Dear Retail Friends, Customers, and Prospects,
Managed Service Providers are not a new concept yet many retailers have not heard about nor taken advantage of their benefits. Recently we introduced our MSP services specifically tailored to independent retailers and we are receiving a tremendous response to it. The independent retailer is under attack from a number of directions and what once was considered an easier business to start and maintain is no longer that.
The independent retailer, more than ever, needs to focus on their business by taking advantage of important technologies that will help ensure they endure this gentrification of retailing as we know it. One way a retailer can focus on what’s important and less on the distraction of everyday technology is to enlist the help of an outsourced technology team known as an MSP. A key thing to know is that all MSP’s are not created equal, meaning some specialize and some generalize. Those that specialize tend to understand the challenges of the businesses they service and that is who we are. We are a MSP specializing helping independent retailers.
One of the growing concerns we are seeing is just how unprepared many retailers are, should they experience a catastrophic technology failure. A technology failure can come in many different varieties, an important one is a hardware failure, but I am going to focus on a much scarier one known as ransomware, a rapidly growing attack on businesses. In case you have not heard of ransomware you can google the word and read a few articles and will quickly come to the realization that this is something every business owner needs to take action to prevent. Ransomware put simply is when a hacker installs a virus which activates and encrypts your hard drives. The only way to get your data back is by paying a ransom, hence how it got its name?
Preventing a catastrophe requires layers of protection, starting with antivirus software, but that is only one of many things business owners need to do to help prevent attacks like ransomware. Keeping up with the basics can be challenging but the more important focus is on preventing this sort of event from occurring and this requires constant diligence to identify new methods and technologies before there is a problem. This is where our Store IT services come into play and are the start of a new era for retailers to be able to concentrate on their business and the very real threats of big sites like Amazon.
Our Store IT services are highly inclusive of the most important products and services needed to keep the independent retailer one step ahead of all things technology. We offer a combination of a product and service known as backup disaster recovery. This is part hardware and part cloud services that helps protect our clients from the most common threats including hardware failure acts of god such as earthquakes and flooding but also includes prevention from ransomware. With our sophisticated technology that we manage for you, should anything like this occur we have a very high probability of restoring your business back to normal, within hours.
I highly suggest you don’t wait till something bad happens as this usually is expensive and unsuccessful. Imagine losing all of your data, what happens next?
We are here ready and willing to help.
Scott Kreisberg
CEO, One Step Retail Solutions