With our forward-thinking approach and dedication to anticipating and resolving potential IT challenges before they impact your business, we offer more than just a service provider – we’re your strategic partner in navigating the digital realm. 

Why Proactive Managed IT Services Matter?

Proactive managed IT services go beyond traditional IT support by actively monitoring your systems, identifying potential issues, and implementing solutions before they impact your business. This approach minimizes downtime and maximizes efficiency and productivity, giving your business a competitive edge in the market.

The Benefits of Proactive Managed IT Services

• Improved Efficiency: Proactive monitoring and maintenance address IT issues before they escalate, allowing your team to focus on core business activities.
• Cost Savings: Prevent costly downtime and address issues promptly, saving money in the long run.
• Enhanced Security: Proactive security measures protect data and systems from cyber threats, ensuring business safety.
• Scalability: Easily scale proactive managed IT services to meet evolving IT needs, ensuring continued support and reliability.

Security Services

Our comprehensive security solutions shield your IT infrastructure from cyber threats and breaches. Leveraging state-of-the-art malware detection, encryption, spam filters, and multi-step authentications, we fortify your systems against vulnerabilities for robust protection.

Hardware and Software Support Services

Leverage the full potential of your IT investments with our expert guidance in enhancing hardware and software performance. Whether it’s resolving sluggish systems, integrating automation tools, or crafting custom applications, our team is ready to assist you every step of the way.

Disaster Recovery and Backup Solutions

Rest assured, your business continuity is our priority with our robust Backup & Disaster Recovery (BDR) solutions. Featuring both on-site and off-site backup options, we protect your data from system failures, physical harm, and remote threats, ensuring uninterrupted operations.

IT Network Infrastructure Management

Immerse yourself in smooth network operations through our comprehensive IT network management services. From setup to fine-tuning, we cater to all LAN, WAN, and wireless connectivity needs, minimizing downtime and optimizing efficiency.

Dedicated IT Service Desk Assistance

Get immediate assistance for IT issues with our 24/7 service desk support. Our virtual assistants provide remote solutions and on-site troubleshooting, ensuring minimal downtime and smooth system operations.

Cloud Solutions

Unlock the advantages of cloud computing with our customized cloud solutions. Seamlessly transition to contemporary private or hybrid cloud services, utilizing automated applications for IT forecasting, data security enhancement, and desktop virtualization.

From email and server hosting to remote monitoring and disaster recovery, our comprehensive business IT support services address all your IT requirements. Enjoy enhanced performance, reliability, and uptime for critical business applications supported by round-the-clock monitoring and management. 

About Us

At JIG Technologies, our core purpose is to elevate organizations that make our communities better and happier. With our tagline “Better. Happier. Peace of Mind.”, we embody values that define our IT services. We work honestly and hard and are dedicated to delivering on promises with integrity and passion and providing peace of mind to our clients. Supporting each other’s happiness, we foster a collaborative environment where each team member is encouraged to grow and contribute to our collective happiness. We embrace endless curiosity, prioritizing listening, learning, and challenging the status quo to ensure continuous improvement and customer success.

Our IT services are meticulously designed to help your business flourish, focusing on transparency through clear and detailed proposals, delivering results with predefined KPIs to measure progress, leveraging innovation with cost-effective solutions that keep you ahead of the competition, and maintaining open communication to promptly address any issues, questions, or concerns you may have.

Are You Ready for Premier Managed IT Services in Toronto?

Are you ready to elevate your business to new heights? Partner with Jig Technologies today and experience the transformative power of our customized IT solutions. Whether you need managed IT services, cloud solutions, or comprehensive support, our team is dedicated to helping you succeed.

Please schedule an appointment with us now to arrange a consultation and discover how Jig Technologies can empower your organization for success.

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The post How Technology Decreases Operational Costs appeared first on JIG Technologies.

Why is an IT Strategy Needed?

If the typical executive director was asked, “do you need an IT Strategy?” you would be hard pressed to find anyone answering no.  So, why is it then that so many nonprofits fail to create an IT Strategy to follow?

One of the reasons IT Strategy is often ignored is because there is not a clear understanding of why it is important.  Many don’t realize that IT Strategy helps create value in the organization.  In other words, it helps maximize the return on IT investments. By ensuring that IT is aligned with the business vision, and across all departments throughout the organization, a better return will be provided.

What Could Go Wrong Without a Strategy?

Most organizations will not develop a clear IT Strategy and seem to get along just fine for a period of time without one.

Often a nonprofit or charity will start out with a mission to bring good into the world and IT is the last thing on their mind.

As the organization is formed, the financial person will choose the accounting system that best meets their needs.

The head of fundraising needs to track donors and sets up a donor management system for tracking donations.  This works well for some time, but the organization needs to get the word out about their cause and hires a marketing person.

This marketing person sets up a website and CRM to track new potential leads.  With all the success the funding team can no longer mange which group gets funding on spreadsheets, so a grant management system is created.

All noble efforts, and each group has the system they need, but this is where the challenges start.

While the donor management system tracks donations, the information about the bank account activity needs to be copied over to the accounting system for reconciliation.   Often this is done through some sort of export and import, but details are lost and reconciliation every month becomes very time consuming.

The marketing group has a list of potential donors, but when they donate, there is no match between the person on the donor system and the one on the marketing system. Lots of additional work goes into figuring out which campaigns ended up leading into donations.

Without an overall IT Strategy the organization has many systems not talking to each other.

Another problem that often occurs is the misalignment of the technology with the mission of the organization. 

An example might be an organization that’s mission is to help cure a particular disease that create a great donor database to raise funds but provides no system to award funding and track the effectiveness of the research.

In this way funds are received, but potentially ineffective and wasted. If IT is not aligned with the mission, then low return will be made on the investment.

How Does an IT Strategy Get Implemented?

Now that we see all the issues that can arise without a clear IT Strategy, how does one go about creating it?   

First and foremost, there must be a clear business strategy and vision to follow.  Business should lead technology, not the other way around.

With the business vision created, an IT vision can be developed, and the following 5 steps can be used to create the IT strategy:

Step 1: Development IT Vision: Answer the questions like where are you headed?  What does the end state look like?

Step 2: Identify the current IT capabilities: What people, processes, technology are currently in place?  How do these operate together?

Step 3: Document the future IT capabilities: What people, processes, technology are needed to accomplish the vision in step 1?  How do these operate together?

Step 4: Determine the IT capability gaps: What people, processes, and technology do not exist in the organization that are needed to reach the future state described in step 3?

Step 5: Create a migration plan: What are the steps needed to fill these gaps identified? Who is responsible for each? What are the deliverables and timelines?

With the plan in place, work can start to implement the IT Strategy in the organization. 

However, this is not a set it and forget it activity.   Every 1 to 3 years the IT Strategy should be reviewed and revised.  Additionally, quarterly check-ins are needed to ensure implementation is going as per the initial plan.

How Big is an IT Strategy Effort?

While many envision an IT Strategy that involves a digital transformation of the entire organization, it doesn’t not have to be that exhaustive. 

An initial IT Strategy could be as simple as just getting systems to a modern baseline level. This is often done through a technology success review (IT Audit) performed by a managed service provider and would take 3-4 weeks. This nice part about this is that it’s standardized and there is a lot to gain just by using the experience of the MSP to just get up to best practices.  It is also true that a more comprehensive and ambitious transformation to reinvent the organization can be taken on.  These efforts tend to be larger with a 6-12 month range for the timeline.

The post How to Use IT Strategy to Drive Your Nonprofit Mission appeared first on JIG Technologies.

How to Make Sure Your Business WiFi is Working for You

How do you know when it's time to update or upgrade your business or enterprise WiFi? This checklist will help you determine what needs attention.

Save Time

Save Money

Ensure a great WiFi experience

Contact JIG Technologies Today

The post Business WIFI Checklist appeared first on JIG Technologies.

1

Getting to Know You

We learn everything there is to know about how your organization works. We want to know how you work, when you work and who you work for.

2

Getting to Know Your Community

The more we know about who you are working for, who you are helping and what their needs are, the more we can start to envision and structure solutions and plans for you.

3

What are Your Constraints?

A successful plan hinges on realistic and consistent estimates for allowable resources.

4

What Do You Already Have?

A thorough audit of your software, hardware, servers, and the state of the devices that are attached to your network or system will ensure you get the most bang for your buck. It establishes how information (sensitive and otherwise) is being shared and protected. Security in nonprofit industries is an area of major concern.

5

What Are Your Options?

Researching affordable technology that has the greatest reach within your organization. Finding the tools and equipment that are scalable and secure. Whether that’s CRMs, donation portals or data storage, there is something out there that fits everyone.

6

Who Will Use This Technology?

Training is important and removes technology barriers that would otherwise create inequality in your organization. Whether it’s volunteers, staff, stakeholders, constituents, everyone requires accessible interaction with your services and technology.

7

How Will This All Fall Into Place?

Depending on your unique needs and the urgency required, a timeline and schedule will be developed to implement all these phases in comfortable roll-out that makes sure nobody is left behind. The lifecycle is designed to move your organization in an upward direction at your own pace and within budget.

8

Are We Ready?

Things are finalized, prepared. Policy and procedure documents have the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed.

9

Off We Go!

We put the plan into action.

The post IT Planning and Assessments for Your Nonprofit appeared first on JIG Technologies.

What is your responsibility as a customer
and what is the responsibility of your provider

Cloud computing is the delivery of computer services via the internet. This is an oversimplification, but hopefully it will be made clearer throughout the article.

It used to be that databases, software, storage and networking were all done locally, at the office/building where a business was run. There was often an in-house IT person/s or outsourced Managed IT company that would handle all the complications involved in operating all that hardware on-site. But since the COVID crisis, it has become more cost-efficient to use a third-party service to house and manage all that hardware and for customers to access it remotely.

Investment in cloud computing increased rapidly since the 2020, changing the landscape of digital technology as vendors and employees moved away from offices to work. Cloud computing revenues, said IBM, reached $219 billion in 2020, and analysts expect the industry to further grow to $791 billion by 2028.

There are several types of cloud services, but these are the 4 most basic.

Software as a Service (SaaS) – In all likelihood you already use Saas services. These are application that run directly from a browser. examples Dropbox, Google Drive, ZenDesk

Platform as a Service (PaaS) – In this case, the cloud service provides the customer with the infrastructure but gives developers access so they can build, test and customize apps. example Elastic Beanstalk, Netlify, Heroku

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) – In this case, the company would provide all the physical infrastructure required by the company so that they don’t have to purchase/secure all the physical hardware themselves. This is obviously much more cost effective and since the cloud service is set up to offer this service, it is usually much faster and flexible. This sort of service is typically used by companies that build their own software ex. DigitalOcean, Linode, Rackspace, Amazon Web Services

Private Cloud Service – Your own storage where you control everything.

Depending on what kind of service you are procuring, your responsibility as a customer varies. Hopefully the below table can shed some light on how responsibility is distributed. It is very important to understand where the cloud provider’s duty of care ends and where the customer (yours) begins. The onus is on the customer to understand what data is at risk and how to protect it.

The provider must ensure that their infrastructure is secure and that their clients’ data and applications are protected, while the user must take measures to fortify their application and use strong passwords and authentication measures.

Information and Data

All of your data, images, documents, spreadsheet, databases etc. are the owner’s responsibility. Proper backup of all integral business assets is a must. In this case, before a move to the cloud, it is within the company’s best interest to conduct a security audit. Learn more about data security and if your data is vulnerable.

Devices

Customers must ensure that any devices being used by employees are secure. How they are accessing the network and how quickly they can access it is all integral to running a business smoothly. It is important that these roads are secure. Security protocols on devices, boundaries to access information, ability to remotely wipe and recover devices are all essential in securing your cloud access. In today’s environment, businesses are more device friendly. Find out more about securing your workplace devices.

Accounts and Identities

Having proper internal file architecture and limited access to sensitive areas is also something that must be clearly defined. Each user should have specified roles, access and abilities within. In addition, complex passwords and two factor authentication. If you are usure of how secure your business is, learn more about how to identify security risks.

The post Cloud Services and Security appeared first on JIG Technologies.

The post What is Ransomware and How does it Work? appeared first on JIG Technologies.

6 Phases of a Ransomware Attack

Phase 1: Exploitation and Infection

The first step is to infect a victim’s computer with malware. This can be achieved by either:

1. Forcing or tricking the victim to download an infected attachment through email (most common).
2. A drive-by-download which refers to the distribution of software or malicious code without the user’s knowledge. This can be achieved through an advertising popup or other active portion of a web page. Clicking or even attempting to close a window can be interpreted as consent to download.
3. An exploit kit which may start as a website that has been compromised. The site will covertly redirect traffic to another landing page that will profile the victim’s device for vulnerable browser-based applications.
4. Exploiting weaknesses in RDP connections

Phase 2: Delivery and Exploitation

Once the malware has installed itself on the victim’s computer it will begin downloading a hidden executable (or .exe) file. When it is done delivering its malicious payload it will notify the cybercriminal

The criminal’s server (often referred to as ‘Command and Control’ – C2) is usually located in the dark web and works across anonymous networks.

The malware can also lay dormant for days or weeks and then spread itself out across networks and systems in an organization.

Phase 3: Privilege Escalation and Keys

Once the cybercriminal is inside the victim’s computer, they start to execute several privilege techniques to gain access to files. In the case of an organization, they will also start scanning the computer to discover corporate networks, or active directory domains.

They mask their activity as an already running process (PID) and then try to give themselves file ownership or increase their security within the folders. Once they have higher privileges such as write or modify they can then start replacing the files with encrypted versions.

They use the network drives and look for backups then piggy back onto those backups and encrypt them. Cold storage solutions are the only way to defeat these kind of attacks.

To ensure the cybercriminal’s stability in the machine, they will often implement ‘backdoor’ options by installing remote desktop software or using compromised credentials.

C2 creates two cryptographic keys. One key is kept on the victim’s computer and the other is stored on C2.

Phase 4: Encryption

Before this stage, things are still reversible if detected on time. However, by this phase, the cybercriminal is in complete control.

The ransomware begins encrypting files. It uploads the newly encrypted files and deletes the originals.

Different ransomware uses different encryption methods which can include anything from encrypting the master boot record (MBR) of a file system or encrypting individual files or entire virtual machines. Common file extensions such as Microsoft Office documents to .jpg and more are all targeted.

Backups may be deleted or encrypted to prevent, or delay recovery.

Phase 5: Extortion

At this point the victim/s will receive a lock screen detailing the situation, the fact that their files are all encrypted and information explaining how to pay to get their files back.

Of course, the cybercriminal requests a certain sum of money to be paid in bitcoin. The typical fee for individuals is between $300USD and $500USD

Corporation may pay in the hundreds of thousands, to the millions.

There is often a time limit associated with the payment window in order to motivate the victim to pay quickly and not search out alternative resolutions.

Phase 6: Payday

At this point, most victims and organization decide to pay since the cost of recovery or partial recovery may exceed the ransom request.

In some cases, with major infrastructure organizations, each minute ticking away can cost thousands of dollars, and possibly affect the safety of hundreds of people (as in the cases where hospitals were targeted). With this in mind, payouts are the most likely resolution.

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Performance

Business Laptop

• Sturdier and last longer.
• Business laptops are generally more powerful than your typical consumer laptop. They are built with more powerful components that allow for consistent use.
• Durable casing designed for travel and commuting.

Consumer Laptop

• Consumer laptops are not designed for consistent daily use or a 40-hour work week like business laptops are. Nor are they designed to travel as frequently as business laptops.

Technical Features

Business Laptop

• Business models have faster processors, graphics cards and more storage space.
• Batteries that last longer and charge faster
• Have more configuration options to make them compatible with your IT company specs. This may mean more options for configuring hardware and software.
• Business laptops often come with Windows 10 Pro (latest OS), which gives access to extra features like being able to join to a domain.

Consumer Laptop

• Frequently designed with obsolescence in mind, so they are not typically built with the fastest, strongest components
• Consumer grade laptops don't usually allow for the end-user to pick custom hardware. For most users this fine, you get what you need in one neat package.

Appearance

Business Laptop

• Designed for durability and long use, business laptops aren’t known to be as good looking as their consumer half.

Consumer Laptop

• Consumer laptops tend to have bright, glossy displays, modern keyboards and flashy chassis.
• Usually has new design features such as 360-degree hinges, built-in styluses, detachable screens and roomy touchpads

Pricing

Business Laptop

• Business models are a little more costly than consumer models due to the durability and strong hardware
• Usually come with a 3-year warranty
• You can expect a business laptop to last about 5 years.

Consumer Laptop

• Often less expensive
• Designed to last between 2-4 years

Serviceability

Business Laptop

• It comes with premium encryption tools to take care of your information security while you concentrate on achieving your business goals
• Business laptops are also typically built with software that makes it easier to manage and secure devices on enterprise-class networks
• Business laptops give you more options when it comes to servicing and repair compared to their counterparts.
• Many of spare components such as replacement batteries and AC adapters are readily available for business laptops and their less compact design makes it possible for your IT company to sort out any issues.

Consumer Laptop

• As cloud solutions are becoming more user-friendly, the gap between consumer and business laptops is narrowing when it comes to managing and securing devices on enterprise-class networks

The post How do Consumer Laptops and Business Laptops Compare appeared first on JIG Technologies.