It’s probably more extreme for the people in Silicon Valley, but here in Seattle it often feels like we live in the world of IT. Seattle is not only one of the most high-tech cities in the nation, we’re recognized as the 15th-most high-tech city on the entire planet.
Being high-tech is awesome… unless your critical business tech starts acting up. (Ouch.)
As a business leader, you’re too busy to waste your day dealing with bad IT support for underperforming technology, so here’s your handy business guide to Seattle’s best IT services.
Make sure your local IT services provider offers these IT services at a price you can afford.
One of the absolute best IT services you can invest in is business continuity, which creates a replicated, image-based backup of your systems every few minutes. This helps you get back to work much faster than traditional tape or disc-based backups if a natural disaster or malicious hacker with ransomware shuts down your operations.
As you know, there are many backup solutions available, but business continuity is different because it doesn’t simply back up your data, it backs up your entire system. All your user permissions and preferences, all your toolbar settings, all your everything are 100% maintained with the image-based backups in business continuity. Win!
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but your cloud services providers aren’t actually required to keep your cloud data safe. Are you storing all your invoicing data for the past 5 years in QuickBooks online? Are you storing all your team files on Box, Dropbox, or Evernote? What would you do if a cybercriminal hacked into QuickBooks or Evernote servers and destroyed your data along with everyone else’s? What would you do if a criminal phished your QuickBooks password and wiped your records?
Don’t panic. Just ensure that you have cloud-to-cloud backup as part of your IT services package from your managed services provider. That way, all your cloud records and data will stay safe. (Phew!)
Phishing gives cybercriminals the power to break through every cybersecurity defense you have, including your firewall and your secure passwords. That’s bad news. Worse news is that a lot of people, including your employees, are likely to be fooled by the extremely sophisticated phishing scams out there these days.
To prevent phishing, one of the best IT services you can invest in for cybersecurity is phishing avoidance training, which clearly teaches your staff how to identify and avoid phishing attacks. After training, a good program will then reinforce learning with frequent reminders and ongoing phishing simulations to keep phishing-avoidance skills sharp.
One of the biggest benefits to living in one of the most high-tech cities in the world (seriously, that’s pretty cool) is that you can reasonably count on the expectation that all your employees will have their own smartphone that they’re happy to use for work on the go. But sometimes those smartphones (or tablets) fall behind on security updates, or they get stolen – which gives criminals access to an unknown amount of your sensitive company data stored on those devices.
Mobile device management helps you keep a watchful eye on all the smartphones and tablets that have access to your company data, ensuring that they have up-to-date security software at all times and that you can remotely wipe your data from them if they’re lost or stolen.
Been in business for a few years (or a few decades)? Gone through one or more office moves? That means you have a closet full of discarded computer towers, monitors, cell phones, servers, keyboards, laptops, and tablets. You may even have some Palm Pilots in there! In addition to that closet of yours, each of your employees has a range of your tech products and devices at their desks and in their homes. You know it’s important to keep an eye on the status and location of all your tech, both for cybersecurity and tax purposes… but tracking IT devices is a major headache.
One of the best IT services — one that’s often overlooked — is detailed asset tracking and management for all your devices. Asset management helps you understand the ins and outs of your tech: what works, what you own, what tech each employees uses, and the security status of all your tech – all the time. For engineers and design professionals, you may also want to consider software license tracking, so you never run into an awkward software expiration notice when you’re trying to give a client presentation.
We just named a lot of IT services, and we’re saying they’re all the best IT services in Seattle. That implies you need all these services, and you might be worried about the costs you’re facing. We hear you, but…
…Don’t worry. Really. All you have to do is find a globally recognized managed services provider, here in Seattle, that offers all of these services with convenient, all-in pricing. With all-in pricing, you’ll have predictable IT costs each month, with no surprises, even if you run into a series of unexpected tech emergencies.
And you know what? We have just the MSP to recommend for all of this. 😉
Since 2001, Interplay has been providing friendly, expert IT assistance to local Seattle businesses, with reasonable all-in pricing that includes extensive IT services and support. As one of the city’s longest-standing IT providers, and one of the only true MSPs in Seattle, you can trust that, with Interplay, you’ll get the best IT services you can get – from one of the best IT companies out there.
[email protected]
16300 Christensen Rd Ste 304 Seattle, WA 98188
(206) 329-6600
