Three Reasons Why Your Company Needs Managed Firewalls

Managed firewalls are tools that can protect your network and allow legitimate business communication. It can keep bad actors away and can also be used by employees to prevent them from visiting insecure or unrelated sites.

Although firewalls provide excellent protection and security, they need to be managed and monitored. Monitoring your firewall can be a tedious, expensive, time-consuming and costly task. Regular upgrades and security expertise are required. Many companies lack the resources, expertise, and capital required to maintain their firewalls 24 hours a day. A managed firewall can be an effective and affordable solution for these companies.

How Managed Firewalls works?

Managed firewalls offer enhanced threat management. Remote monitoring by security experts can detect potential threats to your firewall and help you mitigate them. They analyze your network traffic to determine what your normal business traffic looks like. Any unusual activity can be identified quickly and addressed.

Your provider will also perform routine traffic analysis, and send you regular reports. This will give you a clear understanding of network traffic patterns, and how your managed service team manages threats to your network.

The Economy of Scale Makes Expertise Affordable

IT services such as managed firewall have the advantage of leveraging economies of scale to provide companies with the cybersecurity they require at a cost they can afford. In the past, you could only create an in-house network security solution, which was expensive and required capital investment.

These are three ways that a managed firewall can improve your company’s operations.

Protect against cybercrime

Businesses and citizens are becoming more concerned about cybercrime. Cybercrime is a growing concern for both businesses and citizens, according to Cybersecurity Ventures‘ recent report. Cyberattacks are increasing faster than any other crime. It will cost the global economy $6 trillion per year by 2021.

Cybercriminals can cause serious damage to businesses and make it difficult for them to recover. A 2017 report by the Better Business Bureau found that half of all businesses would experience loss in profitability within one month if their critical information was stolen.

A managed firewall can help business owners avoid or minimize the risk of cyberattacks or breaches.

Conform to compliance requirements

The burden of compliance regulations is increasing as cyberattacks continue to increase in severity. The existing regulations, such as HIPAA and PCI DSS and Sarbanes Oxley, continue to evolve and include more stringent and technical compliance requirements. The complexity is further heightened by new regulations like GDPR.

A managed firewall service provider can help you meet these legal requirements and avoid the severe penalties for negligence.

Monitoring is simplified

Many SMBs can feel overwhelmed by the demands of 24/7 monitoring. If you have only one IT specialist, it may not be possible to monitor your network 24/7.

Business owners must keep their focus on their core business activities. They don’t have the time or resources to learn IT security. It may also be prohibitively expensive to hire enough staff to provide 24/7 monitoring. These problems can be solved by a managed firewall solution.

We Can Help

Adtek Advanced Technologies can help you to shift the responsibility of monitoring, compliance, and network security to our security team. FirstLight’s Managed Edge Security service offers next-generation firewall services, unified threat mitigation, and network security monitoring. Our security experts are dedicated to staying on top of new threats, best practices, and compliance regulations.

Our security specialists will monitor your network for suspicious patterns or anomalies. Routine tasks such as security updates and patches can be performed by us to free up internal resources for more important tasks.

As an OpEx, we can provide high-level security for your network. We also bill you monthly. We will provide you with a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that will clearly outline our responsibilities as well as what you can expect of us in the case of a cyberattack.

Contact Adtek Advanced Technologies today to learn how we can help protect your most important data.

Adtek Advanced Technologies
Rock Hill, SC 29730
(803) 902-3111

Dillon, SC 29536
843-627-3079
https://adtekitservices.com/

Three Reasons Why Your Company Needs Managed Firewalls

Managed firewalls are tools that can protect your network and allow legitimate business communication. It can keep bad actors away and can also be used by employees to prevent them from visiting insecure or unrelated sites.

Although firewalls provide excellent protection and security, they need to be managed and monitored. Monitoring your firewall can be a tedious, expensive, time-consuming and costly task. Regular upgrades and security expertise are required. Many companies lack the resources, expertise, and capital required to maintain their firewalls 24 hours a day. A managed firewall can be an effective and affordable solution for these companies.

How Managed Firewalls works?

Managed firewalls offer enhanced threat management. Remote monitoring by security experts can detect potential threats to your firewall and help you mitigate them. They analyze your network traffic to determine what your normal business traffic looks like. Any unusual activity can be identified quickly and addressed.

Your provider will also perform routine traffic analysis, and send you regular reports. This will give you a clear understanding of network traffic patterns, and how your managed service team manages threats to your network.

The Economy of Scale Makes Expertise Affordable

IT services such as managed firewall have the advantage of leveraging economies of scale to provide companies with the cybersecurity they require at a cost they can afford. In the past, you could only create an in-house network security solution, which was expensive and required capital investment.

These are three ways that a managed firewall can improve your company’s operations.

Protect against cybercrime

Businesses and citizens are becoming more concerned about cybercrime. Cybercrime is a growing concern for both businesses and citizens, according to Cybersecurity Ventures‘ recent report. Cyberattacks are increasing faster than any other crime. It will cost the global economy $6 trillion per year by 2021.

Cybercriminals can cause serious damage to businesses and make it difficult for them to recover. A 2017 report by the Better Business Bureau found that half of all businesses would experience loss in profitability within one month if their critical information was stolen.

A managed firewall can help business owners avoid or minimize the risk of cyberattacks or breaches.

Conform to compliance requirements

The burden of compliance regulations is increasing as cyberattacks continue to increase in severity. The existing regulations, such as HIPAA and PCI DSS and Sarbanes Oxley, continue to evolve and include more stringent and technical compliance requirements. The complexity is further heightened by new regulations like GDPR.

A managed firewall service provider can help you meet these legal requirements and avoid the severe penalties for negligence.

Monitoring is simplified

Many SMBs can feel overwhelmed by the demands of 24/7 monitoring. If you have only one IT specialist, it may not be possible to monitor your network 24/7.

Business owners must keep their focus on their core business activities. They don’t have the time or resources to learn IT security. It may also be prohibitively expensive to hire enough staff to provide 24/7 monitoring. These problems can be solved by a managed firewall solution.

We Can Help

Adtek Advanced Technologies can help you to shift the responsibility of monitoring, compliance, and network security to our security team. FirstLight’s Managed Edge Security service offers next-generation firewall services, unified threat mitigation, and network security monitoring. Our security experts are dedicated to staying on top of new threats, best practices, and compliance regulations.

Our security specialists will monitor your network for suspicious patterns or anomalies. Routine tasks such as security updates and patches can be performed by us to free up internal resources for more important tasks.

As an OpEx, we can provide high-level security for your network. We also bill you monthly. We will provide you with a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that will clearly outline our responsibilities as well as what you can expect of us in the case of a cyberattack.

Contact Adtek Advanced Technologies today to learn how we can help protect your most important data.

Adtek Advanced Technologies
Rock Hill, SC 29730
(803) 902-3111

Dillon, SC 29536
843-627-3079
https://adtekitservices.com/

Benefits Of A Professional Network Installation

An important part of any company that depends on the Internet to deliver at least some of their products or services is a strong, reliable network. Your business should never lose time due to a slow internet connection. You will still benefit from professional network installation, even if you try to do this yourself.

Professional Network Installation has Many Benefits

The process of network installation is intended to establish a reliable and fast network that allows your company to do business. It also ensures that your network infrastructure is robust. The way this is done depends on what you need. For example, do you want a wired or physical network? How many devices and systems will you be interconnecting?

These are five benefits to professional network installation.

You save time

You can technically do a network installation yourself, but you’ll likely spend more time doing it if you don’t get professional help. This is because you might need to know how to complete certain steps. A professional will be able to help you resolve any unforeseen problems faster than you. Ask for help to save yourself frustration and confusion.

Professionals Provide Optimal Speed

A related point is that an IT professional can optimize the speed of your newly-installed network. Internet connection speeds have improved significantly over the past decade. Statista reported that the average Internet connection speed for the United States during the first quarter 2017 was 18.75 megabits per sec (Mbps). This compares to the 3.87Mbps recorded in the first quarter 2010. Business Insider’s April 2020 report states that you need a minimum of 12 Mbps download speed to be able to browse the Internet comfortably. Experts are able to provide services at significantly higher speeds because they know how the different IT systems work together.

Initial Report on Security & Risk

A professional IT specialist will not only be able install your network. An IT professional can provide you with a report that will show you the potential risk of setting up a network and any security concerns your company may have. A score and chart may be used by this professional to evaluate your risk level and analyze any external vulnerabilities to data breach or other issues.

Lowering business costs

While it may seem like an overwhelming expense to have a professional install your network, it will pay off in the long-term. This is partly due to the fact that IT professionals know best which resources to use for network installations. These types of people will be up to date on technological innovations.

Tailor Networks to Your Business’s Specific Needs

Each organization has its own set of goals and needs. A network installation should be tailored to meet these needs and goals. You may want to use multiple networks to share key information about your business processes and strategies if you have offices across the globe. Routers can help link several networks.

Talk to an experienced managed IT services provider

For a professional network installation, contact Adtek Advanced Technologies Rock Hill. We strive to provide the best and most innovative IT solutions available today. We aim to understand our customers’ unique challenges and needs in order to tailor our services accordingly.

Adtek’s staff is highly qualified and has extensive knowledge about top OEMs as well as ISVs. We are confident in our decision due to the wide range of options we have. We provide detailed reports on network installation that will help you ensure your network is secure (i.e. no risks). Adtek offers an audit of your expenses and carrier services. Our clients are free from the responsibility for circuit provisioning or procurement by outsourcing their carrier management. We manage expenses such as Internet, SDWan and MPLS.

We will do everything possible to save your company money. For more information on our managed IT services, or to schedule an appointment, call Adtek Advanced Technologies Rock Hill at or 843-627-3079.

Adtek Advanced Technologies
Rock Hill, SC 29730
(803) 902-3111

Dillon, SC 29536
843-627-3079

Home

Why Your Company Needs to Deploy Network Monitoring

Over the last two years, there has been a sudden shift in the way businesses should provide and protect their network services. Companies had to abruptly deal with an already complex modern network while still supporting many remote employees. A working network is the backbone of any business, and through continuous monitoring, a network should ensure reliability, maximum staff performance, and robust security.

What is Network Infrastructure?

Let’s start with the basics. Your company’s network infrastructure includes all the hardware and software resources of your entire network. It includes devices like routers, switches, wifi, firewalls, and servers, each of which require careful configuration and maintenance.

• Your routers connect your private network to the internet.
• Switches and network cabling connect the devices in your private network like computers, printers, and more to allow them to communicate with each other.
• Wifi access points connect your laptops, tablets, and phones to the rest of the network.
• Firewalls protect your private network by controlling incoming and outgoing traffic to untrusted networks.
• Servers host applications, databases, and data files that get delivered to users through a network.
• And of course, there are all your PCs, printers, phones, and tablets. The best way to ensure that all of these are running efficiently is through proactive network monitoring.

What is Network Monitoring?

Network monitoring is the continuous analysis of a network to detect and correct any performance issues. Network monitoring involves collecting network statistics to determine the quality of services offered by the network. Continuous monitoring and review of your network include monitoring network hardware and software devices like routers, firewalls, switches, servers, and WiFi.

With the continuing pandemic causing many employees to work from home, it is vital to ensure your business network performs optimally. Remote network monitoring can ensure your network is not having performance issues and is secure enough for employees to access company resources.

How Can I Monitor My Network?

The first step in getting started with your network monitoring is to identify which devices need to be monitored. You’ll also want to decide on what performance metrics you’ll be measuring.

Here are some baseline metrics you’ll want to monitor:

• Bandwidth usage: You’ll want your network to be sending as much data as it can without being overloaded. Your network monitoring tool can identify how much bandwidth is typically used versus how much is currently being used.
• Throughput: This measures the percentage of data packets that are actually being sent.
• Latency: This is the time it takes between requesting data and receiving that data. Performance issues can be almost too small to recognize, so it’s important to have a monitoring tool in place.
• Packet loss: This is the number of data packets that are lost during data transmissions.
• Retransmission: This is a measure of how often data packets are lost and need to be retransmitted to complete a request for data.
• Network availability/Uptime: This lets you know if your network is currently available. Your network monitoring tools can alert you when the network goes down, and how often.
• Connectivity: You’ll want to make sure your network connection is operating at top performance at all times.

3 Benefits of Network Monitoring

Continuous monitoring of your network helps you to troubleshoot not just hard failures but slowdowns as well. Metrics such as throughput, latency, packet reordering, and jitters can be used to measure your network’s health.

Troubleshooting issues early ensures business continuity and fewer or no downtimes, including network monitoring benefits like:

1. Identifying Issues Anywhere in the Network

Network monitoring and assessment is a way to quickly locate a problem in the network. Monitoring your network’s performance can show you the cause and source of a network problem, where and when it occurred. It can also tell you who needs to fix it. When you actively monitor your network, you can detect any performance changes that could be problematic to users before they occur.

Network monitoring includes insuring your data is secure from outside attack or internal threats. What would happen if your company’s data was compromised? A network monitoring service can provide peace of mind that you are secure.

2. Better Use of IT Resources

IT teams are feeling more burnt out as a result of the increasing cybersecurity threats. With 72% of IT professionals having taken on new responsibilities since the outset of the pandemic, a network outage could be a productivity killer. For example, an under-resourced IT manager would be required to divert attention from one business critical project to another with little notice or preparation.

The tools in network monitoring systems reduce manual work for IT teams. This gives back valuable time to an IT team to instead allocate to more critical projects.

3. Providing Historical and Baseline Data

With the availability of baseline data, network monitoring tools can continually and automatically compare data. In case of performance degradation, an alert is sent to you, and you can immediately solve the problem. Historical data gives you a comparison point to determine optimal network performance or identify poor performance. It enables you to troubleshoot network problems of past events.

Why is Network Monitoring Important?

Network failure causes business disruptions. Businesses lose customers when such disruptions occur, causing huge losses and a decline in employee productivity. 33% of SMBs have lost revenue and customers due to downtime. Further research shows downtime causes a 21% decline in employee productivity.

Network monitoring helps to proactively solve network problems before they happen. Such solutions reduce downtime and help businesses to retain customers and improve employee productivity.

Adtek Advanced Technologies Network Monitoring Tools & Capabilities

If you don’t have the capabilities to monitor your network infrastructure yourself, outsourcing is a great option. At Adtek we provide network monitoring for today’s cyber security needs.

We can save your business time and money by eliminating the cost and complexity of traditional on-site network support and by mitigating outage-related downtime. We ensure unmatched visibility and efficiency to provide you with a reliable and secure network. Looking for more? Contact us today.

Adtek Advanced Technologies
Rock Hill, SC 29730
(803) 902-3111

Dillon, SC 29536
843-627-3079

Home

Six Steps to Follow After a Business Data Loss

A response strategy is the last thing that you need to worry about during a cybersecurity incident. This is why Incident Response plans (IR) are designed to prevent this exact situation. They provide a clear protocol to respond to cyberattacks and unauthorized software/hardware changes. The IR plan should be drafted if there are doubts as to the security, integrity, confidentiality or security of your business data. To ensure that your clients, employees, and business IP are protected, your IR plan should include both your legal and technical teams. These are the six most important incident response steps you should take if there is a security breach or another event.

6 Essential Steps to Respond to Cybersecurity Incidents

1. Prepare your systems for 24-hour responsiveness

Someone must be alert for an attack in order to be prepared. Adtek Advanced Technologies monitors threats 24 hours a day, including logs, track network and Office 365 threats. SOC and other related systems will alert members of your team in the event of a security event. A designated team should be established within your organization to assess and identify threats 24×7. They will be able to access sensitive applications and intellectual property during a cyberattack and can assist in the recovery process. Cyber attacks can be unpredictable. However, having a plan and a set of responders can help reduce the damage.

2. Identify the Cyber Threat

The earlier a threat can be identified, the better. Your IT team must know whether the threat is external or internal and what its success rate in evading existing defensive measures. Some important data points include:

• The current status of the incident
• Date/time at which the incident took place
• Description of the incident (e.g. How it was detected and what happened
• If known, the source/cause of incident – hostnames and IP addresses
• Description of the affected resources – hostnames, IP addresses, type of system, and so on.

3. Escalate the Incident

It can be useful to create a framework for escalation in the event of system/data compromise. These priority levels can be used to identify the respondents and time frames for their response. They also provide methods of communication. These are just three examples of incident prioritization and the expectations around each:

High Priority

This level is for high-risk incidents that could cause severe damage to an organization. This includes data and system compromises, Direct Denial of Service attacks (DDoS), computer viruses, or other similar incidents. These threats require immediate intervention.

Medium Priority

This type of incident affects multiple data sources, where confidential data appears to be read, modified, destroyed, or altered by an unauthorized user. Examples of such incidents are malware outbreaks, attacks on specific servers, unauthorized scanning activity, and systems communicating with bad threats vectors. Medium priority events are not likely to cause business disruption if they are handled correctly.

Low Priority

This classification refers to alerts that are contained in a single or limited number of machines from a single data source. This could include system infections and malware alerts from user browsing activity. These incidents are considered “low priority” if they don’t appear to have any impact on confidential information.

4. Limit the damage

Your Incident Response Plan must include containment. There are many strategies to achieve this goal, depending on the threat. There are two main types of containment: short-term or long-term. A short-term containment could be as simple as blocking traffic from compromised servers or isolating the network device under attack. Your team might apply temporary patches to the targeted system. During the recovery stage, they may also build a new system.

5. Eliminate the Source

This is the best time to determine the source of the attack, eliminate malware, and create prevention cybersecurity strategies. If weak authentication was the entry point, then replacing it with multifactor authentication would be considered elimination. This stage builds on containment by eliminating threats identified from your network or endpoint of your application.

6. Recover your Operations

To prevent another incident from happening, systems are carefully restored to normal operation. This is when systems are restored to their original state before the incident. This stage is where backups are crucial. They will help your team restore your computing environment. Contact Adtek Advanced Technologies to learn more about how you can recover from a cybersecurity attack.

Adtek Advanced Technologies
1702 Hwy 301 North
Dillon, SC 29536
843-627-3079
https://adtekitservices.com

Rock Hill, SC 29730
(803) 902-3111