Author Archives: Megan Carnes

Welcome back to another installment of our “Thrive Spotlight” blog series.

Our featured Thrive Employee is Patrick Ramsdell, vCISO and Cybersecurity Consultant at Thrive.

Patrick is primarily focused on acting as a trusted advisor to help his clients navigate the complexities of cybersecurity, compliance, technology and how they all fit together.

Patrick lives in Peabody, Massachusetts, which is about 20 minutes north of Boston (when there’s no traffic). He loves to travel and spend time with his family, including his two small boys who keep him very busy in Maine, Vermont and Costa Rica.

Hi Patrick! Can you tell us about your background and how you came to Thrive?

I worked at Tier1Net for almost exactly seven years before we were acquired by Thrive. I started on the helpdesk, got my chops as the onsite engineer for several years, and then started on strategic reviews of our clients’ networks and infrastructures. I’ve recently moved to Thrive’s vCISO team, where I have the opportunity to help our client’s meet their cybersecurity and compliance goals.

Where did you go to school or get training?

I actually didn’t go to school for IT. However, I worked on my high school’s ‘tech team’ and university’s IT help desk, and of course my time at the previous MSP. I’ll tell anyone coming up through the ranks: there is no better way to learn than being on a helpdesk and onsite with clients – the experience of having to think quickly is invaluable as your career grows. I received my CISSP certification in 2020 and am working towards my CISM.

What do you most enjoy about working for Thrive?

Coming from a smaller MSP, I really enjoy being able to introduce truly enterprise-grade solutions to my clients. With so many of them focused on cybersecurity and compliance, having solutions of such a high caliber is very valuable to them.

Any recent exciting projects at Thrive that you can tell us about?

I am currently in the process of helping a client with a limited Cybersecurity platform work towards compliance in their industry. I really enjoy being able to help them understand that Cybersecurity can be attainable with the right focus, some hard work and a clear goal.

Are you interested in learning more about Thrive? Click here!

And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn for the latest news, and continue checking our blog for more in our “Thrive Employee Spotlight” series. Until next time…

As one of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. named by Inc. 5000, we are thrilled to receive another award that highlights Thrive’s commitment to our workplace culture.

The Herald-Tribune recognized Thrive as one of the 2022 Top Workplaces. The award celebrates employers that are retaining and attracting talent amid COVID-19-related workplace challenges.

While Thrive is experiencing record-breaking growth via acquisitions, we’ve done so with an unwavering focus to prioritize our team and work culture. Thrive’s employee headcount has grown 200% since 2001 with more than 1,000 employees around the world.

Our success in becoming the leading technology provider delivering end-to-end managed services and unmatched expertise to drive secure digital transformation is a result of our collaborative team environment and dedicated employees.

Thrive places a strong value on employee work-life balance and offers comprehensive benefits, including a 401k plan and a full selection of health insurance plans to choose from, as well as paid holiday and vacation time.

We also strive to strengthen our work culture by hosting company outings and team-building activities to encourage office camaraderie.

The heart of the Top Workplaces program is the employee survey results which are used to determine which employers make the Top Workplaces list.

Please click here to see all the 2022 Herald-Tribune Top Workplaces winners.

We’re also hiring! Click here to view our open positions and apply today.

“While we are drastically growing, we continue to prioritize our team and work culture,” Augustine said. “We offer comprehensive benefits, including a 401k plan and a full selection of health insurance plans to choose from, as well as paid holidays and vacations.”

“Stopping suspicious payment activity is critical, but so is simply teaching people how to identify a phishing message — especially at smaller banks with fewer cybersecurity capabilities”, Chip Gibbons, chief information security officer at IT solutions company Thrive, told BAN.

For the sixth consecutive year, Thrive has earned a spot in the latest Inc. Magazine rankings of the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. Thrive ranked No. 2,474 on the 2022 Inc. 5000 with an impressive 234% growth since 2021.

The list represents a unique look at the most successful private companies with significant revenue growth from 2018 to 2021. The companies on the 2022 Inc. 5000 represent a new group of fast-growing private businesses that have demonstrated success amid COVID-19-related challenges. Companies such as Facebook, Chobani, Under Armour, Microsoft, and many other well-known brands gained their first national exposure as honorees on the Inc. 5000.

Thrive’s inclusion on the Inc. 5000 list comes at a significant time of growth for our company. Thrive’s employee headcount has grown 200% since January 2001 with more than 1,000 employees around the world. Through acquisitions and internal growth, Thrive has cemented its global position as a leading technology provider delivering end-to-end managed services and unmatched expertise to drive secure digital transformation.

To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2018. Other requirements include being based in the United States and having a minimum revenue of $100,000 in 2018 and $2 million in 2021.

Here’s a look at Thrive’s climb on the Inc. 5000 list over the years:

• 2017 – No. 3,413
• 2018 – No. 3,248
• 2019 – No. 1,222
• 2020 – No. 2,764
• 2021 – No. 3,037
• 2022 – No. 2,474

Congratulations to all those recognized! The complete Inc. 5000 list is now available here.

Your business’ technology is critical to its productivity, but unfortunately, this technology can (and at some point, likely will) break. So, what do you do when it does?

Let’s go over some of the options that you must consider.

Businesses Have Three Options for their IT Support

A business in need of maintenance and support services for its information technology systems can approach this need in three different ways:

An In-House Team

If your business has a team member or a department that works on the technology that your operations rely on, you rely on in-house IT resources.

A Break/Fix Provider

These IT companies are those that are called upon to resolve existing IT issues and repair needs.

A Managed Service Provider

These IT companies work with businesses on an ongoing basis to assist them with their IT, proactively dealing with potential issues rather than waiting for them to arise.

In terms of these options, a business that utilizes an in-house team isn’t restricted to using just those resources, either. Many businesses supplement their internal resources by outsourcing some of their IT responsibilities to one of the other options. Otherwise, outsourcing all of the IT needs that a business has is a common tactic for businesses (particularly those too small to dedicate an employee to their technology maintenance).

However, the options for outsourcing aren’t exactly equal. There are a variety of reasons that working with a managed service provider (MSP for short) is the better call. Now, are we biased in saying that? Slightly—but that doesn’t mean we’re wrong.

Why Working with an MSP is the Better Business Decision for Your Technology

Let’s run through the scenarios surrounding break/fix IT services and the experience to be had working with an MSP when a critical piece of business technology goes on the fritz.

Business A relies on a break/fix provider for its IT needs. One day, a few of the business’ workstations suddenly can’t connect to the server, leaving many of Business A’s employees stranded. To solve the problem, Business A reaches out to its provider. Unfortunately, their IT provider isn’t able to send someone out to their location for a few hours—or potentially, days—and when the technician does arrive, it takes a few additional hours to diagnose and correct the issue. Meanwhile, money goes out the door every hour Business A’s IT is unavailable, both in terms of lost productivity and in payroll. Business A is then on the hook for the repair costs which, depending on how long the issue takes to resolve, could be quite substantial.

Business B, on the other hand, relies on an MSP like Thrive for assistance with its technology, paying each month for services scaled to its needs. By utilizing modern remote monitoring and maintenance tools, the MSP is able to remotely keep an eye on Business B’s infrastructure. As a result, issues are caught early or are mitigated proactively through these remote capabilities, before they create the expenses that accompany downtime. Business B can therefore keep their IT in line while still maintaining their budget while helping to ensure their profitability.

Which would you rather be, Business A or B?

Working with us can help ensure that you’re more like the latter. Find out more about our services by contacting us today.

Cloud technology has changed the way we do business, and it has provided countless opportunities for companies to achieve their wildest dreams. Granted, different businesses will use the cloud in different ways, but one fact remains the same: it makes financial sense to implement the cloud, no matter what type of business you are. Let’s go over some of the benefits.

Money Isn’t All the Same

When it comes to breaking down your business’ finances, there is more than one way to categorize them. Here is how you might typically look at investments for your company:

• Capital expenditures: A capital expenditure is one that is typically quite high, and it is usually a one-time investment that can be used for many years to come. That said, it’s not really planned or budgeted for (although it should be).
• Fixed-expense expenditures: These are predictable expenses for something which expires in the short term. For example, you might pay for advertisements or Software as a Service. The price will be independent of your sales, and the intent is usually to result in a sale down the line.
• Costs of goods sold (COGS) expenditures: These expenses are directed proportionally to the revenue your business generates; the higher your COGS, the more money you are bringing in. This assumes that the ratios between COGS and revenue are low.

How These Expenses Relate to the Cloud

If we assume that you need a new data center, you might look at options for building one on-premises. While doing so might incur large sums of capital expenditures, it’s a one-time expense for its construction and maintenance, along with the costs associated with its upkeep. On the other hand, if you were to outsource management of a cloud solution to a managed service provider, it would be a fixed-expense model, as you are paying for a monthly fee that can be terminated or adjusted at any time as you see fit. Basically, you have to look at it in terms of what your organization wants and needs, particularly if you think flexibility and scalability will play into your cloud solution in the future.

Thrive can help your organization make these tough calls regarding the cloud. To learn more about what we can do for your business, contact us today.

“Banks and banking customers are high-value targets for hackers,” said Chip Gibbons, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Thrive Network. Gibbons shared tips for CISOs and security leaders in the financial sector who are combatting phishing attacks and business email compromise.

In business, you need to be ready for anything, including potential disaster scenarios. Therefore, it stands to reason that you have a solid disaster recovery plan in place to help you address them should the need arise. We’ve outlined three disaster recovery best practices you should consider for your business continuity strategy, as well as some tips to help you implement them seamlessly into your own operations.

Figure Out What All Potential Threats Look Like

The first step toward figuring out your business’ continuity plan is to consider the types of disasters you will be facing. This means that you need to perform an analysis of all the potential threats your organization could face, no matter how unlikely they might seem. Granted, you should lend more credence to the most likely of disasters, but you can’t rule anything out. Otherwise, you could be ignoring a glaring hole in your plan.

Basically, we’re not telling you to plan for when an asteroid levels your office, but we are telling you to have a strategy in place to account for physical damage or power loss to your office. Your business continuity plan should be specific enough to address the most likely issues you’ll face, but flexible enough to account for other less likely incidents, too.

Determine Your Business’ Benchmarks

No matter the disaster, your organization will have critical data and systems that need to be recovered. It’s up to you to determine what they are and how you will prioritize them. This will help you when it comes to responding to these disasters.

What it boils down to is knowing your various systems’ maximum tolerable downtime, or MTD. This is how long a system can remain down before permanent damage is done to your business. Knowing this number gives you more flexibility and room for making important decisions in the event of a disaster. Your MTD can also help to inform your RTO and RPO, or your recovery time objective and recovery point objective, respectively. These metrics help you better prepare for a disaster by establishing how often a backup should be taken and how long it will take for you to restore said backup.

Test, Revise, and Test Your Plan Again

Your disaster recovery solution will only be successful if you have multiple people working in tandem to ensure that it happens regularly and effectively. Otherwise, if the disaster renders that one person responsible for the strategy unavailable, you’ll be left in dire straits. On the other side of things, the more people involved means more can get done, and the work is easier to achieve.

This is why it helps to have a hierarchy of people responsible for various parts of your plan; if one key person is unable to pull off the full plan, then at least certain other aspects of your continuity strategy will go off without a hitch. Furthermore, these processes should be written out to make them as accessible and easy-to-follow as possible.

After you have your continuity plan mapped out, you should routinely test it to make sure that it works properly. This will help you in the event you actually need to use it, as you can be confident that the plan works as it should. It will also help you determine where weaknesses in your strategy lie.

Nobody Likes to Think About Business Disasters, But They Need to Be Anticipated

At Thrive, we have plenty of recommendations to provide for your business’ continuity plan, so be sure to contact us for more information and tips!

Managing business technology is a challenge that many small businesses have difficulty overcoming, and this is largely in part due to the fact that managing technology is not the focus of these small businesses. The inability to overcome IT challenges can hold businesses back that otherwise would flourish. Let’s discuss some of the biggest issues that companies have for IT and how they could potentially be addressed.

Digital Transformation is Here to Stay

The pandemic forced the hands of businesses all over the world, forcing them to adopt new technology solutions in response to the rapidly changing global situation. There are no signs which indicate that this digital transformation is slowing down, as businesses are more focused than ever on optimizing their processes with what was previously seen as a taboo working environment, i.e. remote technology.

Cybersecurity is More Important Than Ever

You can’t go on the Internet or turn on the news without seeing a new devastating cyberattack against a major business or government entity. A 2022 study from Evanta found that cybersecurity is the number one priority for CIOs, and considering the number of remote and hybrid workers out there, we’re not surprised.

Taking Full Advantage of the Cloud

The cloud is the second largest growing spending category for businesses, at least according to the Evanta study; 54 percent of businesses are investing in cloud solutions. Businesses want the freedom and agility that comes with cloud infrastructure, making it one of the highest priorities and biggest challenges facing organizations today.

Supply Chain Problems Linger

Hardware and other technical components are harder than ever to get, particularly because of disrupted supply chains as a result of the pandemic and conflict between Russia and Ukraine. We like to recommend that businesses plan ahead with their technology acquisition by planning out a hardware refresh cycle and IT roadmap.

Talent Acquisition is Difficult

Paying to hire in-house IT workers can be expensive, especially if you want IT workers who know what they are doing and have the skills required to keep your business technology running. Unfortunately, many small businesses don’t have the resources to pay top dollar for IT talent.

Managed Services Can Solve a Lot of These Issues

The closest thing you can get to a silver bullet for all your technology problems is to work with a provider like Thrive. Our trusted technicians have the know-how to help your organization overcome any technology-related obstacle, from technology acquisition to management to maintenance and beyond. To learn more about what we can do for your business, contact us today.