When your corporate IT is down, how drastically does it impact your business?
Whether it halts your ability to send and receive email, invoice or pay bills via your cloud based accounting package or shuts off your VoIP system, chances are when IT isn’t running your business isn’t either.
So while sometimes, IT is sort of taken for granted and costs may even be seen as a necessary evil; we ask businesses to try and imagine their lives without it.
Having said that, we also love to ask the question. What keeps you up at night about your IT? Beyond whether it is running or not, what are the topics and technologies that scare you just a little bit (or a lot)?
The answer we most often hear… Security.
The role of security in business
With so many important assets now “Out There” as they are all connected to the network, businesses are afraid of people gaining access to their data.
To stop this from happening, businesses invest in security. The most common appliance that businesses use to stop intrusion is their firewalls. Another less well-known secret about Network Security is that it is complicated. It takes a certain amount of expertise to properly configure and make sure that a firewall is properly set up and optimized to stop those that you don’t want from gaining access all while giving means of access to those who need it.
Leading to our next question. Who is the expert on your staff to handle this?
For many small and medium businesses, this person doesn’t exist or if they do, they are extremely busy with day-to-day IT which leaves little time to worry about network assets and security.
This is a perfect opportunity to leverage a Managed Firewall Solution.
A few great advantages businesses gain from a Managed Firewall
With a managed firewall you have access to great features like web filters, virus protection and spam blocking. All while making sure you are granting secure access to trusted users. Plus there are many other great features like policy manager and WAN failover to keep you running and safe as long as the Internet is up.
Additionally a managed firewall provides you with the ability to reduce wasted time by employees perusing Facebook and Twitter. You can make this even more valuable through bandwidth management tools that prevent network-hogging videos from YouTube being watched during work.
So for businesses that want reliable and secure IT but lack the time to manage and deploy it safely and reliably, think about the value of a Managed Firewall. It may be the perfect solution for your business; providing piece of mind and up to date best practices for a secure and healthy network.
