GiaSpace’s IT Support Is Almost Too Fast For This Public Accountant
“If I send them an issue, I have to be prepared to work on it right then,” says Guy Strum, Public Accountant. “They’re going to get back to me in the next five minutes.”
Guy Strum, a Public Accountant, has been in business for more than three decades now.
He handles financial statement audits for condominiums and homeowner associations. These are critical processes that help with financial planning and are also required as a part of these businesses’ compliance obligations.
As an active Public Accountant, Guy stores and accesses an extensive amount of financial data on behalf of his clients. In order to do his job well, he needs to know his data is available, secure, and backed up.
That’s why he trusted GiaSpace with managing his IT.
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Why Did Guy Start Working With GiaSpace?
“I came upon GiaSpace three or four years ago, after having issues with my former IT people,” says Guy.
Prior to working with GiaSpace, Guy had partnered with a different IT company. While, for a time, he wasn’t entirely satisfied with their services, the arrangement worked well enough to leave be. That is, until they lost a day’s worth of Guy’s data.
“My data wasn’t being backed up,” says Guy.
Guy discovered that, contrary to what his IT company had told him, his data was not being backed up on a regular basis. This resulted in an entire day’s worth of lost data.
Data Loss Is A Major Threat To Modern Businesses
The unfortunate reality is that without effective data backup capabilities, a business like Guy’s will suffer devastating consequences, including:
- Data loss with no chance of recovery, resulting in wasted work hours and employee wages.
- Data leaks due to malware attacks and phishing scams, which will threaten the privacy of the business’ data, as well as that of its clients.
- Reputational damage, resulting in clients no longer trusting the security of the business dealings.
3 Reasons To Verify Data Backup Capabilities
Data Retention Contingencies
At the rate that technology evolves (and how quickly your standard operations and concerned policies are required to keep up with it), it’s no surprise that some businesses find it difficult to keep up with.
When policy development falls behind the pace of adopted technologies, it can often lead to gaps, which can affect data retention. The fact is that many applications only have limited backup and retention policies, equipped to handle situational data loss—not comprehensive.
Cybercrime
Data loss is often the result of poor digital security; without the right defenses, cybercriminals can easily infect an IT system with ransomware or other types of malware and compromise company data.
In a ransomware attack, a hacker gains access to an organization’s computer systems.
Typically, an unsuspecting employee clicks on an emailed attachment that appears to be a bill or other official document. In actuality, the attachment installs malware onto the computer system. Once embedded, the malware allows a hacker to access critical systems, often giving complete remote control data and access.
What’s more, in recent years, more advanced forms of ransomware have demonstrated the capability to encrypt backups as well. That means that offsite backups that are connected to onsite systems are just as at risk of data loss as those stored locally.
That’s why you should make an investment in a comprehensive backup data recovery solution (which includes digital air-gapped capabilities) so that you can restore your data at a moment’s notice when necessary.
Maintaining Compliance
When it comes to modern compliance requirements, redundant data backups are critical. You’ll want to make sure you know what’s required of your industry’s compliance regulations, and make sure you have backup methods in place to meet those. The default backup capabilities offered by many applications may not suffice for the most stringent regulations
When Guy’s previous IT company failed to establish reliable data continuity processes and it cost him a day’s work, he decided enough was enough.
“I was referred to GiaSpace by a friend and it’s been great ever since then,” says Guy.
GiaSpace Provides Fast Support For Minor Issues And Major Emergencies
In the years since partnering with GiaSpace, Guy has experienced an unparalleled speed and quality of support.
“If I send them an issue, I have to be prepared to work on it right then,” says Guy. “It’s not like they’re going to get back to me sometime later—they’re going to get back to me in the next five minutes.”
GiaSpace is so fast, in fact, that often Guy won’t tell us about an IT issue right away. If the issue in question is small enough, and Guy doesn’t have time to walk through the resolution process right then and there, he’ll push it out a few days.
“Their response rate is incredible,” says Guy.
This type of response is critical in emergency situations as well, as was the case when Guy’s server crashed earlier in 2022. The GiaSpace team received an alert one morning stating that two virtual machines (VMs) had gone down and then come back online.
Later that morning, the servers went down again and never came back online. Our team immediately began remotely troubleshooting the issue and discovered that both power supplies were dead. When connected to a direct power supply, they still failed to power on.
After initial troubleshooting was done over the phone, we sent a technician onsite to investigate the problem further. This was a very old server, and it turned out that both PSUs were dead. Our team had to bring the server back to the office for further investigation.
How We Helped Guy Avoid An Ongoing Crisis
After troubleshooting the server in-house we swapped the PSUs with known working units, but an issue still remained: there was still no power to the server.
Our team then determined that the server Motherboard was fried due to a power outage. The server in question was 13 years old and at that point had no warranty on it.
Concurrent with the troubleshooting process, we had already started the recovery of the VMs from the offsite backup to our Hyper-V Cluster hosted in our own data center. This meant converting their machines to integrate with our systems.
The whole process took an entire day to complete and we were able to bring both servers online in the data center before the end of the day.
Once configured, we provided Guy with remote access to the server and he verified that it was working correctly. In order to ensure he also had access to the local applications at his office, we provided him with a spare server to host the VMs locally.
The next morning, we completed the transfer of the virtual servers to a server that could be installed onsite at Guy’s office. Once deployed, our onsite technician confirmed with Guy that his applications and data were accessible on his PC.
In the end, Guy only lost a day and a half, largely due to an unforeseen power outage, and a server that was out of date as a result of the pandemic.
“I don’t see how anyone could expect any better than that,” says Guy.
Guy Feels Like Our #1 Client
“I’m not their biggest client, but you’d never know it by the way they treat me,” says Guy.
Guy continues to work with GiaSpace to this day because we make sure he gets fast and effective support right when he needs it. Guy has recommended us to other businesses he knows because he’s never experienced this quality of support before.
“I would put my name behind them any day,” says Guy.
