ARE YOU A SMALL BUSINESS LOOKING TO BUILD REVENUE?

LET’S BUILD SOME REVENUE USING THE CLOUD…

Do you want to save money and direct your time and energy into boosting profits? We suggest updating your infrastructure to include the cloud.

For a small business owner like you, building and supporting a baseline IT infrastructure that provides reliable 24/7 services to you and your customers can be forbiddingly expensive. Even a wobbly, poorly supported infrastructure can be a budget breaker.

REALTIME CLOUD HOSTING is a great way to eliminate a lot of headaches for your business.

Large capital expenditures, high fixed-labor costs, and endless spending for upgrades don’t have to be your fate. The cloud offers a way out it can not only save you money, it eliminates a lot of headaches and can spur growth and boost profits. Let’s look at just a few things the cloud can do for you.

Capex: Most of the expenses of hardware disappear into the cloud. Servers, cabling, all the redundant equipment needed for backup can be handled by a cloud Service provider.

And more importantly, if you need to ramp up quick for an unexpected surge in business, a cloud service provider can easily accommodate your demands as needed.

Disaster recovery is simplified: While you always need disaster recovery plans, the biggest head- aches disappear. When you handle everything in-house, considerable expenditures arise if you want high reliability. Redundant equipment, fully loaded with software is required in case of hardware failure. Uninterruptible power supplies to support the full load of all your servers and backups can be extraordinarily expensive. And even if you keep a lot of your infrastructure on-site, the cloud can be used as a reliable data backup system

Labor: The cloud can cut and/or re-allocate your IT labor costs. The benefits of the cloud in the area of IT resources are twofold.

First, you eliminate the need for 24/7 resources to support your infrastructure. Even if you have only minimal in-house support, emergency on-call break/fix services come at very high hourly rates, and cannot always respond fast enough to eliminate downtime. Of course, your cloud fees include the labor needed to support your infrastructure, but you are sharing that labor cost with all the other renters. Economies of scale really step in when it comes to labor, and this is a condition a small business can’t create on its own.

Second, when you migrate to the cloud, your in-house IT resources can be re-directed to strategic IT planning for future growth and boost profit. This staff can now be used for innovation, not just housekeeping.

And finally, the cloud isn't blue- It's green. While big server farms use enormous amounts of energy, they are a more efficient method than equipment dispersed in offices worldwide.

Other unexpected benefits: As you move your IT into the cloud, some unseen expenses go away. The extra office space that houses equipment no longer needs to be leased, or can be used to house other revenue producing resources, like a few new salespeople. The electric power to drive it all doesn’t come free, and the cooling power to keep everything from overheating is often an overlooked cost of in-house infrastructure.

5 FOUNDATIONS OF A SOLID CYBERSECURITY PLAN

5 FOUNDATIONS OF A SOLID CYBERSECURITY PLAN

• Identify - Define your business assets and what you need to protect.

• Protect - Operate securely and actively protect your valuable information.

• Detect - Observe and alert on bad behaviors and other indicators of compromise.

• Response - Guide your actions with your response plans.

• Recovery - A safety net is imperative for a solid Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan.

CRAFTING A SOLID CYBERSECURITY PROCESS

The first steps in crafting a solid cybersecurity process for your business fall under the IDENTIFY domain: perform a Risk Assessment, a Vulnerability Assessment, and an Impact Analysis on your business to help document your business risks. 

Let’s dig into this a bit. Beware, lots of links ahead!

Here is a great resource that you’ve already paid for with your tax dollars – the NIST Small Business Cybersecurity corner, https://www.nist.gov/itl/smallbusinesscyber. NIST has a roadmap, https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/c3vp/smb/DHS-SMB-Road-Map.pdf to help visualize the journey to improved cybersecurity for your business. This guide covers the five foundations discussed earlier in a user-friendly format -https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2016/NIST.IR.7621r1.pdf.  

• Risk Assessment – compare proven best practices against how your business approaches various actions/processes that can impact your security. RealTime has a shortened Risk Assessment to get you started, all based upon the NIST Cybersecurity framework. Save some time by calling us to review your processes or use the full assessment using the NIST framework tools provided below:

  • Latest NIST CSF Framework PDF, version 1.1 https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/CSWP/NIST.CSWP.04162018.pdf

  • Spreadsheet to perform the evaluation with https://www.nist.gov/document/2018-04-16frameworkv11core1xlsx

• Vulnerability Assessment – Test your network inside and out for technical holes using this assessment. A competent professional should perform this step and RealTime is available. You can do this yourself, but it’ll be faster, cheaper, and better to engage a professional to perform this step.

• Business Impact Analysis – Outline the most important things your business does and technologies or systems used to perform these important functions. This will help you focus your resources where you can get the most positive impact to your business. A Business Impact Analysis is definitely a DIY step – no one knows your business better than you. RealTime can help guide the process and the risk discussion if you need it.

IDENTIFIED RISKS AND POTENTIAL IMPACTS

After you’ve gathered this information, prioritize your findings to help make educated decisions on

1. What risks you need to mitigate now;

2. What risks to plan to address in the future;

3. What risks you choose to accept for now.

   The goal is for your business to understand what your identified risks are and the potential impacts; this allows you to prioritize and begin mitigating those risks. Most small businesses find that many risks are process/procedure oriented. These things can largely be addressed internally with proper staff training on new processes.

   Additionally, it is likely that there will also be technical risks and these will need to be addressed by your Technology Department or an outsourced provider like RealTime.

 ARE YOU GOING TO SLEEP WELL TONIGHT?

We hope this piqueS your interest in getting on the path to improving cybersecurity for your business. EVERY business, small or large, needs a comprehensive cybersecurity program now more than ever. Call us if we can help or fill-out the form below, (334) 678-1417.

Pro tip – this is part of RESPOND, but is something you’ll want to have in place sooner rather than later – Cyber liability insurance. Talk to a qualified insurer, ask lots of questions and make sure the policy is going to be effective in providing the coverage your business needs. 

[Guest post written by RealTime VP Todd Swartzman]

WANT ADDITIONAL RESOURCES?

We have resources such as a Business Impact Analysis spreadsheet and other items to help your business. Just fill-out the form below and we will help you out.

2 TIPS FOR IT HURRICANE PREP

Hurricane season is quickly approaching as we watch Tropical Storm Barry move into the coast. Start preparing your business now, instead of waiting until the last minute.

source: ABC13 Houston

TOP TWO TIPS FOR HURRICANE SEASON PREP FOR YOUR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Don’t wait for a Hurricane to hit our area to begin to prepare for Hurricane Season. Here are our TOP TWO TIPS to begin prep work for Hurricane Season:

1. BACKUP TO A HYBRID-CLOUD

There are several different ways to create a backup, but we suggest a hybrid-cloud image-based backup that can be used to restore data and applications even if your server is destroyed, and that can restore data from different points in time.

RealTime provides Hybrid-Cloud backups for our clients. The above diagram explains the concept of a Hybrid cloud model for backing up your data.

Source: KPMG International, 2016.

2. GO OLD SCHOOL

This is what telephones looked like before they were referred to as “landlines”.

Use your printer the way you did in the 1990s! Print out a copy of all of your important emergency contacts and have them ready with your hurricane supplies. You never know if you will be able to access your phone or computer, but perhaps you can find a landline somewhere to use in a dire situation.

If you don’t have a Backup plan, contact us today to get your business backup going. Our IT experts can handle all of the details of protecting your business during Hurricane Season and year round. It’s always good to have a plan. We are the planning experts.

Contact us now.

TECH JOMO

TECH JOMO

Blogger Anil Dash first coined the phrase JOMO (joy of missing out) in a popular blog post nearly seven years ago. To explain it another way, JOMO is the opposite of FOMO (fear of missing out). It’s unplugging from emails, texts, social networks, etc. in an effort to embrace solitude. 

So what would it feel like to experience JOMO in your work life? RealTime could help you let go of the reigns a little bit. Putting your tech in the hands of professionals and basking in JOMO will give you more joy and peace-of-mind than micromanaging yourself to death at work.

Here’s what you should start missing out on…

REPLACING HARDWARE

RealTime provides a JOMO-inducing smile with our Life Cycle Management program.  As your systems age, we take the responsibility to replace them. We schedule the replacement and upgrades for your technical equipment including computers, servers, firewalls and switches.

SOFTWARE UPGRADES

What about software? Do you have FOMO that you won’t have the latest update? Well, rest assured that RealTime automatically maintains and updates all your software systems so you don’t have to do it. 

BACKUPS

We have a plan in place to automatically backup all your systems and we regularly test these backups. So you can let go of the FOMO on your work and documents if your systems unexpectedly go down. Your work is not lost; it is backed up. 

DOWNTIME

If you’re worried about not being able to work because your systems have gone down, with RealTime on your side, you’ll experience JOMO. By providing all the features we’ve mentioned above, RealTime ensures that your downtime is minimal. 

Embrace the solitude of knowing that all your technology is working optimally. Give RealTime a call and let us put some JOMO back into your work life.  

(334) 678-1417

The Art of Decluttering your IT

Four easy steps to declutter your tech gadGets and enter the world of technology nirvana.

If you live on planet Earth, then you’ve heard of Marie Kondo, a Japanese organizing consultant, that basically transforms lives through the art of decluttering. Her radical approach has made her a best-selling author and awarded her a Netflix series where you can literally watch people get emotional over the clutter in their homes.

Along that same train of thought, we should organize and transform our tech lives. Here are our life changing suggestions to transform your tech life one cluttered item at a time. 

#1 FORGOTTEN DOWNLOADS CAUSE A LOT OF CRUFT 

Cruft is bad. Terrible. It piles up and uses up a huge amount of storage and can eventually lead to your machine slowing down. (Kind of like those 15 pairs of blue jeans you can’t squeeze into any longer that are taking up drawer space.) Get rid of the duplicates. 

Software cruft are basically “digital dust bunnies.” You know, those duplicate files, forgotten downloads, abandoned files from apps you deleted, and so on. They’re slowing you down big time. Getting the cruft out may sound daunting, but it is actually easy to do. Apple, Microsoft and Google have all joined the anti-cruft global crusade and have added cruft-removal tools to their operating systems. You just need to remind yourself to use them. Read more on How to Clean Out the Cruft here.

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#2 OUT-OF-DATE SOFTWARE COULD BE HARMFUL TO YOUR DIGITAL HEALTH

There’s a reason that Apple, Microsoft and Google offer free updates to their phones and computer operating systems. Each update offers more security, less bugginess and makes you love your device more. Let’s face it – they want you to love their product so you will continue to purchase from them in the future. 

Make sure that you update software whenever it is available to ensure that your device/system is running the safest and most efficient that it can. These updates usually help protect your devices with current ways to protect you from hackers and malware.

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#3 FALL IN LOVE WITH AUTOMATED BACKUP 

If you’re like the masses, only 6 percent of us have actually set up an automatic, continuous backup system. Because, believe it or not, if you use it long enough your hard drive will die one day. Even the manufacturer admits this in the fine print of the manual. (M.T.B.F “mean time between failures”…look it up).

There are some online solutions that will automate backups, these are great because they are offsite. Whether it’s fire, flood, burglars…toddlers’ juice…your data is safe and not your concern until you really, really need to be concerned. 

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#4 SAVE YOUR PHONE’S PHOTOS 

We all have trigger finger. We snap photos at soccer games, weddings, selfies (eh-um) and work to capture the sweetest moments on our phones. But what happens if we lose our phones or they get dropped in a cup of coffee? What happens to all of those moments?

Ensuring you have a cloud-based backup for phones is the rule. You have options like Dropbox, Flickr, Apple’s iCloud and other companies that can back up your phone’s photos and videos, wirelessly and automatically. Or, look into other options like Google Photos and Amazon Photos, they can back up your complete photo collection for free.

The short and long of this story is that you need to clean up your technology like you clean and organize your home. Automate backups and updates, clean out the cruft and live in bliss knowing that you are automatically safe and secure on all tech avenues.