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Don’t Hire MSPs Just Because Others Are Hiring

Don’t just hire; Think first

If you are well versed with technology and the pace at which IT is moving, you must definitely know what an MSP means. The IT Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are an essential backing to the IT needs of small to medium businesses, especially to those who cannot afford to have a dedicated team of IT professionals. While there are innumerable numbers of MSPs existing today, you can’t just fall into the trap.

Being a business owner, you need to do your homework well before making the decision. Here are a few points to think upon, before you finalize your IT partner. You require to hire an MSP if:

  • You don’t have a dedicated team of IT professionals:
    If you are a small or medium sized establishment, you definitely don’t need an entire team of IT experts on your payroll. Here’s where you can opt to hire the services of IT Managed Service Providers – providing expert solutions at relatively low costs.
  • Your systems need constant assistance & repairs:
    Technology is prone to eventual breakdowns and even if they seem to be simple at the first glance, you will get to know the complexities on deeper analysis. The MSPs do this for you at a fraction of the costs that an in-house IT professional would cost. Moreover, by partnering with an experienced MSP, you can be rest assured of having expert minds & brains to look after your technology.
  • You are unable to predict your IT budget:
    With this ever-changing cost of technology, it has become simply impossible to predict a fixed amount needed for the upcoming year. You can solve this issue by hiring an MSP that charges a flat fee/month and ensure to take care of all the network or data related issues without demanding for anything more. Thereby, you will have a planned approach to securing your IT infrastructure while reducing on overwhelming costs.
  • Your IT strategy is non-existent/poorly developed:
    No system is static. The technological components of your IT infrastructure also need upgrades. However, you have no idea as to how and when to proceed. The IT Managed Service Provider guides you through the whole process and also gives timely suggestions to stay consistently functional.

Apart from the above, there are other issues you may face regarding IT network security that are complex for you to resolve. Hiring MSPs can prove to be a better solution if your business is being hampered by the above mentioned technological pitfalls.

Partnering with the right MSP is essential. Net Activity, Inc. has been in business since 2002 and we believe in providing exceptionally competent solutions to our customers. If you wish to secure your data at the most economical prices, please contact Harry Bhatia at 2165035150 X 206. You may visit our website for a virtual tour of services offered by us: https://www.netactivity.us/.

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Moving to the Cloud? See How Hiring a MSP Can Help

Your transition to the cloud is a critical process and involves numerous activities that affect various aspects of your business. It’s definitely not something you deal with on daily basis. So, hiring the services of professionals is a better alternative. Hosting your business on the cloud is an opportunity to enjoy flexible, expandable data management sources while cutting down on expenses. But before migration, businesses must weigh the advantages and disadvantages of the cloud environments. These are better known by experts as they are well-versed with the technicalities of the cloud. A custom strategy is vital to get enterprises up and running faster in the cloud environment with reduced overall costs.

Here is why you need the services of managed service providers (MSPs):

To avoid investment in IT technicians – Organizations require a dedicated team of technicians to monitor the cloud migration process. However, once migration is complete, the investment will seem to be unworthy and unproductive. MSPs accept various modes of payment and you can select the one that suits your budget.

To save on the infrastructural expenses – It is wise to delegate the job to MSPs as organizations cannot afford to arrange for the computer systems that are configured to suffice the cloud migration process.

To avail the services of specially trained engineers – Many details are understood better by the specially trained engineers employed with MSPs. Your in-house IT technicians may not be able to solve issues as they occur.

Organizations may experience many other pitfalls while the process is on and at that emergency hour, it would be difficult to manage apt solutions for the problems. Manpower, bandwidth, or architecture are some of such areas where unpredictable needs may arises leading to a situation of crisis. Fortunately, collaborating with MSPs can pacify the process of your transition to the cloud with its high availability, resiliency, or disaster recovery – freeing up internal IT staff to focus on more strategic projects.

Net Activity, Inc. is one such managed service provider that is dominantly serving its customers for cloud migration and management. We are leading providers of public, private and hybrid cloud computing solutions including cloud assets, IPs and services that are customized to meet the diverse business requirements. We would like to help you through the cloud migration.

Call Harry Bhatia at 2165035150 X 206 to know about the details or visit our website https://www.netactivity.us/ to understand what we offer. https://www.netactivity.us/contact-us

How to Aggregate Multiple Links for Better Internet Connectivity?

While most of us struggle every day to connect to the highest internet speed, it is really important to look out for ways that will help extract the best usage of internet speed. Increasing the internet connection bandwidth depends on what you actually mean by it. Consider a single LAN user making only one TCP connection; In this case, he will a get a traffic flow from a single gateway and won’t be able to benefit from balanced connections. On the other hand, if the LAN is crowded with multiple users who execute multiple requests at the same time, their individual connections will have access to a higher bandwidth.

Cyberoam Firewall Addresses the Problem – Let’s see how

It simply focuses on ‘more management’ than ‘more bandwidth’ that is a logical solution. With Cyberoam, you are able to evaluate the traffic and regulate the flow, strictly adhering to the pre-established network policies. In the corporate scenario, users expect to have access to myriad applications. However, not all of those applications are related to business activities. Here, it is necessary to control user access to irrelevant applications, which would definitely invite resistance from the users. But what we are concerned more about is, distributing an optimum bandwidth to all the users so that they don’t get frustrated due to slower loading times.

Cyberoam is a bandwidth usage monitor and allocates it dynamically ensuring that every individual user and application receives a guaranteed bandwidth along with a share of excessive bandwidth based on priority. When the priority is configured, Cyberoam uses the Hierarchical Token Bucket to queuing discipline coupled with triple control like:

  • Guaranteed bandwidth: A minimum bandwidth that is reserved for a user or application
  • Burstable bandwidth: Borrowable bandwidth from the excess bandwidth
  • Priority: This refers to the excess bandwidth access priority. There are eight priority levels ranging from 0(highest) to 7(lowest).

Although Cyberoam provides result-oriented solutions to management of bandwidth, there are certain challenges that will have to be faced while its implementation.

  • Allocating required bandwidth to business-critical users every time
  • Restricting internet access and controlling bandwidth of users other than the business-critical users during the peak hours
  • Blocking the non-business related traffic during business hours

Implementing these policies to control internet usage for increasing internet speed is not an easy task. It requires strategic planning and implementation but once practiced, can result in reducing non-business network traffic and resultantly providing the expected efficiency to business-critical users.

To help you experience a speedy internet connection, Net Activity, Inc. can help you manage and gain a control using its proven Unified Threat Management (UTM) done by the award winning Cyberoam products. We offer Intrusion Prevention System, Bandwidth Management, Multiple Link Load Balancing & Gateway Failover, Content & Application Filtering and many more just from one device.

We have been in business since 2002 and use our knowledge and expertise to strengthen your internet network security and bandwidth. To know further details contact Harry Bhatia at 2165035150 X 206 or visit our website https://www.netactivity.us/contact-us  & fill in the contact form so that we can assist you.

Is Aging Computer Equipment Costing You Money?

 “Oh no… Not again!” exclaims every business owner whenever new technology enters the market. Small business owners are better reflectors of what happens in the background when any of its computer equipment reaches the retirement age. Most of them tend to continue using older equipment until it completely fails; not a smart move indeed. Although this has not been the case with pro-active businessmen who meticulously keep an eye on the movement of technology, there is a certain part of the business that is hampered.

Yes. The aging computer equipment is costing you money, in fact, a huge chunk of the investment. Let’s understand the hows:

Repairing costs > Replacement costs: The cost of repairing the sluggish PCs or other computer accessories equals or even exceeds the cost of purchasing a new one. According to a global survey by Techaisle, small businesses spend $427 on the repairs of a 4 year old PC on an average which is 1.3 times costlier than to repair a PC that is less than 4 years old or replace with a new one.

Underutilization of Employee Productivity: We often miss out the technological component while measuring and assessing employee productivity. The Techaisle study revealed that an average of 42 productive hours is lost while the older PCs are being repaired which is twice as the unproductive time due to PCs which are less than 4 years old.

Struggle with the New Technology: The aged computer equipment is weak to handle the newer versions of the software. Compatibility issues are huge as the drivers get out of date. Automatic software updates force the business owners’ hands by pushing computers to their fullest capabilities. This consumes a considerable amount of hidden costs that are accountable for less productivity and profits.

Downtime Issues: Bearing the burden of non-productive hours and loss of opportunities as well as profits during the most profitable months is not what any of the businesses operate for. However, if businesses tend to push their hardware until it blows up severely bad, this is really critical. It results into a dual-end loss: replacing the old hardware along with the unforeseeable losses due to downtime.

Business Looks Outdated: As you wouldn’t walk into a business meeting wearing a 1970’s suit, your clients, employees and customers wouldn’t be impressed to see clunky old desktops and laptop computers. It wouldn’t be a pleasant scene to watch your employees struggle to connect to a local printer – they and others connected to your business naturally tend to think that your entire business is behind the times.

If you are already calculating the costs of your aging computers, it is a good start. We can definitely help you with replacing your hardware, machines, and network components. Call Harry Bhatia at 2165035150 X 206 to discuss how much it will cost you. For initial details, please visit https://www.netactivity.us/ and find out how we can help your business requirements.

Net Activity, Inc. offers services to all sizes of businesses with skilled server handling, network management and, computer maintenance including  complete IT solutions like system installation, IT consulting, data security, storage solutions, helpdesk, maintenance & support and hardware repair.

What Is The Private Use Of Your Internet Pipe Costing You?

Internet Pipe Costing

Employees spend more than half a day’s time at their workplaces and consequently struggle to find time to pursue their own interests. Here, our major discussion is based on the use of office internet lines for personal use. At their desks, employees apparently consider the computer systems as their individual property and naturally, use the internet lines too.

However, with the surprising survey results after monitoring the network usage of employees at work, business owners realized the necessity to keep a watch on the online activity of its staff. Creating an internet policy for controlling the net activity of employees often invites resistance. But here is why you need to have an internet security policy:

Loss of productive time

– When an employee spends his office time for personal tasks, your business loses on many of the productive hours collectively. This doesn’t mean that employers must expect the staff to work every single minute, but definitely misuse of considerable productive hours must not be acceptable.

Virus attacks

– Surfing the internet for unauthenticated websites may make them prone to virus and malware attacks. This may cause serious problems if certain important files get corrupted. It would cost a huge loss of data which might also be irrecoverable at times.

Hackers’ trap

– The internet’s vulnerability to hacker’s intelligence can destroy your complete business if not secured properly. Hackers are constantly watching your business and jump in as soon as they find an entry that is missed to be secured by you.

Of course, there is no permanent solution to saving personal intervention while performing online official tasks. However, implementing the acceptable internet use policy strategically and thoughtfully can lead you nearer to the safe zone. Company internet usage policy is meant to monitor the acceptable use of internet while at work and is a measure to minimize loss of productivity as well as data.

Staying alert and proactive is often a better solution. Net Activity, Inc. offers internet network security solutions, web filtering, content management, daily/weekly reports on usage. Net Activity also provides comprehensive proactive maintenance program that covers 24x7x365 server monitoring, Spyware detection and removal, Spam and Antivirus Management, backup management, online asset and vendor management, patch and service pack management, and service pack installation along with unlimited telephone support to our Support Desk. You can fetch more details here: https://www.netactivity.us/services/it-managed-services. For further discussions, please contact Harry Bhatia at 2165035150 X 206.

Urgent Solutions for VoIP Security Issues

 

Until now, voice over internet protocol (VoIP) security has been overshadowed by the attractiveness of this new technology. But the intelligent users of today proactively raised the question of security of the internet telephony as a result of increasing vulnerability of the internet environment.

Let’s understand the vulnerabilities:

Starting with the basics, we know that these audio streams are accessible to anyone with network access. Voice over IP can be decoded by Eavesdroppers as they tap the audio conversations in an unsecured VoIP Environment. How about an eavesdropper overhearing the news of layoffs that management is planning? It can be dangerous as leaking out extremely confidential information of the management is really not what is expected of a sophisticated IT network. Hackers are all set to attack servers with irrelevant queries or requests making it inaccessible for legitimate users. This may lead to ruining the complete data structure of an organization.

What are the alternatives?

The VoIP communications may use one or more channels (TCP/UDP) connections which need to be secured – authenticated and encrypted. The VoIP network can be secured by:

  • Authorization
  • Transport Layer Security (TLS)
  • Authentication
  • Media Encryption (SRTP)

Authorization: The devices must be configured in a manner to allow traffic from a selected group of IP addresses. This mechanism shields the device from denial-of-service attacks to some extent.

Transport Layer Security: The TLS Protocol provides privacy and data integrity between two communicating applications. It allows only SIP signaling with other devices and permits applications to communicate in a way that prevents message forgery, tampering, and eavesdropping. With this, it will be mandatory for clients to set up a TLS/SSL connection to the server and exchange encrypted SIP messages on the secure connection.

Authentication: It requires the participating VoIP devices to authenticate each other before starting conversations. Thereby, it becomes nearly impossible for hackers to mislead/fake identities.

Media Encryption: SRTP (secure real-time transport protocol) is a security profile that adds confidentiality to the protocol and is ideal for protecting the voice over IP traffic. It also provides replay protection and achieves low packet and high throughput expansion by using fast–stream ciphers for encryption an implicit index for synchronization, and universal hash functions for message authentication. SRTP ensures confidentiality of the RTP payload, the integrity protection of the entire RTP packet (including protection against replayed RTP packets), and implicit authentication of the header. SRTP serves as a suitable choice for the most general scenarios as well as the most demanding ones.

Most of the VoIP vendors have pledged in to provide VoIP network services that are competitive enough to provide you a secure communication platform. The VoIP security issue is not “as” critical as it is hyped up. It’s just that hackers are alluded to interfere with the voice flowing through data networks. If you avail the services of a reliable VoIP service provider, the purpose of having an uninterrupted secure network will be solved.

Net Activity, Inc. comes along with high quality, reliable cloud-based solutions that future-proofs your communication systems. With our expert services, you will experience limitless call routing features, and an effective, intuitive user interface. For more details, please visit https://www.netactivity.us/services/voip-business-phone-services or call Harry Bhatia at 216 503 5150.

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