Author Archives: Maria Koblish

We frequently encourage our clients to consider the cloud as a viable option for their data storage needs, be they someplace to store a copy of their data backup or even their primary storage option. Sometimes though, our clients are hesitant to adopt cloud technology. We frequently get asked – is cloud storage secure? This is an important question to answer, because more and more of our data is going to end up in the cloud as technology continues to advance.

Unfortunately, this can be a difficult question to give a straightforward answer to. Why? Because different cloud providers will offer different levels of security, so the answer we can give you will depend entirely on what provider you use.

Cloud Storage Security Depends on the Cloud Provider

Cutting a long story short, it really is as simple as that. There are plenty of means that your cloud provider has to help ensure the security of your stored data on their infrastructure—because that’s all the cloud really is: an infrastructure that you can use remotely instead of using your own. In this case, you’re simply using someone else’s server to store your data.

Due to this, your data’s security is wholly dependent on the protections that the provider has (or has not) put in place.

Ideally, your provider will have made sure that your data is protected by a variety of safeguards, including encryption, access controls, redundancy, and cloud monitoring, with these features tested regularly to ensure that your data is properly secured. Any quality provider will be doing so to the best of their ability, with their servers locked down and guarded behind their own security features and personnel.

Data Also Needs to Be Available

Of course, data that your business can’t access is (for all intents and purposes) data that doesn’t exist, so you need to be sure that your cloud storage provider can also ensure that you have access to everything you’ve entrusted to them.

There are numerous reasons why this may not be the case, ranging from user error, mechanical failure, or local disaster leading to a service disruption on the provider’s end to a successful cyberattack upon the provider.

However, Most Cloud Security Issues Originate from the Client’s Side

The unfortunate truth is that it is much more likely that any security issues you experience with a reputable cloud storage provider will likely come from an issue present on your end. There are a lot of examples as to how this can happen, including:

• The use of shadow IT, in the form of one of your users also storing data on another, unapproved service or platform
• Files being inappropriately shared
• Insufficient passwords being used to protect access to cloud resources
• Accidental data deletion by a user
• Insecure and unauthorized devices being used to access cloud resources

Is cloud storage secure? In short, the cloud is very secure —the problem is usually the person using it and how it was set up. This makes it critical to your company’s successful and secure use of the cloud that your users understand how to appropriately utilize the cloud in a way that maintains security while also allowing them to be productive.

That’s where we can help. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help secure your operations, including your use of the cloud.

2021 was a very exciting year for Thrive and not just because it was an especially busy year for protecting against cyber threats. With many businesses settling into an extended remote work scenario, organizations began to think seriously about the long-term security plans for their remote workforces and their increasingly exposed assets. According to a study by Fortinet, ransomware attacks alone increased by 10.7x last year. Consistent with this and other demonstrated increases in attacks, Thrive’s own 2021 year-end report indicates a paralleled rise in attacks and increased cybersecurity action as a result.

Thrive’s Year in Review

In 2021, Thrive grew its presence and global protection reach. In the past year, we:

•   Onboarded over 100 new customers
•   Grew NextGen security by over 450%
•   Protected over 60,000 endpoints

Security Statistics

Increased security threats were felt on a global scale. Here is what we saw at Thrive:

•   900 security incidents (investigations) per month
•   30% increase in investigations month-over-month
•   Overall 30% rise in investigations

Top 3 Investigation Types for 2021:

1.   Intrusion Prevention
2.   Intrusion Detection
3.   Client VPN-related alerts

Thrive ended the year with over 1,200 customers across the US and the UK. With the increased number of high-profile cyber attacks that occurred in 2021, more attention than ever is being focused on risk mitigation and damage remediation to preserve businesses’ customer confidence and public image.

Building a cyber readiness plan that adheres to best practices can be difficult. Thrive’s managed cybersecurity solutions are deployed on its industry-leading cybersecurity platform for comprehensive support that empowers Thrive’s CISSP-certified experts to not only identify problems, but also solve them.

With an Active Remediation approach, Thrive’s security experts are empowered with the access, know-how, and trust to directly mitigate and remediate issues, keeping critical business systems and staff operational. Contact us to help you in 2022.

The past couple of years have been difficult for businesses, regardless of if they are large organizations or small businesses. Likewise, cybersecurity has been a challenge. The best technology providers should always be preparing for the next wave of cyberthreats, because bad actors are always coming up with new and nefarious ways to access your sensitive information. Let’s take a look at what 2022 could pose for cybersecurity, especially considering recent trends.

Prediction: Attacks Will Shift in Method and Severity

The increase in remote and hybrid work has been great for companies that are able to support these kinds of operations, but there are certain tradeoffs, including security.

Remote Work Has Increased the Attack Surface

Working remotely can do wonders to protect the health and safety of your employees, but it does increase the opportunity for them to fall victim to hacking attacks. Their home networks are likely nowhere near as secure as your in-house network is, so you’ll have to encourage your users to stay alert and remain vigilant, especially while out of the office. All it takes is one unsecured smart device to create a problem for your organization.

Hackers Will Do Their Homework

You can also expect hackers to seek out new vulnerabilities that coincide with where their victims are located and which devices/solutions they are using. There is always a risk when using a new software solution, especially when new patches and updates could potentially bring with them new vulnerabilities in the form of a zero-day attack. Attackers are always trying to use new and developing technologies to their advantage, too, such is the case with deepfake technology.

Prediction: Attacks Will Change Their Targets

It’s expected that breaches will target different types of victims over the next year, and that the largest breaches will target the cryptocurrency space. Even so, we would be surprised to see this shift creating even less of a danger for businesses, so you’ll still want to protect yourself whenever possible.

Prediction: Attacks Will Still Rely on Familiar Methods

Many vulnerabilities stem from failing to update systems in an appropriate manner, so it’s of critical importance that these vulnerabilities are patched as soon as possible, especially in the business technology sector.

Attacks On End Users Will Continue

It’s safe to say that phishing and other cyberthreats are not going anywhere, placing the end user in a precarious position. This is especially true if people continue to work from home without a concerted effort to increase cybersecurity awareness. You must take measures to increase awareness of the risks of working remotely and of the threats that are found online.

We might want to say that the future is bright for security, but you can never count on it being too bright. What you can count on, however, is that Thrive will be there to help you out each step of the way. To learn more about how we can help you protect your business, contact us today. 

You’d think that cybercriminals would use ransomware to target high-profile businesses with loads of money to extort, but this is not always the case. Even a small business can fall victim to these particularly devastating attacks. So, what is ransomware? Ransomware is a threat, and just like other threats out there, it has continued to evolve and adjust its approaches based on the current cybersecurity climate. So what are some of the latest developments in ransomware?

In No Uncertain Terms, Ransomware Has Grown More Dangerous

In order to be effective, cybercriminals capitalize on the challenges that small and medium-sized businesses face every day. For example:

• Cybercriminals frequently rely on deception in the form of phishing. Using phishing attacks, a cybercriminal bypasses the protections a business has in place by taking advantage of their employees in order to gain access to the business’ network.
• A lack of communication between departments makes issues even greater. A lack of communications between a business’ departments can exacerbate the risks to be seen from cybercriminals.
• Smaller businesses don’t always have the resources needed to prepare their team members. Unlike corporations, SMBs likely don’t have a dedicated budget for cybersecurity training, and almost certainly can’t afford the salary of a dedicated security professional on-staff.

The question remains, how can we stop ransomware? To know how to stop it, it’s crucial to understand the actors. Ransomware attacks are increasing and businesses need a plan to fortify their defenses and protect their information.

What is Ransomware as a Service (RaaS)?

Recent ransomware attacks will clearly show that cybercrime is a legitimate business model. Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) involves selling or renting ransomware to buyers, called affiliates. RaaS can be credited as one of the primary reasons for the rapid proliferation of ransomware attacks, as it has made it easier for a variety of threat actors — even those who have little technical knowledge — to deploy ransomware against targets. It provides hackers and criminals with the means to pull off ransomware attacks with ease. With these types of services being so accessible, it’s no wonder that ransomware is a major cause for concern for business and IT leaders. More and more, businesses are putting together teams of developers and commission-based structures for these services to ensure these attacks won’t affect their operations.

How Does Automation Make Ransomware More Effective?

The power of AI and automated processes has allowed many businesses to streamline certain processes, unfortunately, the same can also be said for cybercriminals. Automation has made it so they no longer manually attack individual targets, instead opting to leverage automation for widespread attacks with minimal effort. The extortion part of ransomware has also been completely automated, as evidenced by Avaddon, a ransomware variant that proudly displays a list of companies that have been infected right on its Dark Web listing, as well as flaunting a countdown to when the data will become publicized.

Ransomware Attacks and Layered Extortion

Ransomware attacks often target the same individuals or companies more than once, sometimes charging the victims even more or forcing them to pay up with a threat of the data being leaked if they do not do so. Unfortunately for businesses, this approach is more advanced than it has been in the past. Here is a snapshot of what the extortion process looks like:

• The victimized business is instructed to pay for their access to their encrypted data to be restored.
• Hackers release the data they’ve stolen if the ransom isn’t paid.
• Denial of Service attacks are used to take down a victim’s website.
• The cybercriminals responsible reach out to the targeted business’ customers, partners, employees, and the media to inform them of the hack.

These tactics have made it hard to say no to ransomware and have drastically improved the success odds for an attack to be launched.

You Need to Be Ready to Resist Ransomware

Ransomware can be devastating if you let it create problems for your business, so don’t take any risks with it. Make sure that you are working with cybersecurity professionals who can help you take the fight back. Thrive’s expansive suite of security tools helps your business stay on top of the next incoming attack. To learn more about your security and how to keep it from becoming a problem for your business, contact Thrive today.

“IT departments are for a bygone era and are ill-suited to the demands of a digital-first world.”

Joe Peppard makes some compelling arguments in his article “It’s Time to Get Rid of the IT Department” in The Wall Street Journal. His primary suggestion throughout the piece is to decentralize IT and embed technology experts within business units because the traditional siloing of IT hinders its ability to add business value. But in the move to align with the new reality that “the business is the technology and the technology is the business”, companies still need centrally managed IT support to make sure their infrastructure is performing and secure.

Creating Common Threads
Although IT has in the past functioned on its own island of intelligence, this obsolete model no longer functions in today’s dynamic business environment.

Now, business problems more often than not require a technology-based solution. If a company’s brightest technologists are either siloed or too busy with mundane tasks like employee onboarding, password resets, or software patching, they’re not available to help where they are most needed. Having a common thread of technology expertise in every department to alleviate some of those tasks can power the elusive digital transformation many are striving for.

What Happens Without Centralized IT
Distributing an IT department to the four corners of the enterprise could leave a very big gap in service, which Peppard does acknowledge. There needs to be someone making the company-wide decisions and enforcing corporate policies, so there are not a dozen IT fiefdoms with their own management, support, and security challenges.

If one team manages tasks and tickets using Zendesk while another uses HubSpot or Excel, collaboration time and efficiency are lost by cross-referencing databases or trying to merge data. On top of functionality headaches, the organization is most likely paying for two different solutions for the same problem. Imagine differing security protocols across departments – you would not want one group implementing one vendor’s multi-factor authentication solution while the next group picks their favorite MFA provider. There needs to be someone taking a 10,000-foot view of the entire company’s IT and cyber security needs.

Filling the Void
The question becomes, how does an organization both place its technical know-how directly into business units and support a functional IT infrastructure when it is more than likely short-staffed and lacking critical skills?

The managed services approach enables companies to shift away from the traditional centralized IT organization that services the entire company. By going above and beyond what most internal IT teams can deliver in terms of 24/7/365 monitoring and support, multi-vendor expertise, and strategic thinking from virtual CIOs and CISOs, MSPs such as Thrive hold the key to a successful, secure digital transformation for organizations of all levels of technical ability.

Empowering IT to Drive Transformation
Today’s IT teams are not only reactive; they are critically proactive. They can bring some much-needed problem-solving muscle across the organization, but they just need to be unleashed from the monotony of routine IT tasks.

Not everyone has the capacity to dedicate heads in their organization to manage IT internally and drive digital transformation. Regardless of where your IT lives, they must exist to help move your organization forward. Whether your team needs a little extra support or you’d like to migrate those responsibilities fully remote, Thrive’s Managed IT Solutions or vCISO service are here to help you stay up-to-date and protected. All while you do what you do best – serve your customers.

Cyber attacks are one of the fastest spreading crimes in the digital world, costing more than $6 trillion in 2021, and making it the third-largest economic system just behind the United States and China. In the U.S., the most popular targets of cyber attacks are small businesses, individuals, and healthcare facilities, with each attack leading to consequences beyond immediate monetary loss.

Small businesses are often found to be easier targets of cyber attacks because they often don’t have the security and fortification that larger enterprises do. Small businesses also may believe that it’s too expensive for them to become properly protected. No matter the size of the business, cybersecurity is not only necessary but can be affordable.

The loss of an individual’s data can lead to identity theft, credit fraud, ransom threats, and other unsavory actions. For businesses, this can be disastrous for the company’s brand and reputation. Once the attack is discovered, fixing it is not always as simple as canceling a few credit cards. Complete remediation of the problem is not an instant process. It takes time and resources to identify and fix all the collateral damage caused by the theft.

Healthcare facilities are a particularly vulnerable target. With attacks on healthcare facilities can come the loss of important records, malware issues with vital medical equipment, and the breach of patient privacy. Hospitals are especially susceptible to attacks, and more specifically ransomware threats, because the targeted data can literally be life saving.

No matter what the size of your enterprise, Thrive can walk you through what your business’ best options for cybersecurity are, and can help identify options for your consideration.

Who Helps with Recovery?

Insurance is the easiest, quickest way to mitigate losses from a cyber attack. Insurance against cyber attacks should be a priority, no matter the size of the business. From Fortune 500 enterprises to your local corner store, cyber insurance for a business is tantamount to fire insurance on a home. If you have insurance, you can both recoup your losses while also gaining insights from forensic services. Thrive helps support business continuity after the attack. Working in tandem with the insurance company, not only will we help identify the perpetrator, we will also help ensure your business operations continue. Thrive can help you to choose the proper security installations for your IT platform, taking into account your business and its specialized needs. We make sure any security software you currently utilize is either updated or replaced with something more effective and efficient.

How Does Thrive Help Deter Cyber Attacks?

As you may have read in our multi-part series on the Return to the Office, COVID-19 and the mass migration to working remotely from home has caused the need to adapt the cybersecurity companies utilize on a daily basis. No longer should we as businesses fortifying only one major network at the office; now we must take into account all of the different digital environments and security risks they impart upon us while employees are working from their homes, coffee shops, and other places external to the enterprise.

For employees working from home, we suggest using end-to-end protection and anti-virus software; even simple security is better than no security. We also encourage inter-business Security Awareness Training; a service Thrive provides to our clients. We will teach you what to look for in terms of suspicious activity and aid in the management of your security platform. It is also important to expect that one day you WILL be attacked. This is not to cause paranoia, but to cultivate an alert mindset when it comes to the continued protection of your network and data.

A Security-First Mindset

At its core, IT security awareness and safe practices start at the top. Leaders within your company should be sure to lead by example and communicate the importance of IT security. Creating shared “rules” to follow and raising awareness of how attacks can be initiated is a great start, along with strategies such as frequent password updates and locked screen savers.

Thrive offers multiple security options, from hands-on training to complete supervision of IT software. To learn more about what we can do for you, contact us today.

As modern warfare has evolved, so too has cyberwarfare. There is always a war occurring in cyberspace, where hackers attempt to outdo security researchers. One such example of hackers—often sponsored by government agencies—attempting to engage in cyberwarfare can be seen in the United States and Israeli technology sectors, which have become the target of password spraying.

What is Password Spraying?

Password spraying involves hacking into multiple accounts by spamming commonly used passwords. Think of passwords that include birthdays, names, or even the word “password,” itself. A good password strategy will require users to create passwords that meet a high standard of difficulty to guess, including special characters or needing to be a certain length for example. But, considering how frequently people still use common passwords, as well as variations of those passwords, one can imagine how effective this tactic can be!

In the scenario outlined above, Microsoft has issued a warning that about 250 Microsoft Office 365 customers in the defense technology sectors have been targeted by password spraying tactics. Microsoft calls this group DEV-343, with the DEV in the name representing the fact that the attacks are, at this time, not sponsored by state actors. This group is thought to originate from Iran.

Less than 20 of the targets were actually compromised, but it’s still shocking to see high-profile targets opting for commonly used passwords. Microsoft has also reported that organizations that use multi-factor authentication are at less risk than those that don’t. As reported by Microsoft, security professionals should be wary of suspicious connections enabled by Tor networks: “DEV-0343 conducts extensive password sprays emulating a Firefox browser and using IPs hosted on a Tor proxy network. They are most active between Sunday and Thursday between 7:30 AM and 8:30 PM Iran Time (04:00:00 and 17:00:00 UTC) with significant drop-offs in activity before 7:30 AM and after 8:30 PM Iran Time. They typically target dozens to hundreds of accounts within an organization, depending on the size, and enumerate each account from dozens to thousands of times. On average, between 150 and 1,000+ unique Tor proxy IP addresses are used in attacks against each organization.”

Cybersecurity Strategy is Key

Your business should always be prepared to take a look at traffic on its network—especially if the activity is suspicious in some way, like during off-times when nobody has any reason to be accessing your infrastructure. Passwords are only one part of a cybersecurity strategy, though, and you should be implementing security solutions like multi-factor authentication whenever possible.

Thrive can help your business keep itself secure from threats of all kinds. To learn more, contact us today. 

Can you tell when it’s time to move on to another IT company? Consider the signs below, and think carefully about whether it’s the right time to make a change. Thrive can help you accurately assess the needs of your growing organization and ensure they are met.

What Happens When You Outgrow Your IT Team’s Capabilities?

In today’s economic environment, your IT team is an integral part of your organization.

They need to be going above and beyond to do more than simply fixing broken equipment and installing new hardware—they need to be there when you need them most, and they need to find new ways to apply technology to enhance efficiency and enable new organizational capabilities.

Above all, they need to help the organization grow and operate more profitably than ever before.

Regardless of whether you have an internal IT team or an outsourced IT support company, if they can no longer support your business, then you need to consider an upgrade.

The big question is: how do you know when you’ve outgrown your IT team?

The Downside Of Growth

Organizational growth is a double-edged sword. Yes, success is great; more clients, more sales, more profits. That’s the goal, after all, right?

But with growth comes growing pains. As you take on new clients, you need more staff to be able to service them. You need more resources for those staff members. You draw more greatly on the support services you use every day.

If one part of that fragile system can’t keep up with your growth, you might have to turn new clients away or risk delivering a low-quality product or service to them.

One of the key components that is most likely to fail you during a period of growth is IT. Every single part of your organization depends on available, functioning IT—as you grow, your demand on IT does as well.

5 Signs You’ve Already Outgrown Your IT Team

Here are five red flags that tell you that you’ve outpaced your IT team’s capabilities:

• Unidentified Risks: Your IT team may be capable of handling day-to-day maintenance and support just fine, but that doesn’t mean they’re handling everything IT-related. Failure to properly plan and maintain the disaster recovery and business continuity plan can put your organization at serious risk without affecting your daily work.  One primary way to tell if your emergency recovery management is being handled correctly is to determine when the last full disaster recovery fire drill was executed.  If your organization has never completed one, that’s a very bad sign.  If it has been longer than a year, the potential for the plan to fail increases significantly because of updates or missing critical data and systems that have been added since the last fire drill. A failed disaster recovery plan during a real crisis can be an existential risk to any organization. That’s why your IT team needs to obsessively manage and test your disaster recovery and business continuity plans.
• Cyber Incidents: A mishandled cybersecurity incident or the inability to report on cybersecurity incidents is a key indicator that your organization has outpaced your IT team. Even if it did not result in considerable downtime or data loss, a mishandled incident exposes a serious oversight in your cybersecurity management processes.  A lack of incidents is an even bigger indicator of risk, as the underlying security weaknesses are going unnoticed. Similarly, if you lack basic cybersecurity defenses like multi-factor authentication, that’s a clear sign you need to find a more capable IT team.
• No Automation: Is your IT team handling maintenance tasks manually? The fact is that a lot of IT maintenance work, while necessary, is tedious, repetitive, and ill-suited to manual execution. More advanced IT teams automate these tasks and provide exception alerting to ensure they are carried out in a timely and consistent manner.  If your IT team is still doing everything manually, they may not have the management capabilities your growing organization requires.
• Lack Of Digital Transformation: As an organization grows, it will gain the resources to invest in more complex and advanced systems and software.  A key example of this is the migration of IT workloads to the cloud—while there are plenty of consumer-level cloud platforms that work for small organizations, as an organization scales up, it can greatly benefit from more tailored and complicated cloud deployments. If your IT team keeps telling you the cloud isn’t right for your organization, it may be because they lack the expertise or resources to properly migrate your data to the platform you need.
• No Annual Assessment And Planning: There are many tasks that your IT team must handle on an ad-hoc basis.  Internet outages, system failures, and corrupted storage devices don’t happen on a scheduled basis. However, planning for these events and building a long-term strategy for the application of technology should not be handled on a reactive basis, especially for growing organizations.  In order to properly plan for the future of any organization’s IT, budget accurately, and stay ahead of necessary expansions and upgrades, your IT team needs to establish a comprehensive annual assessment and planning process. If your IT team is only making changes and launching projects after they become necessary, then your IT management as a whole lacks strategy. Eventually, this lack of foresight will catch up with you, resulting in downtime, lagging systems, security issues, or worse.

Is It Time For You To Move On?

Your organization needs the best IT services to thrive.  It’s really as simple as that. From productivity to security, to communication, to innovative new ways to get work done—IT is at the heart of it all.

Here are the facts: properly chosen technology combined with true expertise can achieve real results for your organization.

All that depends on finding the right support—have you settled for something less? Get in touch with the Thrive team to get the IT expertise and resources your growing organization needs.

Is your IT staff out of their depth when it comes to certain aspects of your IT environment?

That’s understandable. If you have a team of four or five people, do you really think they can be experts in support, cybersecurity, engineering, infrastructure design and maintenance, and the many other types of work included in IT?

Your internal IT team can’t do everything, but that doesn’t mean you have to hire more people. Instead, you can augment their capabilities with Thrive managed IT services.

What Is Co-Managed IT?

Co-managed IT services allow businesses and their IT teams to take advantage of the expertise and skill of a team of outsourced IT specialists when needed, and without paying expensive salaries or benefits.

Co-managed IT does not replace your internal team—it adds to it. You’ll have the people and IT support you need when technology problems crop up that no one else can resolve or handle.

Why Should You Add Thrive To Your Internal IT Team’s Capabilities?

• Human Backup: With only internal IT staff, your organization is highly vulnerable to gaps in personnel continuity. This is a particular problem for smaller IT departments as the loss of a key engineer or manager on your internal IT team will almost certainly affect your maintenance and management processes. Without comprehensive documentation of your IT environment and how it is managed, your remaining staff members won’t be able to fill in until another engineer is hired. And that’s assuming that other members of your IT team don’t leave along with the departing employee — we see this happen quite often when the outgoing employee is a senior engineer or manager. However, if you have Thrive as a part of your IT team, you’re protected against these types of gaps in your staff. No matter who leaves your internal IT team, you can rely on Thrive to maintain a complete set of documentation and keep everything running smoothly while you recruit, hire and train new staff.
• Increased Capacity:  As most IT directors will attest to, there is never any shortage of work in the IT department of a growing organization. At any given time, there are usually multiple IT projects going on that are key to the future operation and efficiency of the organization. Quite often, existing IT staff members are drafted to work on these projects as they know the most about the organization’s Line of Business applications and user base.  This can create a conflict of interest for those staff members who may also have other IT maintenance and management responsibilities and potentially create burn-out of internal IT staff.  However, if you have Thrive as a part of your IT team, our service staff can take over those maintenance and support tasks on-demand while internal IT staff members handle project work.
• Second Opinions: An external partner like Thrive provides you with an invaluable perspective of the state of your IT systems. The fact is that you don’t know what you don’t know. Your IT team may be so close to the systems and processes they oversee that they may not be able to spot a critical risk item or potential service issue. We help address this in two ways:
• • We ensure that you properly document everything in terms of your IT in order to maintain continuity, no matter what type of employee turnover there is.
  • We provide an expert second opinion on the state of your IT, helping you determine what is optimized and what isn’t. We will help you address the gaps in your management, maintenance, and continuity.

Thrive Offers Perspective, Resources, And Expertise

An internal person or team can only offer so much in terms of availability, time, and skill sets. You might have the most talented IT team in the world and they will still be limited in what they can do.

It’s not your fault and it’s not their fault; it’s just the reality of IT services in an increasingly complex and tech-dependent world—comprehensive and end-to-end internal support is extremely difficult to arrange.

The fact is that your IT team just handles your company. Thrive works with dozens of other organizations, which allows us to maintain the resources you need, which you can access with an economy of scale.

Get in touch with us to access the additional IT capabilities your internal IT team needs.

It’s no secret that people are the most important resource in any organization. No matter the industry, one thing rings true: talented, dedicated people are what makes the true difference in our bottom lines. While other IT service providers offer a standard set of hardware, software, services, and support, we believe that Thrive’s NextGen services – and how we deliver them – truly differentiate us. That’s why the entire Thrive team – not just those working in account management – focuses on delivering the superior client experience. We make it our business to drive and support your success.

We’re able to consistently put the right people in the right places to succeed because of our proven Thrive5 methodology. Thrive5 creates a meaningful IT roadmap that capitalizes upon NextGen technologies and services, focusing on our shared customer – your users. Let’s take a look at that process and what makes it unique to the Thrive experience.

The Thrive5 Methodology

Strategy

Thrive’s account management team sits down with your organization to ensure that big picture issues are identified and included as remediation points alongside IT and security issues. During this first stage of the partnership, our goal is to understand your organization, your employees, your customers, and your goals.

Current Technology Assessment

Thrive’s technicians intensely analyze systems and processes to get a baseline of your current state. Typically a hands-off process for organizational leaders, Thrive will ensure you’re kept up to date and apprised during the process.

Comprehensive Solution Design

In this phase, Thrive’s Customer Experience team acts as a technical liaison between the IT teams and managerial teams to help outline strategy implementation with your larger business model in mind.

This usually includes a discussion around a governance plan for maintaining ease of use and organization of the new software tools to be launched.

They address issues like adding multi-factor authentication (MFA), endpoint detection and response (EDR), security incident and event management (SIEM), and more to your security stack while also ensuring it is deployed in such a way that it does not hinder employees from getting their jobs done.

Implementation and Optimization

This is where strategy comes to life. Throughout implementation, Thrive’s expert team ensures your existing data is safeguarded and that employees are up to date on any new practices put in place to improve security or to make their jobs easier.

At least once per year, Thrive revisits strategy in a Technology Business Review. In that review, we conduct a gap analysis comparing current technology against best practices to ensure your organization has the appropriate infrastructure to meet your business and security needs. The Thrive team then provides a plan to prioritize and remediate any gaps in coverage.

24 x 7 Managed Services

Enhancing your security stack with firewall protection is an effective step in safeguarding your important data. The next most important process is monitoring and maintaining said firewall to close any holes and stop attacks before they happen.

A Team You Can Trust

Thrive’s expert team of information security professionals is constantly identifying and mitigating potential breaches while also bolstering the frontlines to directly stop targeted attacks at our 24x7x365 Security Operations Center. At the same time, this team is always available to ensure your technology services are seamlessly transitioned and properly supported. In addition, we deliver hard-to-find CIO and CISO-level resources to provide high-quality oversight, regulatory, and compliance guidance through our vCISO service.

Enabling You to Take the Reigns

While not every organization needs a fully managed external team of IT professionals, the Thrive Platform enables you to be as hands-on or hands-off as you want. The Thrive Platform provides tailored experiences depending on the individual roles of your employees, streamlining the day-to-day tasks of IT while enabling users with self-service tools. Custom workflows and easy-to-follow instructions make day-to-day tasks a breeze, even automating some of the most common IT help desk ticket items like password resets and new hire onboarding.

It’s Our Business to Stay on Top of Yours

Thrive’s goal is to be your go-to partner for NextGen technology services. We understand that everyone has a choice when it comes to not only the hardware and software you choose to deploy, but also who you choose to help integrate and maintain those systems across your organization.

From discovery all the way through deploying and maintaining your new IT strategy, our account management team makes it their duty to fully understand all the challenges your business faces. As new problems or new initiatives arise, your tailored NextGen strategy is adjusted to support them.

Wherever you are in your IT journey – we’re here to help.