The 2011 numbers are in – Referrals from our friends continue to be our best new lead source.  So we are upping the Ante this year with an all expenses paid 5 Night Western Caribbean Cruise for two to any person that refers MIS to a business that signs up for one of our Greenlight monthly support programs.

Here’s how it works:

¨ Call or email Jennifer Holmes or Shannon Smith with your referral information and we’ll call to schedule an appointment.

¨ For each referral you provide where we  get an appointment between Feb. 1 – June 30, 2012, your name will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win an iPad2 with carrying case.

¨ If the company you referred signs up for one of our monthly Greenlight support programs between Feb. 1 and June 30, 2012, YOU WIN AN ALL EXPENSES PAID 5 NIGHT WESTERN CARRIBEAN CRUISE FOR TWO from your friends at MIS.  How cool is that?  You help a friend find a GREAT IT support company and you win a cruise! Everybody wins.

¨ So you’re wondering, who makes a good referral for MIS Solutions?  Answer: A business owner who has 10-200 PCs and has nagging problems with their network, computers, email server or is just interested in having a second opinion on how they are doing things now.  We serve areas that are within a 30-40 mile radius from Suwanee.  So if you have a friend or associate in need, please pass our information along or call me and I’ll reach out to them.  I promise to treat your referrals with kid gloves and guarantee no high pressure sales tactics.

How To Play: Call or email Jennifer Holmes at Jennifer@mis-solutions.com (Direct at 678-730-2703) or Shannon Smith at scsmith@mis-solutions.com (Direct at 678-730-5527) with your referral details or you can go to www.mis-solutions.com/referral-program to register.

Contest Starts: February 1, 2012– Contest Ends: June 30, 2012

This month Lliam, Shannon and I attended our Quarterly Producer Club and Marketing Genius Meetings in Nashville and made some interesting observations.  We heard Chris Locurto from Dave Ramsey’s Entreleadership Series.  This was an amazing half day session so if you get the opportunity to train with Entreleadership—do it.  Here are nine valuable nuggets we learned:

1) Organizations are never limited by their opportunity, they are limited by their leader.  Your education, character, capacity, ability and vision are limiting your organization.  John Maxwell calls this the “leadership lid”.

2) Everyone is an entrepreneur—everyone is self-employed.  If you think you are not, try “not showing up” for work on Monday.

3) Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant. Matthew 20:26 (NLT)

4) My weakness as a leader will be my team’s weakness.  It’s time to strengthen those weaker areas.

5) You know you are leading successfully if you “awaken the possibilities in others”.  Benjamin Zander, Conductor for the Famous Boston Philharmonic says, “ I know I’m leading well if they eyes around me are shining.”

6) If you serve your people well, they will serve your clients well.

7) The average millionaire reads one nonfiction book per month, but 40% of the American public had not read a nonfiction book since their last day of formal education.

8) Hire passion over education and talent every time.

9) Leadership test: Turn around.  If nobody is following you, you are not a leader.

For more information on this fabulous program, check out www.entreleadership.com.

Alesa Smith from Materials Analytical Systems is the proud mother of an adorable mini schnauzer / Yorkie Terrier mix named Roxie.  Roxie is two years old and joined Alesa’s home this past Christmas. Roxie loves to run around her house, up the stairs then back down and repeat.

An interesting fact about her sweetie pie is she is a rescue from a very young couple who had 3 young children at home.  Roxie’s past family had to put Roxie up for adoption because they were facing some employment challenges. However, they really wanted to make sure their little tiny dog would go to a good loving home. We love Roxie and I find she is giving love back to us even though we are just getting to know each other.

The best thing about her is a hard one because she is so new to our home but if I had to come up with one thing it would be that she is keeping me moving by going for walks and playing around the house where I may normally go home and lounge around!

Thanks Alesa for sharing Roxie with our readers of Tech Times. As this month’s Grand Prize Winner, Roxie won a $40.00 Treat Basket from Pooch N Paws Pet Boutique and Barkery in Suwanee and she will be featured on our MIS Blog.

If you want free stuff for your fabulous pet, enter one of these 4 ways:

1.  Call Shannon Smith at 678-730-5527

2.  Email at scsmith@mis-solutions.com

3.  Go online to https://budurl.com/petofthemonth and submit your pet’s picture and story.

Are you looking for better control over your network’s security from both employees and ex-employees? Do you know that most breaches originate from the inside? Would you like to be able to instantly revoke access to vendors that need temporary access to your network such as a software vendor or copier technician?  Are you adamant about securing private information like your customer’s social security numbers, bank account numbers or email addresses?

Do you want to know how many failed login attempts happened this month so you can take action? What happens when an employee leaves but you’re certain they know several key users’ passwords?  Is it feasible to do a complete password change across all systems every time an employee leaves? How can you be 100% sure that your terminal server is secure from the outside? You know remote users access the terminal server but how you can you be sure it’s really them and not an imposter?

These are all important security questions.  Compromised security is silent – often it goes undetected.  So how do you protect your company’s most valuable assets?  You secure your servers and network with 2 factor authentication (2FA). Two factor authentication is an approach to authentication which requires the presentation of “two or more” of the three authentication “factors” (“something the user knows”, “something the user has”, and “something the user is”). For example, when you go to the ATM machine – you present a card that is unique to you and you key in a pin that only you should know.

Network passwords continue to be weak even though employers have stressed the importance of using secure passwords that include combinations of numbers, letters and symbols.  But policy without automated enforcement is tough to pull off.  That’s where a product like Authanvil comes into play.  It provides secure 2 factor authentication for your network by using a token that has a constantly changing access code and a secure pin.

If you have questions about this process or know it’s time to beef up your company’s security, join us for our February 8^th webinar on “What Every Business Owner Needs To Know About Security”.  To register, go to budurl.com/missecurity, call Shannon at 678-730-5527, or email her at scsmith@mis-solutions.com. If you know it’s time to finally secure your network with two factor authentication, then call me direct at 678-730-2703 or email me at Jennifer@mis-solutions.com.  For the month of February, we are offering 20% off any new Authanvil implementation Projects to help you further secure your network.  Even if you are not sure this is right for you, call me and I’m happy to answer your specific questions.  With security, you simply cannot be too careful.

Are you about to experience dam failure? Let me explain what I mean. As a CEO Coach, I have conversations with leaders of companies from a variety of industries, shapes and sizes. Yet one pattern that nearly all these business leaders share is that they say “yes” too often.

Think about your schedule like a reservoir with the dam. Every time you say yes to something, you’re adding more and more water to that reservoir. Say yes too often and pretty soon you’re going to have to open the spillway to let something else out. Keep this up for a while, and eventually you’ll experience dam failure.

To protect your reservoir of time, I’m going to give two tips that you can use to help you say “no” more often than you say “yes.”

The first deals with saying no to others. The more successful you become as a business owner or a CEO, the more people will be drawn to you. They’ll want you to be involved in their projects. That’s not to say that you should say no to all of them, but you need to be judicious in the “yeses.”

A simple way to handle this is to ask for requests through email. Email allows you to review their request in a calm environment, away from social pressure, and view it in relation to your calendar. Then, if you decide to say no, you can take your time to craft a diplomatic response.

The second tip deals with saying no to yourself. Most entrepreneurs, business owners, and CEOs are great idea generators. They have many ideas about business improvements or maybe even new business ventures. However, when they say yes to too many of those ideas, pretty soon they have to open the spillway of their time reservoir, causing them to neglect other things—or, even worse, experience dam failure.

I recommend using a perhaps list. A perhaps list is a running list of all those great ideas that you have. Put ideas on that list, and then set up a schedule—perhaps once per month—to review that list and decide whether it’s time to add something new to your already busy schedule. These two simple tips will help protect your precious time and focus. Follow them consistently, and you’ll go a long way toward avoiding dam failure.

Guest article provided by:

Dave Crenshaw is an author, speaker and CEO coach. He has appeared in TIME magazine, Forbes, SIRIUS XM Radio, and the BBC News. His first book, The Myth of Multitasking: How ‘Doing It All’ Gets Nothing Done, has been published in six languages and is a time management best seller. His latest book, Invaluable: The Secret to Becoming Irreplaceable, is also an organizational behavior and motivational bestseller. Dave has helped thousands of clients worldwide harness chaos, get focused, and build invaluable businesses. For videos and articles from Dave, visit www.DaveCrenshaw.com

I read somewhere that the average Microsoft Office user uses less than 10% of the features available to them in the software. If that’s true, then Office is a treasure trove of shortcuts, tools and features just waiting to be unleashed. Of course, we don’t know what we don’t know – which is why most people never invest in training to learn these features and tools and make shorter work of various projects.  To quote an old axiom, “We’re too busy chopping trees to stop and sharpen the axe.”

Of course, not all training is created equal and you DO want to make sure you are getting the biggest bang for your buck; so the first thing you need to determine is, which software applications do you use the most? Word? Excel? Publisher? Next, you need to determine your learning style. Are you good at self-study or do you prefer to have someone walking you through the lessons?

There are many self-study and online courses to choose from, and the one we like is www.trainsignal.com.

Are you thinking about moving all or parts of your computer network “to the cloud” but worried about who can access your data? You’re not alone – but many security experts, software companies and cloud service providers alike agree that cloud computing offers a MORE secure way to store data. In fact, the US government’s cyber security adviser Howard Schmidt had said that cloud computing will enable businesses to catch up on security issues.

That’s because most small businesses do NOT have high-security measures in place for their data onsite and lack tight password protection policies, firewall management and backup procedures.  The same business owners who verbalize their concern about putting their data in the cloud are backing up their entire network to a tape drive and leaving it in their car overnight – or are using weak passwords for important access points to their network, which are much bigger security risks than storing it in a highly secure, highly redundant cloud platform. That’s like saying you’d rather stuff your money into a mattress at home than keep it in a bank because you’re not sure who can see and touch your money.

Of course, with any data storage there is risk and there’s no way to completely guarantee absolute security. That said, most cloud providers are far more diligent about security and invest millions of dollars into ensuring all aspects of security are as tight as possible. At MIS Solutions we have spent a considerable amount of time investigating various cloud solutions and vendors for our clients. If you want more information on cloud security and what to look for, you can always call Jennifer at 678-730-2703 or email me at Jennifer@mis-solutions.com.

Dear Jennifer,

This past summer, we were faced with the daunting task of ensuring our network was PCI compliant.  After reading the PCI specifications, we were overwhelmed with the number of questions and weren’t sure how we were going to secure the internal network to ensure compliance.  The questions were long and it wasn’t obvious which ones applied to us.  I shared this with my wife, Eileen, and she suggested I talk to Lliam for ideas.  While talking with Lliam, I sensed his familiarity and experience with the subject and the challenges we faced so we engaged MIS to help us.  One of the things I liked most in the interview process was Jennifer said, “MIS didn’t pursue every opportunity”.  You interviewed prospective clients first to see if there was a match in terms of challenges, types of help needed and values.  I appreciated your candor and it made me realize that you all were focused on serving only those that were a good match for your services.  From working in IT for many years, it was refreshing to meet a firm that was genuinely interested in helping as opposed to just after securing new clients.

As we faced our PCI compliance challenge, MIS shared that the UTM (unified threat management) system was the key to our compliance.  It was a big piece to the puzzle because it helped us to segment our network so that we could lock down the parts related to PCI compliance.  The added bonus was it enabled us to separate the backup function too.  I love the fact that I no longer have to worry about backups now because I know that your team – not just me – is looking after them daily.  That in itself is a huge burden off my plate.  I have peace of mind knowing that MIS is making sure we have backups and that they work consistently.

Working thru the network planning stage on the PCI project with you and Lliam was a huge stress reliever.  We met with you and white boarded out the network, the PCI requirements and how they applied to our business – which helped me understand the strategy on how we were going to meet the compliance requirements.  I also loved that fact that we can turn over the PCI documentation to you directly and you continue to update it with us.  Working with your team simplified this daunting task and helped us complete compliance in less than 2 weeks. Now getting our quarterly audit results is much easier and we simply make changes as needed.

Implementation of this project was easy with MIS. Reorganizing our network for this project was scheduled outside of our production time.  I like that your team is flexible on scheduling nights and weekend work as certain projects require it.  For other companies that face PCI compliance, I recommend using a UTM.  It helps you segregate the network and focus the PCI requirements on the applicable parts of the network.  In other words, it simplifies and streamlines what you need to do.

We hired MIS to initially help us with a Buffalo server and the PCI compliance requirements. At the time, we were considering hiring another IT person to help maintain our network.  After working successfully with your team, we decided to give MIS a try as our outsourced IT department because we realized that we could have access to a whole range of technical talent (security, backup & disaster recovery, email, network administration, etc.) at a lower cost than hiring a single person with limited areas of expertise.  That was huge for us.

After 4 years of building this network, MIS is now helping us take it to the next level in terms of backup preparations, security, helpdesk services, and PCI compliance which enables me time to focus on the strategic web development projects we have planned.  This process of working with you has highlighted the fact that technology is accelerating faster than ever and there is so much out there to learn to stay up to speed.  I like that I have your team in our corner so we can see what’s working for other companies and apply that wisdom to our environment.  Thank you for helping me move our network forward, Stirling Flynn, Director of Technology, Living On The Edge With Chip Ingram.

Dear Stirling,

Working with you has been our absolute pleasure.  You’ve taken time to share your firm’s history, network layout, technical evolution and ongoing needs with us.  Not many people take the time to do that but it’s huge in helping companies truly leverage their investment in IT.  Your efforts and dedication have paid huge dividends to your firm’s increased security, protection and business continuity preparedness- all of which were accomplished in a very short time period.  We’ve appreciated working with you to move the network forward.  You have been extremely helpful, flexible, resourceful and eager to learn and apply best practices.  We appreciate being involved and look forward to many more years assisting you and your team. – Lliam & Jennifer Holmes

Here’s a little quandary for you to consider: If you have employees using company-owned laptops, phone or other devices, who’s responsible for replacing them if they get lost, stolen or damaged? This is a sticky question and one that needs to be addressed BEFORE Joe walks into your office to sheepishly admit he’s left his laptop at Starbucks last night.

Under federal law, an employer has the right to deduct the costs of a lost or damaged device from their employee’s paycheck PROVIDED that deduction doesn’t drop the employee’s compensation below minimum wage. However, California considers the loss and damage of electronic devices to be a cost of doing business and will only allow you to charge back your employees if they were negligent. Other states may have similar laws – so the first thing you should do is check with an attorney who specializes in employment law for your state to know what you can and can’t do.

Next, decide what your policy is going to be on this topic and communicate that in writing to your employees. It should outline what care they should take with company-owned mobile devices as well as the consequences of losing or damaging them. Yes, the term “policy” makes us all cringe, but it’s important to make sure you and your employees have a written understanding of what your expectations are, as well as what their responsibility is.

A BIGGER Loss To Consider

The cost of replacing a lost device is actually insignificant compared to the bigger cost and risk of the data it contains. Of course this opens up another can of worms all employers need to think about – security on mobile devices. And since some employees are using their OWN devices, you’ll need to think through what the rules are for company owned AND employee owned devices.

But one thing is for sure: if you and your employees are storing sensitive information like passwords, credit card information, client or patient data on mobile devices, extra care MUST be taken to ensure the security of that data if the device is stolen. As always, if you need help in determining what your policy should be and how to secure mobile devices, give me a call 678-730-2703 or email me at Jennifer@mis-solutions.com. This service is free to all Greenlight Advanced Managed Services Clients.

When: Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Start Time: 2:00pm EST
End Time: 3:00pm EST OR until all questions are answered, whichever comes first. This webinar is open to all Greenlight clients.

On the call you will learn: How to use your firewall reports to find out what your employees are doing online while at work; How to automatically enforce your Internet Usage Policy; How to find out if unauthorized users are trying to break-in to steal your data; How to know if your current Internet Package is meeting your company’s bandwidth needs and When does it make sense to implement 2 factor authentication. If you are serious about your network’s security, then this is a must attend event. To register, go to budurl.com/missecurity, call Shannon at 678-730-5527, or email her at scsmith@mis-solutions.com. Space is limited and Registration is required.