SMBs, Botnets and (Sort of) What To Do
Recent studies show that the SMB (Small Medium Business) sector is getting nailed by botnets and hostile code with greater severity than Big Business. They don’t have the budgets, IT staff or security experts on staff and so, well, they get nailed.
In fact, a friend of mine runs a fairly large construction company in British Columbia, Canada. He is the epitome of the SMB market. He called me with ‘Troubles’.
His network was at a standstill. His e-mail was down… and he was freaking out. His IT guy, a friend of mine who is not a security person, wanted me involved.
The answer was comparatively simple, inexpensive and workable.
1. Keep your internal data and applications server(s).
2. Keep your existing end-point applications.
3. Use the usual mess of A/V, spyware detectors and so on at the proper places in the internal network.
4. Get rid of your own mail server. Outsource it for like – what - $10 month? Let them be responsible. If you want your QoS to be higher, pay $100 month. Just admin the user accounts and use a decent client at the end points.
5. Get rid of your Sharepoint server, your internal collaberation servers ad nauseum. Write down a set of specifications and features you want. Search for the SaaS Cloud Based product that meets the majority of your needs. (Nothing is perfect.) Outsource it – SaaS – and let them have the headaches.
Dave took my advice. He saved $15,000 on new hardware. He saved dozens of hours of techy time. He lowered his admin time that our friend was handling (to his relief, too). He set up a Cloud based collaborative environment for his back office intranet for $149 month.
He’s happy. And much more secure than ever before.