mobile devices
Secure, monitor, manage and support mobile devices and tablets
Automatically configure email, access other settings
Simplify the support of mobile devices

If you would like help with BYOD issues, please contact us. We are hyper-focused on the security of your business, and we will gladly work with you to manage the risks involved with BYOD issues.

Image Credit To: Chris Jagers, Phil Sexton and Carissa Rogers

Finding Cloud Services That Can Help Your B2B Business Deal with Growing Pains

November 7, 2015 by eric

The most recent statistics show the use of cloud services in companies nationwide continues to grow. Yet, those same statistics show plenty of headroom still available in using the cloud for more business services. This perhaps gives indication the potential of the cloud isn’t fully realized in everyone, especially in businesses starting to experience growing pains.

Your B2B business is perhaps on that road now, and maybe you’re still sitting on the fence wondering whether using cloud services could help you reach your goals. As a result, it’s important you know some extra things about the cloud to show the potential of what it can do to help your business grow in a more competitive business world.

No matter what B2B industry you’re in, competition is no doubt becoming more intense than ever. Business opportunity is thriving, so having the right tools available to help you stay ahead of the herd is an imperative in the times we’re living in.

Ultimately, the cloud is there as a backbone to help provide myriad other tools that helps you in the realm of communication. Plus, you have access to many business tools to help speed up critical projects.

Let’s see how the cloud can keep you in the competitive race.

Quick Access to Data

Collaborations are a major part of business growth. You’re possibly working on a business project at the moment that requiring constant communications with your team to get your project fully realized. Because all of you travel for business considerably, there isn’t any time to meet in person, which would put you multiple steps behind without proper technology.

The cloud lets you access and share data with all of your colleagues while apart. Whether it’s file sharing, or gaining access to hardware and software, it’s all embedded in the cloud server. All of it has easy access via mobile devices, just as long as you have Internet service.

Utilizing IT Models

Plenty of other services are available through the cloud like Software as a Service as just one. You also have Platform as a Service, and Infrastructure as a Service as more examples of having all business tools readily available in the cloud.

Having these assets instantly available saves you money having to buy physical software and hardware. While you’re in the middle of the growth stage, you obviously still need to stick to a budget, and using cloud tools already saves you tremendous money.

Upgrading is also a problem that you can eliminate with your cloud business tools. Rather than having to spin plates and take precious time away doing updates, your cloud provider automatically updates for you. With the cloud, you have easy scalability as well to add more tools there and data when needed.

Preventing Downtime

The most recent evidence shows downtime continues being a major financial burden for companies everywhere. Infrastructure failure cost is now estimated at $100,000 per hour, and application failures are up to $1 million. These astounding numbers show far too many companies aren’t investing in things like the cloud that can prevent the excessive cost of downtime.

Disasters are inevitable in today’s unpredictable world, so you can’t become complacent to anything happening to your B2B business. If your business headquarters becomes destroyed, you can get back on your feet the same day thanks to the easy accessibility of the cloud.

Basically, your entire business can get stored in the cloud with safety and security. You can get back to business and continue your journey toward business growth without severe financial setbacks.

Here at GeekTek IT Services, we have excellent cloud solutions for you with predictable service fees. No more will you have to worry about the other excessive cost of maintaining your own server that could fail on you during a business growth period.

Contact us to find out more about our comprehensive IT services serving small and mid-sized businesses throughout the Los Angeles area.

Cloud Computing Los Angeles: How It Can Serve Your Business

October 22, 2015 by eric

We have all heard of “the cloud“, but many people do not understand what it is, or how they can take advantage of the cloud for their personal or business use. Businesses especially have a lot to gain from implementing a cloud architecture within their IT department.

“The cloud” is a term used to describe an off-site system of computers. Usually there are cloud servers that operate with a specified set of hardware and software, with the software made available to the users through their connection to the hardware. For example, a word processing software could be hosted in the cloud, and users would log in, perform their word processing tasks, and log back out. Everything they did would be stored on the cloud server, and would be available to the user anywhere they had access to an Internet connection.

Something else the cloud provides is secure backup and storage of information. By giving users their own lockbox to store files in, a cloud server is making those files available to those users from anywhere with an Internet connection. The user may edit the file on their local computer, and then re-upload it back to the cloud for access later or somewhere else.

The cloud continues to grow, both in size and capability. As computers become more advanced, what can be accomplished over an Internet connection also becomes more advanced. For example, when the cloud was just getting started, it was mostly just for storage. Now companies like Microsoft and Google have whole sets of tools and software available to use over the Internet, with everything stored and run in the cloud.

But how does one get started using the cloud? Not just using the services that are already out there, but setting up a service for their business that will allow employees to access and work on information from anywhere. For cloud computing in Los Angeles, businesses should turn to GeekTek IT Services. Our full-service suite of tools will have your business up and running in the cloud in no time, and we provide the support you need to ensure that your cloud servers are always operational so that employees have access whenever and wherever they are.

Setting up a cloud server is not something that can just be learned from a book or online tutorial. To have it done properly, and for maximum effectiveness, a business needs to turn to GeekTek IT Services for our expertise in this area. We will work with your IT department and the business managers to establish what type of cloud infrastructure and capability your business is looking for, and how best to meet those needs. Once we have established what you need, we can go about building your cloud infrastructure and installing the hardware and software to build the cloud server.

It is important that employees be educated about the new cloud infrastructure that your business has, and we can certainly provide detailed information that will help them get up and running on your new cloud servers, accessing the software and uploading and saving files.

Whether you just need a basic file server that is accessible from anywhere, or you want hosted software that will allow employees to work from anywhere without having to have special software loaded onto their computer, we can help set up your cloud server and software to the configuration that best suits your business need.

When the time comes to set up a cloud infrastructure for your business in Los Angeles, contact us at GeekTek IT Services. We look forward to hearing from you and helping you meet your business cloud service needs.

Watch Out For Productivity-Sapping Tech Cautions IT Consulting Services

October 12, 2015 by eric

You’re an entrepreneur who embraces technology. All these modern hardware, software, mobile devices, and apps help get your small business off the ground and turned your enterprise into a going concern among your customers.

But now that you’ve hired an employee or two, you can help but wonder if all this 21st century is actually sapping your productivity. It seems that you’re spending increasing amounts of time looking at funny Facebook videos. And you’ve caught your workers using up work hours searching for mobile phone apps.

You don’t consider it particularly practical to become a Luddite just to boost productivity. PC Magazine agrees and offers several tips for co-existing with hi-tech so your business thrives.

Minimize the Hardware

If one high-tech device does wonders to improve your business, then several must be better. So you not only own a desktop in the office but also own a laptop so you can bring your work to the coffee shop, a tablet so you can read your online magazines, a smart phone to keep in touch, and a connected watch so you can access your phone from your wrist. Each of these devices take time to check for notices, upgrade with the latest features, clean, maintain and store. You have to duplicate what you do with one piece of hardware among all the others.

Instead of dealing with all these time-consuming machines, confine yourself to just one or two. that you can focus on. For example, use a touch-screen laptop to take the place of your desktop and tablet, and rely on your smartphone for more portable functions, such as telling the time or catching up on reading.

Beware Your Time Online

You have the best intentions whenever you go online. You want to check the latest prices on a new paper shredder and you spend hours browsing office furniture, looking at pictures of well-decorated business spaces, and shopping for Christmas decorations. You want to respond immediately to an email your customer sent you but end up spending all afternoon sorting and adding tags to each message and cleaning up your contacts list.

To eliminate these digital time sinks, confine your online meanderings to a limited period each day, perhaps an hour when you first come in or the hour before you leave the office. If you don’t have the discipline to control your Internet access, inexpensive software such as Freedom can block access to websites and apps for set period of time. If you’re not sure how much time you spend online, use an app like RescueTime to track where you’re spending your minutes.

Block Off Your Focus Time

You know that you’re most focused the first two hours of the day or sometime in the afternoon. So that’s when you schedule your meetings. Unfortunately, such interactions among people tend to be highly unproductive as you hem and haw your way through different strategies, analyzing various options, and reaching consensus. So you’ve wasted your most valuable time.

Schedule your interactions at any other time other than when you’re most focused. Block off your most productive hours on your online calendar, so employees and customers know not to bother you then. You can then spend your best times performing tasks that demand concentration or that produce the biggest value for your company, such as determining project schedules.

Technology can multiply the working capacity of people around you and yourself but only if you know how to use it properly. To find out how, please contact us. As your IT consulting service, we can help you define strategies for managing your hardware, software, and network.

Ask Questions To Find The Right Managed Service Provider

September 26, 2015 by eric

“The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.” Nathaniel Branden

Managed service providers (MSP) have been around for a long time, but the number of businesses utilizing that IT model had been relatively low. According to Carolyn April, senior director, Industry Analysis at CompTIA, “as late as last year CompTIA found that only 3-in-10 organizations had any of their IT in the hands of an MSP.” However, that number is changing significantly, as more than two-thirds of companies surveyed for CompTIA’s Fourth Annual Trends in Managed Services Study, released in June 2015, say they have used the services of an outside IT firm within the past 12 months.

As a business owner of a small to medium-sized company, you may be overwhelmed with all the acronyms surrounding information technology (IT), the Internet of Things (IoT), software as a service (SaaS), disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), backup as a service (BaaS) and IT buzzwords like “big data.” In fact, this IT alphabet soup looks more like a Star Wars presentation than a business model and even the most insightful business owner can get intimidated with all the decisions associated with what was once, just a computer on a desktop – a personal computer (PC).

If you are not sure about joining the ranks of organizations that have contracted with a managed service provider, ask yourself a few questions:

Do you know which equipment in your current IT structure is aging and in need of replacement?
Do you know if all your servers and desktops have the latest anti-virus updates installed?
Do you know which PCs are running out of memory and affecting employee productivity?
Do you know if the latest security patches have been installed on your network?
Do you hear from your IT department on a regular basis or only when things break?

If you scratched your head or wondered about any of these questions you may benefit by engaging the assistance of a managed service provider. However, before you enter into any agreement, ask potential providers some questions also:

What level of support does each of your managed service plans provide? A reputable managed service provider should be able to tell you exactly what you are paying for, upfront.
What staff monitors the data centers, and what training they have received?
Is the staff is available 24/7/365?
Do I need to report problems or do you monitor for problems and let me know?
What backups do you have in place in case of equipment or service failure? A good managed service provider will have backups in place for each piece of equipment and a plan to switch to those as quickly as possible. Every second your equipment is not operating will impact your bottom-line, so you want that time minimized.
What security measures are in place? Protection of your data and business should be paramount to them and the measures in place need to give you peace of mind.
How customizable are their service plans? Your business may have unique needs and you should not engage in a “one-size-fits-all” type of service plan.

There are many driving factors that cause a business to consider a managed service provider. Enhanced security, cost savings, and improving the efficiency and reliability of IT operations are just a few of the realities business perceive after engaging a managed service provider. According to April at CompTIA, very few companies get rid of their internal IT staff just because they engage a managed service provider. A unique result for some businesses is that the internal IT staff, no longer under the shadow of the “break-fix” method, is now able to focus on strategic, forward-looking projects for the company.

Contact us at GeekTek and ask your questions. We are a proactive managed IT service provider that will keep all your systems up to date and running smoothly. We meet our clients day-to-day IT needs with exceptional service levels.