Tag: business continuity

How IT Support Providers in LA Help Business Realize Effective BCDR

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How IT Support Providers in LA Help Business Realize Effective BCDR

With the prevailing threat vectors in the cyberspace, it is critical to embrace business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) solutions from IT support providers in LA. While a business continuity plan shares some similarities with a disaster recovery plan, the two are not the same.

Disaster recovery strictly involves the setting up of redundancies necessary for the recovery of data and computing infrastructure in the event of a catastrophe. On the other hand, a business continuity plan entails a large-scale plan designed to help in the restoration of business operations at an organization-wide level in case of a natural or artificial disaster.

Here’re the top business continuity planning and disaster recovery best practices:

Exploit Virtualization Technology

As the severity of cyber-attacks accelerates, virtualization technology has brought about a remarkable breakthrough in the realization of load-balancing and dependable failover systems. These solutions ensure that business operations go on normally by enabling the seamless transfer of users to an alternative computing environment.

As a result, your operational processes continue as though no disaster impacted your organization.

Update Your Plan Regularly

IT support providers in LA prioritizes continuous optimization of recovery plans. Although the initial setup of your recovery plan may cover all the critical aspects necessary to overcome a disaster, new threat vectors keep on advancing. Thus, implementing progressive updates enable you to address new threats as they emerge.

For example, if you have several recovery points that are proven to work at the beginning of the year, you can’t rely on the same approach to address recovery for new cloud-based applications. For the new off-site systems, update your BCDR plan to align with the cloud so that it will be easy and quick to recover in case a disaster strikes.

Test Your BCDR

A business continuity and disaster recovery plan is futile unless it has been tested and proven to work. Testing your plan on a regular basis helps ensure that it is accessible and workable in the event of a crisis.

The testing should simulate all possible outcomes of a disaster, from a minor error to an extreme situation such as the catastrophic wipeout of your premises by a tornado. Doing so will empower you with great insights to build on your existing plan to achieve great resilience so that a disaster doesn’t take you out of business or tarnish your reputation.

Conclusion

With a dependable IT support provider in LA like Advanced Networks, you can achieve a fail-safe BCDR plan. We’ll help you eliminate the vulnerabilities that can nullify your chances of recovery in the face of a calamity. contact us at Advanced Networks today.

IT Support in LA: The Future of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

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The Future of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

A string of natural disasters and online attacks have prompted organizations around the world to establish and test their business continuity and disaster recovery measures. If you don’t have such systems in place or haven’t updated them in a while, our IT support providers in LA can help.

Here’s a look at what to expect for business continuity and disaster recovery in the new year:

A Push to Migrate Data with Prospective Threats in Mind

An increasing number of organizations are shifting toward being proactive against attacks and natural disasters as to being passive or reactive. Some will go as far as migrating data to avoid a specific threat. Business owners and managers are taking the bull by the horns, proactively planning for attacks, natural disasters and other forms of interference. Organizations will spend that much more time, money and effort attempting to identify risks that have the potential to hijack or ruin data. Preparation is now the name of the game.

An Increase in Cryptojacking and Ransomware

Ransomware attacks might be less random than in the past yet they are larger in scope. It appears as though cyber thieves are transitioning to targeting massive organizations as opposed to the small and medium-sized businesses that were in hackers’ sights this past year. There is an emerging shift in targeting those with large amounts of information.

Cryptojacking schemes appear to be on the rise. This attack relies on compromised websites to sabotage devices and pilfer cyprtocurrencies. Cyber thieves access the targeted cryptocurrency instead of waiting for a business to follow through on a ransomware ransom payment. Ransomware really does have the potential to cripple your business. If you aren’t prepared it is time to establish the proper defenses. Our IT support experts in LA are here to help.

Company Reputations Closely Tied to Crises Responses

Look for customers and entire communities to begin judging businesses by their responses to crises. That many more people will focus on how businesses respond after natural disasters, ransomware attacks and other digital threats emerge. Those that respond with grace under fire will win favor amongst the buying public, protect their brand and stay in business for the long haul. After all, a business that cannot protect its data should not be trusted with customer information. Some customers might even go as far as judging businesses by their level of community support following a crisis.

Is your business continuity and disaster recovery up to par? Do you need assistance with IT or other tech solutions? Our IT support team in LA is at your service. Contact us at Advanced Networks for more information about our company and services.

IT Support in LA: Learning Proper Business Continuity Strategies from the Financial Services Sector

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Business continuity is paramount in the financial services sector, and with the help of IT support firms in LA, other businesses can benefit from their experience.

A disaster can cause havoc with a company’s IT systems at any time. It could be in the form of naturally-occurring disasters like tornadoes and earthquakes. It can also be something closer to home like fires and flooding. Add these to the increasing worry of cybersecurity threats and it is clear that every business should be considering a thorough disaster recovery and business continuity plan. But, where to start?

Eliminate Downtime

In order to minimize financial losses, your company should be aiming to have as little downtime as possible in the event of a disaster. The prolonged disruption of business operations can signal the end of a company, so recovering your data and getting your systems back up and running again is vital. In order to do this, you have to make sure that the technology that supports your recovery and operations processes is not outdated. If you are running your systems on the cloud, you will have access to almost instantaneous backups and tested backup verification processes. If not, you have to make sure that your backups are carried out frequently and your data center is fit for purpose, as well as significantly far away from your main IT base, so that the disaster is unlikely to have also caused an issue there.

Protect Your Sensitive Data

Sensitive data is the backbone of financial companies but equally crucial elsewhere, and to lose access to it can be catastrophic. It is essential that your information is kept secure and unreadable if it were to be stolen during a cyberattack on your systems. Encryption is the very least you should be aiming for, and excellent security measures like firewalls and anti-virus software are a necessary addition. If you have IT support in LA and are using the cloud, the chances are your data will be securely protected and backed up. But if you are running your infrastructure in-house, then you need to make sure that all the necessary precautions have been made and your backups will restore your data as soon as is practicably possible.

Conclusion

At Advanced Networks, we are an IT support company in LA specializing in helping all types of businesses with their IT needs. If you are worried about your readiness in the face of a possible disaster affecting your IT infrastructure, we are the perfect people to call. Contact us today and our IT experts will be happy to discuss the best course of action to protect your company going forward.

IT Consulting Firm in Los Angeles: The Importance of a Business Continuity Plan

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IT Consulting Firm in Los Angeles: The Importance of a Business Continuity Plan

Creating a business continuity plan can save your company from a disaster and is critical to partner with an IT consulting firm in Los Angeles. A data breach can occur anywhere, whether it is within your business, a third-party vendor, or even a subcontractor. Having a disaster recovery plan can help you avoid suffering from mass data loss and enable you to bounce back, stronger than ever. If you have yet to create a backup plan, here are a few reasons why it is dangerous to not have one in place:

Damages Brand

Being a well-known company and having a stellar brand is an invaluable resource in today’s business environment. Losing large amounts of data that is irretrievable can have damaging effects on your brand. This can make it nearly impossible to regain the trust of clients. Obviously, it is much too great of a risk to not create a data backup plan. The use of an IT provider can help you make one that meets the needs of your organization.

Downtime

Downtime can hurt any organization. It is critical to choose an IT consulting firm in Los Angeles that offers a business continuity plan to help you reduce any amount of downtime you experience. For example, if you lost massive amounts of data due to an office fire; you can quickly restore this data from an offsite cloud server. Instead of starting completely over, you will be able to bounce back with less downtime. On the other hand, if you did not have a backup plan, an office fire can be devastating and make it nearly impossible to recover.

Hurts Relationships

Another reason why it is crucial to have a recovery plan is that failure to do so can result in damaging relations with clients and vendors. Building strong and successful relationships takes time and all your hard work can be wiped out due to a massive data breach. Joining together with a managed service provider will add another layer of defense against data loss from user error, cyberattacks, or a natural disaster. Keeping data safe and secure, while being able to operate your business at all times, is the top priority for any IT provider. Always being available, while maintaining data security, will help build strong relationships with clients and vendors in your respective field.

The use of IT consulting in Los Angeles can help you create a business continuity plan that will help you recover from any disaster. At Advanced Networks, we help companies keep their data safe from the wide variety of threats in today’s world. Our staff is always available at any time and will be happy to answer any questions. Contact us today and let us set up a recovery plan that will ensure your business can weather any storm in life.

Design Effective Business Continuity Solutions with IT Consulting in Los Angeles

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Design Effective Business Continuity Solutions with IT Consulting in Los Angeles

IT consulting firms in Los Angeles can help your business achieve proper business continuity key performance indicators (KPIs) through consultation and service provision. A combination of both these strategies will often produce the most secure solution.

Be Strategic

In order to determine what will best safeguard your business, you need to know where to center your business continuity framework. You might consider these KPIs:

  • Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
  • Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

RPO is the time it takes to get a specific application back online once a disaster has occurred. Meanwhile, RTO refers to the total time necessary for the reboot of your network after a substantial crash. You should run tests to see what the numbers are. How close are you to your objective in either scenario, and are you able to steadily get those numbers down? Figuring this out will help you know whether your business continuity solution has been adequately designed.

Once you’ve got your KPIs figured out, your next step is going to involve properly integrating your solution. Several steps this direction include:

  • Assigning RPOs and RTOs by application priority
  • Combining both on-premises and cloud solutions
  • Instituting optimization and monitoring support

Application Priority

IT consulting firms in Los Angeles can help you determine which applications should have priority over others in a total crash scenario. RTO is going to, in many cases, have to launch some applications sequentially. You’ve got to know what’s most important to reboot first, otherwise when the crash comes you’ll be operating out of a panic and could incidentally damage you network, which certainly is no good for business continuity. So, set up RPO and RTO not just to recover malfunctioning apps and networks, but to also do so in proper sequence.

Redundancies: Multiple Backup Solutions

You want as many sources of backed up data as you can acquire. Cloud backups that continuously backup your data are strategically valuable. Additionally, it makes sense to have a separate off-site backup solution in the event something happens to your cloud storage option, and an on-site backup in case either of the other two systems is compromised. You might even keep a hard drive updated with the most important data at regular intervals at your home property. The scope of your redundant backup solutions will depend on your budget. It’s generally a minority of businesses that can afford truly comprehensive redundancy solutions; so, perhaps you’ll start with on-site backups and a cloud solution. An MSP can help you determine what’s most affordable and realistic.

Optimization and Monitoring Support

Even if you can only acquire one backup solution, regular optimization of primary and secondary systems, as well as the most continuous monitoring you can source, can both prevent network crashes and facilitate more expedient, reliable business continuity.

Secure Business Continuity

IT consulting firms in Los Angeles through Advanced Networks can cost-effectively maintain the security of your network. Contact us to help advise you on the steps you should take in establishing a business continuity solution, as well as to attain consultation that can be a very real help when an unexpected disaster arises.

Using IT Consulting Firms in Los Angeles to Fortify Business Continuity Strategy

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Using IT Consulting Firms in Los Angeles to Fortify Business Continuity Strategy

IT consulting firms in Los Angeles are increasingly tasked with providing strong business continuity solutions, and it is no wonder why. Cybercrime is its own industry. It is a cash cow expected to have a $2 trillion economic impact by 2019.

Did you know that it is possible to take a video and “simulate” something that looks photorealistic, but is entirely contrived? Check this video out to learn more. Cybercrime today is not always going to be purely “hacking” related. Sometimes, you are going to have fraudulent pretenders deigning to represent your industry as a means of siphoning off money from your clientele.

This is the tip of the iceberg, realistically. More cybercriminal elements are at play in the background that are even known today. You must have business continuity and backup solutions at your behest. With that in mind, three defining aspects of such protections are worth close consideration:

  • Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
  • Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
  • Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR)

Recovery Time Objective

IT consulting firms in Los Angeles will serve your business better should they provide a reduced RTO. Recovery Time Objective refers to the time it takes for a network to come back online from the moment of a crash. The best business continuity is nigh-instantaneous. With cloud computing, data mirroring can be brought to the table, which makes it so that when your MSP detects a system crash coming, a “mirrored” network can be launched which conserves all data and operational ability. While the problem causing a crash is addressed, operations can continue as per the norm. This reduces downtime expenses and essentially pays for itself.

Recovery Point Objective

Many confuse RTO with RPO and it is easy to see why. Here is the main difference: RTO refers to getting the total network back online while RPO refers to getting a specific application back online. A great example might be a sales system for an inbound telemarketing agency. The program is cloud-based and used to process orders. Well, this is not the only aspect of network operations. If that particular order-processing portal crashes, the network remains. Complete network reboot would be unnecessary. The key here is fixing the application that went down. This is the RPO– -how fast you can get some directed application back online after it has crashed. The right MSP will do this faster than competitors will.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

BCDR is a combination of RPO and RTO combined with managed services support. Systems are monitored by an MSP to ensure that everything is in proper working order. Trends that are anomalous and could indicate cybercriminal activity can be seen and stopped before they compromise systems. Additionally, that which cannot be avoided can be more expediently recovered from. A power outage, a natural disaster, user error, or any other disaster can be overcome quickly with the concerted effort from an MSP through BCDR than, in most cases, internal solutions.

Upgrading Your Operational Security

IT consulting firms in Los Angeles that provide business continuity can be essential to operational security. At Advanced Networks, we provide top-tier BCDR, and all that comes along with it. Contact us for recovery solutions that can securely safeguard your operations against even the most unexpected disastrous situations.

IT Consultants in Los Angeles Help Maintain Business Continuity

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IT Consultants in Los Angeles Help Maintain Business Continuity

IT consultants in Los Angeles can be an integral component in maintaining business continuity. You don’t necessarily need to onboard the entirety of security services from a given MSP to experience the security of business continuity. Sometimes you can work with them on a basis of consultancy. However, there is such a thing as opportunity cost. That is to say, by doing something yourself internally, you’re likely to spend more money and take more time, limiting your outward marketing potential— or other operations that require some quotient of funding. With that in mind, following are several considerations to take into account as you go about designing your business continuity solution:

  • Malware is a primary threat to small businesses
  • Small businesses are a primary target of malware
  • The majority of security situations develop internally
  • Many businesses neglect to test backup solutions properly

Malware and Small Businesses

IT consultants in Los Angeles providing business continuity will definitely recommend that you defend against malware. Small businesses are more susceptible to things like ransomware because they can’t afford not to pay the ransom. Hackers understand this, and as a result, there are quite a few small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) who are primarily targeted— approximately 43%, in fact.

Malware is a big threat to your business— especially if you’re smaller. And as an SMB, you’re a primary target. If you don’t have some kind of business continuity solution designed to overcome such hacking problems, you’ve got greater than a four-in-ten chance of being compromised.

Majority of Security Situations Develop Internally

Complicating the issue is the fact that most of your greatest security threats develop internally. A lot of that comes from a lack of education. Basically, employees don’t realize that many of the issues which compromise systems come from their poor online etiquette. Many MSPs can actually help you educate your workers pertaining to best online practices; it’s wise to employ such solutions as best as you can.

Don’t Neglect Backup Tests!

It doesn’t matter how comprehensive, extensive, or expensive your backup solution is if you have not been careful to test it. Backup systems that are maintained by your business on-site are subject to entropy just like any other system. The same goes for physical backup solutions maintained offsite. The best marriage of cost-effective backup that simultaneously reduces maintenance costs and invokes redundancy solutions will often come from a cloud computing solution. Cloud backups are maintained by the providers of the cloud solutions they purvey. It’s in their best interest to ensure all systems operate correctly. This is especially true when things like shared liability come into the equation. HIPAA predicates fines for MSPs who don’t properly secure clients in accordance with HIPAA regulations. Ergo, MSPs and cloud providers who may be in a position to provide such services must be very careful they don’t get fined. This is one of many reasons why many SMBs outsource to the cloud for backup.

IT consultants in Los Angeles can help safeguard your business in ways you may not even have the ability to anticipate. Contact us at Advanced Networks for security you can trust.