IslandWood beats ransomware attack with proactive IT strategy and managed services
Mission critical
IslandWood is a nonprofit on a mission to inspire lifelong environmental and community stewardship. Located in Bainbridge Island, Washington and founded in 1999, IslandWood helps improve access to meaningful, nature-based learning experiences for the region’s children. Today, it serves over 10,000 students each year with it’s 250-acre outdoor learning center, overnight program, and other facilities throughout the Puget Sound region.
Five years ago, IslandWood was struggling with an outdated, overbuilt and misaligned system, costing them time and money. They realized they needed a more strategic approach to technology in order to continue delivering on their mission. This led them straight to Interplay.
Strategic priorities
After doing the due-diligence necessary to understand what IslandWood needed, Interplay identified primary challenges and helped prioritize projects based on budget. “Being a nonprofit, we have to be very aware of financial restrictions. Brian and his team listened and understood,” stated Julie Yunt, IslandWood IT Manager. “They helped us identify what we had to do, versus what we could wait on, and worked hand-in-hand with us to implement the recommendations.”
One crucial priority that Interplay identified immediately was data recovery. What would happen to IslandWood’s mission-critical data in the case of a natural disaster or cyber attack? There was no plan in place, so Interplay worked with IslandWood to implement Datto – a state-of-the-art device and service that backs up data both on-premises and in the cloud.
Disaster strikes
A few years after the strategic disaster recovery plan was implemented, the unthinkable happened: IslandWood had a ransomware attack. Thankfully, due to the strategic, forward-thinking that had been done a few years earlier, Interplay was able to quarantine the virus and have systems back up and running within hours. More importantly, their data was completely restored within a half day’s time.
“If it hadn’t been for Brian and his team, we would have had extensive data loss,” said Yunt. “Prior to Interplay, this would have been a major disaster. Interplay had the forward-thinking to protect our data, and had someone onsite the entire time we were dealing with the crisis.”
Part of the family
In addition to serving as a strategic technology partner, Interplay has completed many tactical projects over the years that have helped further IslandWood’s mission – replacing devices, rehauling systems, and upgrading unreliable Wi-Fi. These changes have lead to significant improvements for IslandWood’s operations.
“[Interplay] has made an impact on employee productivity, time, and keeping clients happy,” states Yunt. “We think of Interplay as part of our family.”
