Managed IT Services Drive Value for Mid-Sized Businesses
In today’s world, technology is essential to business. While many organizations simply see IT as a cost center, there are ways to mitigate these costs by utilizing managed IT services to increase reliability, reduce risk, and increase operational efficiency. Organizations must invest in IT to continue to stay relevant and secure in a changing world—employees working from home during and after the pandemic is a prime example. But this kind of flexibility requires continued innovation within the IT space, and mid-sized businesses oftentimes lack the resources to do so on their own. Managed IT solutions are the key to mitigating risk while continually improving business processes—providing real business value to the company.
Increased Reliability
Modern businesses run on technology, making the IT department indispensable to daily operations. Unfortunately, outages can and do happen, and when they do, they can be very costly. Gartner estimates that on average, downtime costs companies $5,600 per minute or somewhere between $140K to $540K per hour. Even after an outage is resolved, it requires effort to restore lost data, make required updates, install necessary hardware upgrades, and ultimately get business back on track.
This worst-case scenario can be avoided by working with a managed IT services provider who works around the clock to manage hardware and software and will proactively address issues before they lead to costly outages and downtime.
Aunalytics offers a Secure Managed Services solution that includes 24/7/365 remote monitoring and management to mitigate the risk of your valuable infrastructure going down or becoming unavailable. Our advanced monitoring tool ecosystem allows us to not only respond to equipment that is reporting down in a timely manner, but also to proactively detect system issues and repair them ahead of downtime. Our remote monitoring agent includes client-based interactive support, performance management, alerting, asset management and reporting, while on-site support ensures issues can be resolved quickly at any time of day.
Reduced Security Risk
Ensuring that systems are up-to-date and constantly monitored is just one piece of the equation. Cyberattacks are an increasingly ubiquitous threat for businesses both large and small. In 2021, ransomware attacks increased by almost 105% worldwide, Fortune reports. And these increases are even higher in certain industries—in 2021, governments worldwide saw a 1,885% increase in ransomware attacks, while the health care industry faced a 755% increase, according to the 2022 Cyber Threat Report. In addition, attacks are becoming increasingly malicious and complex. Statista reports that the average duration of the downtime after a ransomware attack had increased from 15 to 20 days between Q1 2020 and Q4 2021.
Just as outages and disruptions due to technical issues can be avoided with proactive maintenance measures, there are steps organizations can take to avoid cyberattacks. McKinsey cites several tactics that have proven successful at mitigating cyberattacks which include: securing remote workstations, multifactor authentication, patch management, disabling user-level command-line capabilities and blocking TCP port 445, protecting Active Directory, and organization-wide education and training.
The in-house IT department of a mid-sized business could implement many of these tactics on its own, but generally these individuals are not data security experts. Knowing how to effectively monitor, manage, detect, prevent, and respond to cyberattacks is a very specialized skillset. Big enterprises have the bandwidth to take on these divisions. The mid-market does not.
By partnering with a managed IT services provider who is entrenched in the latest security best practices and strategies, mid-market companies avoid making costly mistakes and omissions. They can stay well-protected at all times. At Aunalytics, our security expertise includes proactive security services that your business needs to thrive. As threats evolve, your security solutions must adapt. We meet you where you are and guide you on a journey to mature your overall security posture and manage risk.
Increased Operational Efficiency
One of the biggest benefits to partnering with a managed IT services provider is increased operational efficiency. The IT team of a mid-sized business spends most of its time dealing with day-to-day challenges, and they don’t have time to think too far ahead. It can also be difficult for businesses to hire and retain IT talent. Mid-sized businesses increase operational efficiency when they utilize the talents of a managed IT services partner to advise, build, and maintain solutions on the forefront of technological advances. This partnership gives the organization’s internal team the freedom to focus on what they do best.
At Aunalytics, we strongly believe that innovation through technology makes teams more efficient. We are committed to helping organizations digitally transform by guiding and assisting them along every step of the journey. ultimately, allowing them to thrive by working side-by-side with existing teams to drive positive business outcomes through the use of Aunalytics’ technology and solutions.
Aunalytics Managed IT Services
To achieve our mission of helping mid-market businesses thrive, Aunalytics offers a wide range of managed IT and security services. It Aunalytics, we believe security is so vital that our Secure Managed Services solution includes embedded security. We offer everything needed to support the IT needs of mid-sized businesses, including:
- 24/7/365 Remote Monitoring & Management
- Synchronized Network Security Platform
- Internet Protection
- Workstation & Server Patching
- Office 365 Management & Security
- Email Filtering & Security
- Multi-Factor Authentication
- Data & Device Encryption Management
- Security Awareness Training
But at the core of all of our offerings is the team of experts that work side-by-side with clients to meet both their everyday needs and make improvements that will benefit them long-term. For urgent day-to-day issues, the Aunalytics Service Desk is available 24/7/365. Our Service Desk is comprised of knowledgeable technicians and engineers working in tandem to tackle technical issues—both simple and complex—that impact our clients. To keep your business moving forward for the future, we work with your team make improvements to your existing tech stack. With years of experience working with the mid-market, we are confident recommending new technologies and procedures your team may not even realize you need.
The technology and security experts at Aunalytics reduce your risk and increase your efficiency. Gain peace of mind by knowing that our team is there to support your tech initiatives and keep your business up and running and secure.
Proactive Security Measures Prevent and Mitigate Cybersecurity Attacks
Does your enterprise’s security stand up to today’s threats? Cyberattacks have increased to higher than ever levels and bad actors are attacking with increasing sophistication. It has been reported that ransomware attacks increased over 90% in 2021, with demands for payment skyrocketing into tens of millions of dollars. In addition, with remote work more prevalent than ever, most businesses now hold some form of sensitive data in the cloud and workers access company data from remote locations. Securing many different locations can be a challenge. Because of these factors, your security infrastructure in place today may still have gaps. Fortunately, proactive security prevents cyberattacks. Therefore, a security operations center (SOC) is the most essential element of modern security. But SOCs are expensive, complicated, and far beyond the reach of most small to midsize enterprises. Plus, security expertise is not easy to recruit and retain internally.
At Aunalytics, we constantly enhance our knowledge to keep up with progressively complex attacks. Aunalytics provides proactive measures for prevention, detection & response by identifying vulnerabilities and threats through a single, unified service. Our data platform examines intel from different sources with the goal of providing insight to your organization needed to best protect your technology environment. Pairing our data platform with the top cybersecurity solutions in the industry gives our clients peace of mind with our complete, holistic approach.
Watch the video below to learn more about Aunalytics Security solutions:
Since proactive security prevents cyberattacks, businesses need access to expert skills in cloud security and data security, which is not standard in mid-market IT departments. That is why our Aunalytics Advanced Security solution includes everything mid-market businesses need to manage risk, including:
- Comprehensive security operations solutions
- Customized security alerting and vulnerability prioritization
- Proprietary, cloud-based security platform
- Continuous vulnerability scanning
- Predictable, consistent pricing
- Threat intelligence and other security data
- Dedicated security engineers X 24×7 detection and response
When your business requires the highest level of security, Aunalytics has you covered. Our security experts stay up to date, so you can focus on your business.
Ransomware Attacks Now Target Community Businesses
If you think that your business will not be a target for ransomware attackers, think again. This is no longer a problem only for large enterprises—now, ransomware attacks target community businesses as well.
The Battle Creek, Michigan community woke up to a May Day attack that forced its Kellogg Community College (KCC) to close all operations. In the middle of preparations for final exams, all five campuses serving approximately 6900 students closed and all operations came to a screaming halt.
The community college posted alerts on its website and social media:
Eric Greene, the Vice President for Strategy, Relations, and Communications at KCC said: “We are still working to understand the full extent of this incident, but as soon as we became aware of it, we immediately assembled a multi-disciplinary team and engaged independent legal counsel and external forensic experts.”
Greene continued, “KCC had backups in place, and we are working systematically with our IT experts to restore our operations.” But even though KCC had backups, “As a precautionary measure, all campuses have been disconnected and our systems will remain offline until they are deemed secure by our IT experts. As a result, our students and staff might experience delays accessing our services, including campus emails, online classes, and resources,” Greene said.
Back-ups alone are not sufficient to prevent business disruption when a ransomware attack hits. Preventing the attack, rather than having to respond to it, is key. KCC remained closed for three days while IT scrambled. All computer access to university systems had to be shut down in an attempt to stop further damage. The response and mitigation included a forced password reset for all students, faculty and staff, and adding multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all users.
Enable Multi-factor Authentication
MFA is an important security measure when people access systems remotely. It provides an extra level of verification to make sure that the user attempting to access the system is really an authorized user and not a bad actor trying to get in. Modern business regularly includes employees logging in from home, travel and mobile devices to access data and systems from their organization. As such, the old firewall security perimeter around your place of business does not protect you. Modern security requires focus on users and access. MFA is something that is easy to add to your security stack. The protection benefit from MFA far outweighs the resource cost of installing and using the technology. Really, there is no excuse for not having MFA in today’s threat landscape. It is standard.
So if you do nothing else this year to improve your security posture, add MFA. But considering that community businesses are becoming targets for cybercrimes, unless you can afford a complete shut-down of your business, it is becoming a must to have modern security technologies (including robust monitoring so that you are equipped to prevent attacks and are better positioned to respond and mitigate), in addition to back-up and disaster recovery plans.
Shift Applications to the Cloud
Mid-market businesses are shifting security and data center responsibilities from on premise servers and security maintained by their IT department, to partnering with cloud experts who run data centers, keeping client systems stable and secure as their full time business. The trend with line of business applications used by your team for daily operations is cloud. As more and more community businesses use cloud based apps for functions like accounting, customer portals, ERP, CRM and HR, having cloud experts with the tools and the skills to be able to secure your organization’s data (from multiple sources) for safe use by remote users makes more sense than trying to build a security fortress yourself at your place of business.
Partner with Experts
If cybersecurity is not your main line of business, partner with security experts unless you want cybersecurity to become your main line of business. It will consume your resources to stay current with emerging threats, protective means, 24/7/365 monitoring, best practices and constantly evolving security measures. The ever increasing sophistication and volume of attacks has shifted the answer to the “buy it or build it” question for this critical business service from the solution being your in-house IT department to the solution requiring managed security services to supplement your in-house IT team.
Don’t become the next ransomware attack headline. Community businesses can take steps to avoid ransomware attacks. An ounce of prevention, after all, is less costly than the cost of operational shut-down, PR scramble, customer service disruption, brand reputation tarnishment, and emergency security consultant fees paid when you are in the middle of an attack that succeeded.
2022 Grand Rapids IT Symposium
Grand Rapids IT Symposium
DeVos Place, Grand Rapids, MI
Aunalytics to attend the 2022 Grand Rapids IT Symposium
Aunalytics is excited to showcase its Secure Managed Services and Advanced Security offerings at the 2022 Grand Rapids IT Symposium. The Aunalytics service stack combines mission critical IT services leveraging zero trust end-to-end security to ensure people and data are protected regardless of location.
IAF - CYBERSECURITY The Quiet War
International Affairs Forum
CYBERSECURITY: The Quiet War
Traverse City, MI
Kerry Vickers, CISO, moderating "CYBERSECURITY: The Quiet War" at IAF
Kerry Vickers, the Chief Information Security Officer at Aunalytics, will be moderating “CYBERSECURITY: The Quiet War” an International Affairs Forum event on Thursday, May 19th. The event will feature Joshua Larocca, Managing Director at Stroz Friedberg and former trial attorney with the Counterterrorism Section, U.S. Department of Justice. The discussion will be screened in-person at the Dennos Museum Center Milliken Auditorium in Traverse City, MI, and will also be livestreamed.
Aunalytics Executive to Present Session on Mobile Offices & Working Remotely at the Michigan Municipal Treasurers Association’s 2022 Basic Institute Conference
Vice President of Sales - Cloud, Steve Burdick, Will Discuss Strategies to Improve Consistent Data Access While Protecting the Security Perimeter, How to Mitigate Risks and Create Better Remote Work Scenarios
South Bend, IN (April 20, 2022) - Aunalytics, a leading data platform company delivering Insights-as-a-Service for enterprise businesses, announced today that Steve Burdick, Vice President of Sales - Cloud for Aunalytics, will present a session titled Mobile Offices & Working Remotely at the Michigan Municipal Treasurers Association’s 2022 Basic Institute conference on April 28. The conference will be held at the Comfort Inn & Suites in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.
With remote work more prevalent than ever, most businesses now hold some form of sensitive data in the cloud and workers access company data from remote locations. Zero trust security principles based on a user’s credentials instead of a user’s location within a firewalled company facility, are the new norm.
Cybersecurity attacks have increased to higher than ever levels. It has been reported that ransomware attacks, which are reaching new levels of sophistication, increased more than 90 percent in 2021 with demands for payment skyrocketing into tens of millions of dollars.
Burdick's Mobile Offices & Working Remotely session will address how today’s modern work settings demand more mobility than ever, but the consequences of working remotely create cyber security challenges for all organizations. With distributed workforces becoming a critical part of the new reality, the security perimeter can span hundreds, and even thousands, of networks that are potentially exposed to risk at every point.
Session attendees will learn strategies to improve consistent access to data while protecting the security perimeter, how to mitigate risks, and create better remote work scenarios.
Tweet this: .@Aunalytics Aunalytics Executive to Present Session on Mobile Offices & Working Remotely at the Michigan Municipal Treasurers Association’s 2022 Basic Institute Conference #FinancialServices #Banks #CreditUnions #Dataplatform #DataAnalytics #Dataintegration #Dataaccuracy #AdvancedAnalytics #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Masterdatamanagement #MDM #DataScientist #MachineLearning #ML #DigitalTransformation #FinancialServices
About Aunalytics
Aunalytics is a data platform company delivering answers for your business. Named a Digital Innovator by analyst firm Intellyx, and selected for the prestigious Inc. 5000 list, Aunalytics provides Insights-as-a-Service to answer enterprise and mid-sized companies’ most important IT and business questions. The Aunalytics® cloud-native data platform is built for universal data access, advanced analytics and AI while unifying disparate data silos into a single golden record of accurate, actionable business information. Its DaybreakTM industry intelligent data mart combined with the power of the Aunalytics data platform provides industry-specific data models with built-in queries and AI to ensure access to timely, accurate data and answers to critical business and IT questions. Through its side-by-side digital transformation model, Aunalytics provides on-demand scalable access to technology, data science, and AI experts to seamlessly transform customers’ businesses. To learn more contact us at +1 855-799-DATA or visit Aunalytics at https://www.aunalytics.com or on Twitter and LinkedIn.
PR Contact:
Denise Nelson
The Ventana Group for Aunalytics
(925) 858-5198
dnelson@theventanagroup.com
MMTA 2022 Basic Institute
2022 Basic Institute
Michigan Municipal Treasurers Association
Mt. Pleasant, MI
Steve Burdick presenting "Mobile Offices & Working Remotely" at the MMTA 2022 Basic Institute
Steve Burdick, Vice President of Sales – Cloud, will be presenting “Mobile Offices & Working Remotely” at the 2022 Basic Institute event presented by the Michigan Municipal Treasurers Association. Steve will be giving tips on how organizations can keep their mobile workforce both comfortable and secure.
The Visible and Invisible Risks of Cryptocurrency for Banks and Credit Unions
The Visible and Invisible Risks of Cryptocurrency for Banks and Credit Unions
The allure of investing early in the “next big thing” has led to increased interest in crypto investment. As a new industry, it is highly unregulated compared to other types of investments and banking. While there is potential for a big win, there is strong potential for a big lose. As a bank or credit union, here’s what you need to know to protect your institution.
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The Visible and Invisible Risks of Cryptocurrency for Banks and Credit Unions - PDF
The Visible and Invisible Risks of Cryptocurrency for Banks and Credit Unions
The allure of investing early in the “next big thing” has led to increased interest in crypto investment. As a new industry, it is highly unregulated compared to other types of investments and banking. While there is potential for a big win, there is strong potential for a big lose. As a bank or credit union, here’s what you need to know to protect your institution.
