What is Virtualization?

There are a variety of ways to reorganize your offices, such as network or storage virtualization, but the easiest to accomplish and most frequently used is server virtualization. This is a way of splitting up one server into many different virtual servers so each workload can run at the same time and are not restricted to a particular piece of physical hardware. This has a large number of benefits, and once you have had your servers virtualized with the help of our managed IT services team in Sacramento, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.

Benefits of Server Virtualization

By splitting a server up into many different virtual servers, you negate the need to have a large number of servers clogging up your offices. Not only will less hardware mean you save on initial costs, but you will also benefit from more space, as well as a reduction in expenses related to cooling and power, making your offices greener into the bargain. As an added bonus, because your virtualization will be taken care of by an IT service provider like us at Noverus Innovations, Inc., you will also get firewalls, adware, and spyware, plus a whole host of other security measures when your servers are virtualized.

Disaster recovery is extremely important as hackers are constantly trying to infiltrate both small and large companies worldwide. Being able to produce a backup of all your data by creating a replica site is simple when your servers are virtualized, and if the worst were to happen, moving from one virtual server to another is a quick and safe procedure. In this way, you can be sure you have almost seamless business continuity, as everything can be moved so quickly.

Finally, it is an excellent way to improve business communications, as by having virtualization, it matters less where your employees are working. They will be able to work with efficiency and speed wherever they are situated, which leaves you able to employ staff in remote sites or open up offices in new locations without the need for expensive hardware purchases and setups.

It is time to let a managed IT services provider in Sacramento update your company, so you can take advantage of the increased productivity and efficiency. At Noverus Innovations, Inc., we have years of experience in this particular field and can help you with server virtualization or anything else, such as network or storage virtualization, to bring your business into the 21st century. Contact us today so we can streamline your business processes and save you money at the same time.

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Reduced Staffing Expenses

Managed services providers in Sacramento can help you to reduce unnecessary staffing expenditures. One thing technology is great at doing is retaining time. Consider how much time a microwave oven can save you in terms of cooking over a traditional stove. Well, expand that out to massive organizations. With cloud computing, you can outsource entire departments. You can even outsource your internal IT to the cloud, saving you in terms of equipment and employees. At Noverus Innovations, Inc., we can help show you where you have the ability to upgrade in a way that saves you money. You don’t have to make the switch all at once. If you like, you can do it sequentially; whatever fits your operation’s needs.

Service Availability 24/7

If your systems crash at two in the morning, you want to be notified and you want a fix before things open around daybreak. Additionally, if you’re running a night shift and something happens, you want some kind of support to help you iron out the issue. With internal IT, this may not be possible; and even if it is, it will require your techs waking up and coming on site; that or you’ll have to pay one to be there perpetually, which is, generally, not going to be cheap. 24/7 service through an MSP solves these problems while reducing cost.

Efficiency Expansion

One reason MSPs provide better support than internal options is that they have built-in efficiency. An MSP for your business is like a rapid lube oil-change place for your car. Sure, you could change your own oil in your driveway. It will take you an hour, make a mess, cause you discomfort, and perhaps incidentally teach the kids a few expletives you did not intend them to learn. Or, you could spend 10-20 minutes at the rapid lube. Now, you spend more at the lube joint, but you save time. What’s your time worth? If your time is worth more than $40 an hour, then you actually lose money by changing the oil yourself. It’s the same with your business. IT professionals have solutions that are swift and comprehensive like those inside a lube facility. They’ve got a process defining provisions and diverse experience with multiple business “vehicles”. This means you get taken care of better, quicker, and collaterally at greater cost-effectiveness.

Managed services in Sacramento through Noverus Innovations, Inc. can provide you greater operational efficiency, continuous service availability around the clock, and solutions which ultimately reduce costs in terms of both equipment and staff. Contact us for the latest in technology solutions and increase your operational profitability. We can help you identify where to upgrade.

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Age of Virtualization

Your managed services provider in Sacramento should be aware of virtualization simply to keep up with modern technology. Many companies are moving toward virtualization as a way to save money on hardware, since it consolidates multiple servers onto one physical server. This system is useful for compartmentalizing divisions within a business.

Due to the increasing amounts of data being used by data centers, SDN is seen as an effective method to optimize analytics, traffic, storage, and data backup for WANs. An SD-WAN, for example, uses traffic metrics such as latency, then uses automation to respond to conditions. It can direct data packets toward optimal paths while administrators can easily add or remove bandwidth.

Better Performance, Flexibility, and Control

An important reason why SD-WAN technology is gaining favor with businesses is that it delivers high-performance connections at lower costs, compared with traditional solutions. It integrates well with cloud services which further increase business efficiency. The technology can be used to create a mesh network that connects multiple remote small offices together. It allows you to access applications more quickly, leading to better productivity.

As your company grows, you’ll easily be able to add new components to your system. You won’t have to worry about downtime during maintenance since you can easily switch to virtualized backup servers. SD-WAN is further useful as an environment for automation. It shifts traffic management from physical devices to centralized software without expensive routers.

A virtualized WAN allows you to choose from various transport protocols, such as Ethernet or Wi-Fi. SD-WAN gives you the power of intelligent path control that directs traffic based on what’s appropriate for the application. Traffic-forwarding policies are set at the centralized controller based on IP addresses, port numbers, application profiles and other factors. An SD-WAN is designed to automatically learn patterns that appear in network traffic.

Stronger Security

SD-WAN provides better security than traditional WAN for a lower cost. One of the keys is that SD-WAN integrates with cloud services that filter web content and block malware. It can also encrypt WAN traffic while it moves from one location to another. Ultimately, IT administrators who monitor the network will have complete visibility of network traffic and be alerted quickly to traffic that needs to be blocked.

The virtualization used in SD-WAN helps protect your organization by segmenting the network. If one part of the network is breached, it doesn’t affect other areas due to unique encryption for each segment. This solution will minimize damage if the system is hit with a cyberattack.

Your managed services provider in Sacramento should be aware of the benefits of using a SD-WAN network. It can make your business more secure and efficient and allows you to get the most out of your bandwidth. Contact us at Noverus Innovations to learn more about how we can increase your network performance and business productivity.

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An Example of Spear Phishing

Consider an email message sent by a wrongdoer that mimics the CEO of your company— it is sent to one of your managers in the same writing style as your CEO uses. This seemingly legitimate email provokes a response from the manager even though the content of the message is fairly simple. The purpose of this initial message is to build a rapport with the target employee. Once he lets his guard down, the information thief makes his request. Yet, the email does not come from the address of the company’s CEO. Furthermore, the sender asks the employee for a favor. These are both red flags that every employee should recognize as characteristic of spear phishing.

An Example of Spoofing a Company’s Domain Name

Consider an instance in which the wrongdoer is more direct with the target, explicitly requesting sensitive data such as financial information. Yet, the attacker’s email address is actually a spoof of the business’s domain. The reply-to address is not the same as the one that transmitted the message. The wrongdoer is hopeful the target will fall prey to the scam and send the requested financial information that will be subsequently used to steal funds.

How to Combat Spear Phishing and Spoofing

Employee awareness is key to thwarting these attacks. Make sure your employees are on the lookout for the red flags of spear phishing and spoofing as outlined above. No one should simply assume a colleague or superior will use email to request sensitive information. Furthermore, employees must analyze email address for legitimacy.

DMARC authentication improves visibility for domain fraud. This tool helps prevent the theft of your brand and the spoofing of your domain. Managed services providers in Sacramento can help with the implementation of DMARC authentication. Keep in mind the miscreants running these scams are sending out a plethora of emails. This is a numbers game to them. All they need is for a couple to work to make thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars or even more.

If you aren’t satisfied with your current IT services, make a change. For the best managed services in Sacramento, contact us at Noverus Innovations. Let our team handle your tech challenges and you will find your operations prove much more efficient. Our proactive approach to preventing IT problems will prevent problems from developing into crises that affect your bottom line.

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Hacking of Mobile Devices

While movies depict hacking as some evil criminal trying to brute force passwords to gain access to your device, it doesn’t usually work that way. While passwords are important, hacking has more than just one avenue to access your device. Many malicious attacks are performed through smarter means, and typically these attacks are installed by the user unknowingly. Other times, data is stolen during transit over the Internet.

The Risk with Mobile Devices

Mobile devices have unique risks when compared to servers and desktop computers. First, there are many different types and operating systems currently used for mobile devices. This diversity makes keeping all the operating systems and hardware up to date difficult. However, older versions of operating systems are one of the main ways criminals can access your device. Managed services in Sacramento helps your company stay on top of all the different security updates.

The other main difference between mobile devices and typical computers is that mobile devices are going to connect to different networks regularly. With Wi-Fi and internet hotspots, you are rarely without a connection. These different networks pose a huge risk to your network integrity. Public networks give criminals a great access point to your data and your entire corporate network.

How to Stay Safe

As there are risks with using mobile devices, there are still benefits. The current access to information and communication from almost anywhere gives your company a competitive edge. Your business just needs to be sure to take the proper precautions to reduce the risk your corporate network faces.

• Stay updated – Both your devices operating system and apps need to stay updated. The security issues that developers find are regularly patched, and older versions have a higher risk of being compromised.
• Think before you install – Apps are a great way to get the functionality you need from your device, but be careful when you are installing them. Read the accesses that the app needs and ensure it is developed by a trusted developer. Many companies have strict rules around mobile apps to help keep their network safe.
• Be wary of public networks – Using public networks for sensitive data is dangerous. If you must deal with a public network, look into using a VPN to keep your private data safe.
• Have solid passwords – If your device is stolen or lost, your password could be the only thing keeping people out of the corporate network.

Protecting your mobile devices is an important job. Managed services in Sacramento can help you stay on top of it. Noverus Innovations provides many IT services to keep your business network safe from malicious attacks. Contact us today to learn more.

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To achieve an effective defense against social engineering attacks, you need to address the underlying vulnerabilities in your business. These are:

• Employees
• Software updates
• IT policy

Staff Training

Managed services providers in Sacramento can help you enforce IT best practices and compliance requirements. However, you must also embrace monitoring and analytics across your computer networks to identify the weaknesses that may lead to successful social engineering attacks. If your employees are not aware of the types of social engineering attacks to defend against, they will be easily fooled by social engineering scams. For you to prevent social engineered attacks, train your employees on cyber security measures against such attacks.

In addition, you can train them on a file filtering IT policy to manage access to sensitive files and send out notifications to employees in case of suspicious files on your internal network.

Software Updates

Noverus offers fully-fledged managed services that help you keep your software up-to-date to mitigate the risk of social engineering attacks. Keeping your software up-to-date is a strong layer of security in addressing potential exploits that a hacker would use to attack your IT systems. Up-to-date software is challenging to hack, which encourages hackers to move on to find an easier target. In fact, software updates offer you update patches for your IT systems and discourage hackers from targeting you. Therefore, if the hacker cannot penetrate your email DNS, they cannot send a malicious email to your employees.

IT Policy

Businesses that succumb to social engineering attacks lack effective IT policies or a strict adherence to them. Your IT policy should have clearly set guidelines on how to handle data in different situations. With a proper IT policy in place, your employees will know what to do when they encounter suspicious emails. It ensures that your employees don’t turn to default reasoning when requested for sensitive information without due process.

An IT policy is of no use without a consistent effort to make your employees aware of it. You need to complete awareness training programs and emphasize that employees must stick to the IT policy. This will prevent the leakage of information and the possibility of a hacker infiltrating your IT systems. However, you must also adhere to a “no-exceptions” approach in enforcing your IT policy, since exempting some of your employees from it creates a vulnerability for social engineering attacks.

At Noverus Innovations Inc., we offer cutting-edge managed services in Sacramento to protect your business from cyber security attacks. With our expertise and advanced technology solutions, we can help you overcome social engineering attacks. Contact us today to learn more.

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Managed services in Sacramento can provide both disaster recovery and data backup. For many companies, a synthesis of the two is desirable. Still, for some, going with one or the other may be best for a time. The issue is often deciding whether to just go with backup or to incorporate disaster recovery as well. If you’ve only got a backup solution, then you simply aren’t going to be able to maintain continuity in the event of a disaster. You’ll be able to reboot, but between the moment your business experiences an issue and the moment you get systems online again, you’ll experience some downtime.

Downtime can be expensive. If you’ve got two hours’ downtime weekly, that translates to 104 hours annually. If it only costs your small to medium-sized business $1,000 per hour of downtime, that’s $102, 000 you’re losing every single year. One thousand dollars per hour is a very conservative estimate of operational losses during downtime. It’s integral to limit downtime as much as possible. The cloud provides exceptional redundancy, allowing for easily-maintained continuity. Part of downtime losses come from revenue reduction due to inaccessible systems during the emergency. Continuity can reduce this cost by ensuring your systems are always available to potential and existing clients; even as you and your tech team troubleshoot the issue and re-establish operations.

Mirroring Your Systems

Managed services in Sacramento providing Disaster Recovery (DR) services often do so by “mirroring” your systems. Instead of files and operating systems requiring total reboot, when a “disaster” occurs— be it a system crash or one of the natural variety— it takes much less time to switch to the mirrored solution. This also curtails downtime in addition to making it possible for clients and employees to maintain system access. Lost time is substantially diminished.

Continuous Backup Is Preservative

A disaster recovery solution is usually facilitated via cloud computing. The cloud is used to continuously back up and store your information in the event of a disaster. While cloud solutions can be used like a tape system for facilitating backup, it just makes sense to go the mirrored approach. It’s a small enough transition and the potential savings are definitely worth considering. If you can cut your downtime in half, at $1,000 per hour, you’d save $52,000 in accordance with the previously explored scenario. If operation costs are higher for you, then you’ll see even more savings.

Multiple Areas of Cost Reduction

While a smaller business who completes very few transactions online— and does not have a ubiquity of employees working digitally— may be able to stand a few hours downtime waiting for a backup. The larger your operation the less likely it is you’ll be able to get away with this. Meanwhile, backup and data recovery:

• Reduce losses from client access restrictions
• Reduce losses from employee inactivity
• Expedite systems recovery

Comprehensive Security

Managed services in Sacramento through Noverus Innovations can help you save time and money by curtailing employee inactivity and clientele losses while speeding up recovery time. Contact us to safeguard your business against the unexpected.

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Avoid Standalones

Standalones make the cloud service very expensive. Before hiring a managed services provider in Sacramento that offer cloud services, make sure that you settle for one that has all the important components that work together. Such a system is relatively cheaper than a cloud service that is operated on a standalone. Additionally, make sure that you choose an MSP of good standing; one that has a track record of managing cloud services.

Prioritize Experience

If you are planning to integrate or migrate your IT systems to the cloud, make sure that you assign this important task to an MSP that has the experience and expertise. This is important because it will be quicker and cheaper and it will ensure that you get value for the money you invested in the system.

Backups Are Crucial

The cloud is instrumental as a backup storage system. Do not push every data to the cloud. Make sure that you only back up data that is important to you and to your firm. Timely updates are important to ensure that the backup systems are up-to-date. Maintaining up-to-date data is crucial because in case you lose your physical data, you can easily retrieve the data and have your critical functions running within the shortest time possible.

Manage Users

Do not allow your system to have so many users. Most of the service providers allow clients to create multiple user accounts. However, there is a catch: these MSPs charge their services according to the number of users. Make sure that you disable or remove user accounts for all employees who have seized working for you.

Go For A Pay-As-You-Go Service

Settle for a managed service provider that offers pay-as-you-go licenses. This will ensure that you are only charged for the resources and storage space that you have used. This is important because it means that you can modify or vary your cost based on the amount of space and resources you will need both during peak and off-peak seasons.

As a business owner, one of your goals should be to keep your operational costs as low as possible. At Noverus Innovations, we are skilled managed services provider in Sacramento. We have a track record of offering managed services and IT consulting for businesses of all sizes. Contact us and let us help you maintain the cost of your cloud services as low as possible.

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What do you do when you need to share a file that contains sensitive information? If you are not using a secure file sharing solution, you are putting your clients’ data and your business at risk.

What is Secure File Sharing?

Secure file sharing is more than just encrypting a file and sending it by email. It involves an entire system designed to keep files secure.

• The files must be kept on a private network, hosted in a secure data center.
• Access to the private network must be through password authentication.
• Every person who requires access must have their own IDs and passwords.
• Before a file is uploaded to the secure file sharing network, it must be scanned for sensitive data. If it contains that type of information, it must be removed or the owner of the data informed.
• When sharing a file, the sender will provide a secured link via email to the receiver.

With the secure file sharing solution in place, your business’ workflow can happen without fear of a security breach.

The Importance of Securing Sensitive Data

Lawyers, banks, and insurance companies know the importance of data security from a managed services provider in Sacramento. Their number one priority is protecting clients and keeping their information secure. Their reputation depends on a client’s trust. One breach of security and they will lose least one client. If word gets around about the breach, their reputation will be shot.

Sensitive documents actually represent value to both your clients and your business. A lot of hours were put into producing those documents, and if they get lost, that represents a lot of vanished work that must be reproduced. Documents containing sensitive information are of value to competitors as well. If sensitive information gets into the wrong hands, it can represent the power to alter stock prices or sabotage a product premiere.

Government and legal entities often require companies to secure client data by law. If the information is breached, the company can face stiff penalties. Plus, it will become known if a company is fined for such a breach, which represents a loss of reputation and trust with existing and future clients.

If your business handles sensitive and/or confidential information, you need to take proactive steps when it comes to file sharing. Setting up a secure file sharing system will let you work efficiently without compromising data and file security. If you want to learn more about securing your data and files, contact our managed services team in Sacramento — contact Noverus Innovations today.

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Thin Clients

Many businesses use conventional desktop computers connected to a network and server for easier file sharing and collaboration. However, a thin client is a very basic and lightweight machine built specifically for accessing a server, either one that’s located remotely (in the case of cloud computing) or on the premises. Since the thin client relies heavily on the server computer, it requires minimal processing power and functionality. By contrast, a desktop computer can serve as a purely standalone machine designed to take on multiple roles by itself.

With an increasing amount of business computing work being carried out remotely, the necessity to have powerful desktop computers is much rarer than it once was. A great deal of important business computing operations, such as CRM, inventory management, and reservation management, are now provided in the form of cloud services, meaning no software needs to be installed on a local computer. As everything runs in a browser and things like application maintenance and data storage are taken care of remotely, thin clients provide all the necessary computing local power.

Simply put, using conventional desktop computers every day is usually overkill these days, unless of course, your business requires them for a specific purpose and/or does not intend to migrate to a primarily cloud-computing environment. Thin clients come in many different forms, but they usually provide everything you need for running browser-based applications. They usually feature a minimalistic operating system, a network interface, and a small amount of flash memory for local data storage. Aside from that, a thin client is basically just a monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

Zero Clients

When researching thin clients, cloud computing solutions, and other managed services in Sacramento, you may also come across zero clients. They work the same way as thin clients; the only difference is they don’t have an operating system. Instead, all they have is the most basic firmware necessary to initialize network communication so that the remote server can do the rest of the work. Since zero clients feature minimal data storage of their own (typically enough just for the required firmware), they’re also far less vulnerable to hacking and attacks by malicious software.

While thin clients require minimal setup and maintenance, zero clients require virtually none. Like thin clients, they are also available in all-in-one form factors, complete with monitors or as small boxes providing the necessary ports for connecting a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. On the other hand, zero clients are not as flexible as thin clients, since they can only use one protocol, which means usage options are more limited. As such, they’re generally better suited for single-purpose machines designed to access a single cloud-based service.

Whatever your choice may be, always consider the one that will help you reduce costs while still maintaining an efficient and stable business operation. At Noverus Innovations, we can help you decide between thin and zero clients. Our managed services team in Sacramento is always ready to answer any IT-related queries you may have. Contact us today to learn more.

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