Portland's Managed Service Provider (MSP)

TeamLogic IT - How IT works

This is a great video demonstrating how SystemWatch, from TeamLogic IT, can save your business time, save your business money, and decrease your liabilities.

Download systemwatch_demo_v2.wmv

SystemWatch is an enterprise-class suite of tools specifically tailored for the small to medium sized business. TeamLogic IT is a Managed Service Provider (MSP), delivering services that until recently were only available to Fortune 500 companies.

Security As A Service

The problem for most small and medium businesses (SMBs) is that they generally do not have full-time IT staff, or not enough, in order to effectively manage all the security measures necessary to fully protect their network and their data. SMBs with 25 or fewer employees often do not have a dedicated IT person at all. Even in larger businesses, IT staff wear multiple hats, which often means critical security tasks are reactionary in nature and are often judged as less important than other IT business needs.

Fortunately, a new development in security solutions is able to leverage technology to address this dilemma: security delivered as a service. The concept behind security as a service is simple. Rather than acquiring your own security expertise, you contract with security vendors to have a turnkey service to meet your demands. Outsourcing cyber-security eliminates all the labor and infrastructure, while still giving you the state of the industry solutions.

Some of the most common Security As a Service (SAaS) offerings are vulnerability assessment, firewall monitoring, content filtering, and intrusion prevention monitoring. These can generally be done remotely and allow businesses to have the protection of a full time Network Operations Center (NOC) monitoring their security status, but at a fraction of the cost.

With new Oregon legislation, such as the Oregon Identity Theft Protection Act (www.oregonidentitytheftprotectionact.com), Oregon businesses must become familiar with the security they  currently employ and ensure that mixture of technology and procedures protects against identity theft and data breaches.

If your company has never had an external vulnerability assessment, it may be well worth the cost to have one conducted. An example of this is at www.hackerview.com, where you can order a vulnerability assessment for you company for $350. This will provide you with the knowledge of how your company looks from the eyes of a hacker. There is an example policy on the site that is well worth taking a look at.

Managed Firewall Service

The management challenges for a small to medium-sized business (SMB) are no different than larger enterprises. SMBs must also contend with disparate tools to manage, monitor and report on the health of their network. Whether a business has as few as one location, managed firewall solutions offer tremendous value in providing uniform management of your firewall(s) and VPN gateway(s) coupled with the value of real-time and historical reporting.

There are many benefits of managed firewalls. One benefit is that you do not have to purchase a business class firewall / router / VPN appliance. As part of the service agreement, you are provided with business-class hardware with a same day / next day replacement agreement. You are able to pay a small monthly fee that includes the hardware, monitoring services, reporting services, antivirus & antispyware protection, content filtering, firmware upgrades, and intrusion prevention. That is an outstanding set of services that keeps you focused on your business. You do not having to worry about the configuration of your firewall and what websites your employees are squandering their time at.

Secure your network from Internet threats and employee abuse with TeamLogic IT's PerimeterGuard, our Managed Firewall Service (MFS). We support and manage all aspects of your Internet access and security, as well as providing secure connectivity to your branch offices and remote users. The TeamLogic IT PerimeterGuard service is designed to assist businesses that want to make the most of high speed Internet access while ensuring that the associated risks, liabilities, management and support issues are professionally addressed.

Our advanced firewall platform provides all of the tools and support that you need to manage your company’s Internet use and connectivity. We provide all equipment and software needed for advanced services such as web site blocking, usage monitoring, auto fail-over, encrypted VPN tunnels and unlimited expert technical support. TeamLogic IT’s PerimeterGuard is compatible with all types of high speed circuits from all major Internet Service Providers. There is nothing to purchase and no long term contract.

PerimeterGuard Overview

- Business-class firewall hardware and software
- Professional installation and configuration
- 24x7 monitoring and reporting - ability to monitor and block web use
- Gateway antivirus and antispyware protection
- Gateway Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)
- Managed content filtering – website blocking by both category and domain
- Auto fail-over to backup circuit  (dual WAN capable)
- Secure encrypted tunnels to remote offices or home offices
- Firmware updates, management and support included in the service contract
- Same or next-day replacement contract

Managed Services & You

When it comes to managed services, most clients have very valid questions in regards to what managed services are and what they are getting for their money.

As a Managed Service Provider (MSP), our mission is to keep client networks, consisting of servers, desktops, routers, printers, and other peripherals, operational. Even on small networks, this involves making sure the software and hardware of at least a dozen manufacturers is configured properly and remains configured so that the network is as transparent as the plumbing in the building. This sometimes sounds easier than it actually is, but the bottom line is MSPs focus on preventative maintenance to minimize overall risks to a network.

With Information Technology (IT), nothing is absolute or error free. Since no two users are exactly alike, every computer is used slightly different and has slightly different software associated with the machine from cookies to updates to versions of software. Given those differences, each computer will in some small way react differently to commands or how they experience errors. Because of this situation, it is imperative to take a proactive stance on maintenance with the goal of solving potential problems when they are small, rather than waiting for the problem to lead to a catastrophic loss of service or data loss.

Preventative Maintenance
There are two approaches to maintaining computers:

1. Focus on reactive maintenance and do nothing until there is a major problem. This mindset leads the network down the path of waiting for a catastrophic failure of some kind and then reacting to it. These situations usually lead to significant downtime and potential data loss. This is an amateurish mindset to have and has no place in a professional organization, since it completely disregards any form of risk management.
2. Focus on routine, preventative maintenance with the goal of avoiding major problems. You know there are going to be some problems, but by keeping on top of the smaller issues, it decreases the likelihood of a catastrophic failure will lead to large disruptions. Based on the level of risk the company is worth accepting, it determines the level of preventative maintenance taken. The main question is how crucial is downtime in your organization?

The bottom line is it is far less costly to deal with preventative maintenance than it is to follow the reactive route. You have to take into account the potential loss of revenue from downtime of systems. That expense justifies following a computer lifecycle plan where your server is no more than 3-4 years old.

Mitigating Risk
The risks are very real. Since you are dealing with highly confidential client data, you cannot afford to have your systems unprotected and become compromised. You have a responsibility to your clients to protect their Personally Identifiable Information (PII). It is a liability issue and our goal there is to minimize your overall liabilities in IT by focusing on due care and due diligence:

Due Care: We implement a network that suits your business needs. We set policies requiring complex passwords and configured the server for users to have least privileges.
Due Diligence: We are keeping your machines updated, we are keeping viruses and spyware off the machines, we are backing up your data, we are looking for potential problems on all the machines that could affect their security or cause downtime.

If your goal is to save a little money on a monthly basis, you will neglect the aspect of due diligence. That may comes back to be far more costly in the future if there is a compromise of client data and nothing can be shown that any effort was made to proactively keep machines on the network secure. Again, it comes down to risk management. It is impossible to eliminate all risk, but it is possible to mitigate risk to an acceptable level. The definition of acceptable is different for each organization.

What are managed services?

A recent study by the Gartner Group revealed the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for an unmanaged computer over a three-year lifespan is $5,309, while the cost of a managed computer over the same timeframe is $3,335. This equates to a cost savings of $1,974 by having managed computers. Managed services has been in place within corporate America for years and is now accessible to the Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) that need help maintaining their network infrastructure.

Simply put, managed services is the practice of clients transferring day-to-day related network management responsibility to an outsourced provider as a strategic method for improved effective and efficient operations.

• Network management refers to the activities, methods, procedures, and tools that pertain to the operations, administration, and maintenance of networked systems.
• Operations deals with keeping the network (and the services that the network provides) up and running smoothly. It includes monitoring the network to spot problems as soon as possible, ideally before users are affected.
• Administration deals with keeping track of resources in the network and how they are assigned. It includes all the "housekeeping" that is necessary to keep the network under control. This can be as simple as adding or removing users or as complex as managing permissions and audits.

Maintenance is concerned with performing repairs and upgrades. Examples of maintenance include when equipment must be replaced, when a router needs a firmware upgrade, or when a new switch is added to a network. Maintenance also involves corrective and preventive measures to make the managed network run "better", such as adjusting device configuration parameters.

If you would like to learn more about managed services, take a few minutes to visit http://www.pdxmsp.com