Category: All Mountain Technologies

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5 Things You Should Know About Your Current (Or Next) IT Support Company

In today’s tech-dependent world, businesses heavily rely on IT companies to support their operations and drive growth. However, it’s not enough to simply hire an IT company based on their reputation or services alone. To truly maximize the benefits of IT support, it is crucial to know your IT company on a deeper level.

Here’s a secret: IT professionals agree that you can tell how good a client is going to be by the questions they ask. So, whether you’re looking at new IT companies or still getting to know the one you’re with right now, make sure you get the answers you need to better understand what you’re paying for.

5 Questions You Need To Ask Your IT Company

Does your IT company understand your strategy?

Understanding your business strategy enables the IT company to align their services with your goals and objectives. By having a clear understanding of your strategic direction, they can tailor their IT solutions to support your specific needs. Whether it’s expanding into new markets, implementing innovative technologies, or streamlining operations, an IT company that fully comprehends your business strategy can provide strategic guidance and implement solutions that drive your success.

An IT company that understands your business strategy can act as a trusted advisor. They can offer valuable insights and recommendations on how technology can be leveraged to achieve your strategic objectives.

By staying informed about your business goals, they can proactively identify opportunities for improvement, suggest innovative solutions, and help you stay ahead of the competition. This partnership fosters a collaborative environment where the IT company becomes an integral part of your business strategy, working together towards shared success.

When an IT company understands your business strategy, they can effectively support your initiatives, scale their services, and onboard new users during mergers or acquisitions. They can align their solutions with your goals, provide strategic guidance, and act as a trusted advisor. This level of understanding and collaboration ensures that technology becomes an enabler for your business strategy, driving growth and success.

What’s your IT company’s 5-year plan?

This is a simple concept, but it’s almost always overlooked by IT clients. Have you ever asked your IT company what their macro business plan is?

You may be surprised by what you find out. Some companies are simply seeking more and more clients in order to grow their value and seek a buyout. Others are looking to rapidly expand and diversify. Often, the IT company’s business plan, if realized, can affect the quality of service the clients receive.

Make sure to keep this in mind, and keep an eye on your IT company as they grow and develop. It may give you insight into changes in service quality, or potential new offering they may be able to make available to you.

How do they handle renewal/termination of service?

Always have an exit strategy—there’s a chance that you’ll find managed services in general, or that IT company, in particular, isn’t right for you. Or, the opposite could
happen: you’ll be perfectly satisfied with the services and will want to renew them.

That’s why it’s smart to know how the renewal/termination process will work ahead of time:

  • Should the managed services contract terminate, does it require a monthly or annual renewal?
  • Will you incur any penalties for ending your service before the expiration date?
  • What is considered acceptable, in the contract, for the IT company to cancel the agreement on their end?

What is their track record?

Whether this is a new IT company you’re considering or your current partner, it’s important to look at their capabilities in the most exact terms available.

  • Do they have KPIs, benchmarks, score cards, or other qualitative trackers available for review?
  • What is their CSAT, and how has it changed over time?
  • What stats can they provide on your service ticket resolutions over the past quarter?

What do their other clients say?

No matter how great a company may seem, remember that you can’t take their word for it; or, not entirely. It’s important to seek testimonials and case studies about a potential partner before you sign on the dotted line.

Furthermore, where available, it’s a good idea to talk to other clients of your current IT company. Whether it’s a peer group, a monthly happy hour get-together, or an annual appreciation client social, this is a great opportunity to find out how other clients are benefitting from the company’s IT services and whether you could change your approach to service usage.

It’s Never Too Late To Know More

The bottom line is that you should always be striving to make better use of the investment you’ve made in IT services. A lazy IT company loves a disengaged client that pays them hundreds or thousands a month just for the occasional password reset or workstation installation. The more you pay attention, the better ROI you’ll get.

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3 Ways To Be A Better IT Client

IT blogs are usually about determining the pedigree of a given IT company. What do they offer? How do they perform? What makes them different?

It’s easy to overlook your role in the process. Here’s the hard truth: you may not be getting the best ROI for your monthly fees in IT support, and part of the problem might be you.

If you want to be a better IT client and maximize the return you get on your investment in IT services, make sure to keep the following three best practices in mind.

3 Best Practices For Ideal IT Clients

Are you doing your homework?

Ideally your IT company will take care of 99% of the work involved with maintaining and optimizing your IT environment. However, from time to time, you may have to perform a task here and there.

This is especially important at the very beginning when you are being onboarded. You generally have to fill out a lot of documentation to capture critical information such as passwords, domains, licenses, etc.

Did you keep up with that homework? Even if your onboarding period is long past, are there still questions you haven’t answered?

It’s important to keep in mind that this may allow your IT company to justify a lower quality of service, or otherwise impede them in critical situations. Without all that information, they won’t be able to do their jobs as effectively as they’d like to. That’s why you need to be sure you’ve done everything you’re supposed to, and can let your IT company work the way they need to.

Are you using all of their available services?

By fully engaging with the services they are paying for, you can unlock the full potential of your IT investments. IT companies offer a wide range of solutions beyond the help desk, such as IT consulting, managed services, cloud solutions, cybersecurity, and more. Each of these services is designed to address specific business needs and challenges, providing tailored solutions that can drive growth and efficiency.

Engaging with a broader range of IT services allows you to access customized solutions that align with their unique business goals. While the helpdesk provides immediate support for technical issues, other services can offer strategic guidance, proactive monitoring, and long-term planning. By leveraging these additional solutions, you can optimize your IT infrastructure, enhance security measures, and align technology with their overall business strategy.

Furthermore, technology is constantly evolving, and businesses need to stay ahead of the curve to remain competitive. By fully engaging with IT services, you can tap into the expertise and knowledge of IT professionals who are up-to-date with the latest industry trends and advancements. This enables businesses to leverage emerging technologies, implement innovative solutions, and gain a competitive edge in their respective markets.

Who is your point of contact?

It sounds simple, but we’ve had a lot of clients that can’t answer this question. Sure, you may have the direct number for the CEO of your IT company, but is that the most efficient way to get the help you need?

Probably not. More likely, your IT company has assigned a staff member as your point of contact. If you’re circumventing this person, whether out of convenience or otherwise, you’re likely adding minutes or even hours to the support process.

The point is that if you engage with your IT company in the way that’s dictated by their core processes, everything will function more smoothly.

Don’t Be A Bad IT Client

Fully engaging with the services provided by IT companies is essential for you to maximize the value of your IT investments. By going beyond the help desk and exploring the full range of solutions available, you can unlock tailored solutions, stay ahead of the curve, maximize efficiency, and proactively address potential challenges.

Embracing a holistic approach to IT services enables businesses to leverage technology as a strategic asset, driving growth, and achieving long-term success in today’s digital landscape.

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The Complicated Process Of Qualifying For Cybersecurity Insurance

Don’t assume you can buy coverage—insurance carriers may not want your money if your cybersecurity standards aren’t up to par. We will help you qualify for the cybersecurity insurance you need. 

During the past few years, as many of our client’s cybersecurity insurance came up for renewal, a clear trend has emerged.

Cybersecurity insurance carriers are requiring more sophisticated written cyber policies, tools, training, and disaster recovery systems before processing the renewal, and in many cases are also significantly increasing premiums for individual cybersecurity risk items that are not being addressed.  

This has nothing to do with whether there has been a claim or not in the past, and everything to do with what steps the applicant must now take to address cyber security risks. All the carriers now have additional forms filled with cybersecurity questions that must be answered accurately before the carrier will renew the policy. 

Furthermore, you can be sure that if a claim against the policy is ever submitted, the carrier will check the answers provided to determine if there is any way for them to deny coverage. This is why you have to ensure your cybersecurity is up to par; failing to do so can raise your premiums and put your coverage in jeopardy in the aftermath of an event. 

15 Questions Your Cybersecurity Insurance Carrier Is Going To Ask…

  1. Does your business have a policy against opening unverified email attachments?
  2. Does your business use an Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) solution?
  3. Does your business test cybersecurity standards with regular vulnerability scans?
  4. How many users have local administrator rights enabled?
  5. Do you have a content filtering solution?
  6. Does your business monitor traffic into and out of the network?
  7. Do you have recent and tested backups of all mission-critical data, applications, and configurations?
  8. Are your offsite backups protected by an air-gap and separate authentication mechanism?
  9. Is your cloud data backed up?
  10. Can staff members access business email on their personal devices?
  11. Do you have an email encryption solution in place?
  12. Is your staff regularly tested and trained on phishing and other social engineering attack vectors? 
  13. Do you have a Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) system in place?
  14. Do you have an update and patch management system in place?
  15. Do you work with a third-party IT company?

If you can’t answer these questions correctly (and prove your cybersecurity capabilities), be prepared to have your coverage denied or accept a significant premium increase. Regardless, it is abundantly clear that the days of the wild wild west in cybersecurity insurance are rapidly coming to an end.

3 Steps To Qualifying For Cybersecurity Insurance

Assess your infrastructure

The best way for you and your team to determine the kind of coverage that is best for your organization is to understand your IT infrastructure. By evaluating your systems from top-to-bottom, you’ll have a clear idea of all the different access points that could be leaving your network vulnerable to threats. 

Remediate your vulnerabilities and risks

Don’t forget to look into how investing in your cybersecurity could save you money on premiums. Open up a dialogue about it with your potential Cybersecurity Insurance provider and see what they suggest. 

Continually reassess

Next, it’s best practice to conduct a risk assessment and an impact analysis. Carefully review all your organizational assets—including financial data, customer information, and intellectual property.

Categorize assets according to risk and make considerations for the potential impacts that a data security event could have on all aspects of your business. 

It’s important to understand that the way you manage your cybersecurity can directly affect the coverage and premiums you qualify for. The more robust your cybersecurity posture is, the better you’ll do with carriers. Your investment can potentially return on lower insurance expenses.

How We Help Our Clients Qualify For Cybersecurity Insurance

Many of our clients attempt to fill out these questionnaires on their own, but more often than not, we have to make corrections before they’re submitted. The fact is that this sort of documentation can be very complicated for those who don’t have extensive experience with IT. 

We can manage the questionnaire on your behalf, identifying any areas that require changes in order to help you qualify for a policy or even a lower insurance premium.

We endeavor to make modifications and changes that cost as little as possible. In many cases, it’s simply a matter of developing the right documentation or changing settings in your systems to comply with your carrier’s cybersecurity standards. We also offer templates for cybersecurity management policies and statements of operations so that you don’t have to start from scratch. 

Need Help Qualifying For Cybersecurity Insurance?

Meeting the stipulations laid out by cybersecurity insurance providers may not be easy depending on the state of your cybersecurity posture. We can help you improve your approach to cybersecurity. 

Our team provides cybersecurity and technology services for businesses like yours—we are available to help you develop a robust cybersecurity defense. 

We can ensure you qualify for a policy and minimize the chance that you’ll have to make a claim on your cybersecurity insurance. 

Get in touch with our team to get started.