Every growing small business goes through IT struggles eventually. If you don’t have the right people and infrastructure in place, your software and hardware could be a bottleneck for business productivity. For many small businesses, this means it’s time to search for professionals to evaluate what you have now and determine what you need to scale for the future.
It takes a lot of time and money to change infrastructure, so you need professionals who can architect a design that not only provides current support but also gives you the ability to scale as your business grows. If you search for IT support, you’ll find several managed service providers (MSPs) offering all types of bundles, plans, and subscriptions. Small businesses unfamiliar with the IT landscape can soon be overwhelmed by options.
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We put together 10 questions you should ask an MSP before you sign a contract. Some questions might be obvious (e.g., “What services do you offer?” or “How much is the cost?”), so we put together questions that you might not have already thought of.
1. What is Your Service Level Agreement?
A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a promise to respond and remediate issues within a set amount of time. Usually, a response is set based on the type of issue, and issues are categorized by severity. For example, an outage of critical infrastructure might be a tier 1 and have an SLA of 15 minutes response time with a small window for remediation, promising to get your business productive in the least amount of time. A lower-priority issue might have a longer response time, with several days for the MSP to remediate.
2. Do You Support Patch Maintenance
Patch maintenance keeps all your software and firmware (software for your hardware) up to date. Outdated infrastructure leaves you open to known vulnerabilities, and it can be a source of serious data breaches. For example, the infamous Equifax data breach, where private information for 148 million Americans was stolen, stemmed from outdated software. Servers were breached after a known vulnerability remained unpatched for only a couple of months after the vulnerability was made public. You need software updated, especially if it’s a patch for a security vulnerability.
3. Do You Follow Compliance Regulations?
If you have a business under compliance regulations (e.g., HIPAA, FINRA, CCPA, SOX, PCI-DSS), it’s critical that you hire an MSP with a firm grasp of requirements. Infrastructure must be configured and deployed in certain ways to avoid hefty fines. Your MSP will guide you in the right direction. For example, healthcare data must be stored in encrypted form even on mobile devices, so you need an MSP that can configure your hardware to ensure that you follow HIPAA compliance.
4. What Hours is Tech Support Available?
You might think that you won’t need support during closed business hours, but what if your website suffers an outage in the middle of the night? What happens if a server fails, and that server is necessary for productivity in the morning? You need a help desk line to call. Ask an MSP what kind of off-hours support they offer, including holidays and weekends.
5. What Kind of Incident Response Do You Offer?
Incident response is the process of detection, containment, and eradication of a threat. The faster your incident response, the less damage a threat can do to your data. Incident response is a crucial step in dealing with a data breach, so make sure you have an MSP educated and experienced in protecting your data. They might also offer a collection of evidence if you need to report the incident to law enforcement.
6. Do You Offer Disaster Recovery?
Disaster recovery is a step in incident response. It’s the last step after a threat is eradicated from your network. After a threat is eradicated, you need a professional to restore your data and infrastructure to operational status. MSPs will create a disaster recovery plan and help restore data after an incident. You want an MSP that can ensure the lowest amount of downtime with as little data loss as possible so that you can return to productivity. Disaster recovery services often include backup, so ask the vendor what types of backups they perform to safeguard your data.
7. Do You Offer Security Awareness Training to Staff?
Phishing and social engineering are primary attack vectors for cyber-criminals. They’re incredibly effective on unaware employees. Not every MSP offers security awareness training, but you should ask if they do and take advantage of the offer. Cybersecurity training is one way to lower human error and email-based data breaches, including ransomware.
8. Does Your Service Include Monitoring and Detection?
How do you know your network is compromised if you don’t have monitoring in place? Some compliance regulations require you to have monitoring installed. An MSP should have monitoring included with their cybersecurity to reduce the amount of time a threat can persist in your business environment. Monitoring might also include the detection of failed hardware or hardware that might not be configured properly. Ask an MSP what type of monitoring is included with your coverage.
9. Am I Tied to Any Vendor with Your Infrastructure Deployment?
It’s possible that an MSP might set up a cloud-based environment for you. You should know if you’re being tied to any particular vendor. Most corporations are tied to a vendor, but should you take over support for the cloud environment, you need to know if it’s AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or another vendor. If you want to change vendors, it could be difficult to switch especially if you’re integrated with proprietary cloud applications. Ask the vendor which cloud provider will be set up so that you are familiar with their applications. Also, a cloud vendor has their own SLAs that you can review.
10. Does Service Include Onsite Management?
Most IT-specific service can be done remotely, but some MSPs offer onsite service too. If you have local hardware, an MSP might offer onsite support. It might cost more, but onsite service might be necessary if you need help installing extra data lines or installing physical equipment like printers. If you think that you might need onsite support, make sure to ask the MSP if they offer any kind of service for physical installation.
Also Read: Why “My Cousin Does IT” Doesn’t Work Anymore
For small businesses, an MSP might be necessary to handle anything IT. Midsize businesses often collaborate with onsite staff and remote MSP professionals. At Corporate Technologies, we cater our IT support to our customers. We have offices across the US to support all our customers.
To find out what Corporate Technologies can do for you and your growing business, contact us now.
