Merrick Sloss, Author at Bellwether Technology

5 Ways Managed IT Services Solve Your IT Staffing Problems

Posted on May 6, 2022 by Merrick Sloss

What if your IT manager resigned today? What if two or more of your internal IT team needed time off at the same time? What if maternity/paternity leave for multiple IT staff overlapped? What if everyone in the IT department got food poisoning from the takeout meal they shared? We’re getting a little melodramatic here but the point that we’re making is that when you have a small internal IT team, you’re just one situation away from big trouble, especially in a tight job market. How can you make sure that you’re always staffed even if something happens to pull […]

How to Evaluate a Managed IT Services Company

Posted on April 25, 2022 by Merrick Sloss

As a business leader, you might be hesitant to make a change with what you’re doing with IT because you don’t have the technical background needed to compare different managed IT service companies. If your goal is to augment your internal IT team, there will certainly be some technical questions that your IT manager will want answered. However, whether you’re looking for a co-managed or fully outsourced solution, what you, as an executive, really need to determine is: As you gather the information that will answer these two questions, you’ll be able to paint a picture of what it will […]

Cybersecurity Beyond the Basics: Penetration Testing

Posted on April 19, 2022 by Merrick Sloss

When you want to know if what you’re doing to protect your organization from cyber-attack is effective, you should check your security controls with a penetration test (or pen test). A pen test simulates what a real attacker might do to get into your network and capture the credentials and privileges that would give them ultimate power to do anything they want in your IT systems. Discovering if your systems can be compromised is a good thing for you to do if you’re a business leader managing risk. However, the need for a pen test may be dictated by someone […]

Account Management with Integrity – Spotlight on Michele

Posted on April 13, 2022 by Merrick Sloss

Every day is different and holds its own challenges for Michele, and she likes it that way because it keeps her thinking and learning. As an Account Manager at Bellwether, it’s Michele’s job to be the go-to person whom clients call on when they have questions about anything at all having to do with their Bellwether IT services. She may not always have the answer right away, but she’ll find it or get them to the people who do. In her role, Michele works closely with Bellwether’s vCIO’s (Virtual Chief Information Officers) to make sure that the lines of communication […]

All-Inclusive or Partial Managed IT Services: Which Option is Best?

Posted on March 29, 2022 by Merrick Sloss

When your business runs on technology (and whose doesn’t?) you need to be confident that your IT team has the expertise and bandwidth to do everything that needs to be done. Whether you have an internal IT manager and staff, or someone “good with technology” overseeing IT, there can come a time when you’re not convinced that what they can provide is enough. This puts your organization in a precarious position because when the balls start to drop, you’re going to suffer the impact. Impacts like downtime, employee and customer frustration, loss of competitive advantage, and even cyber-attacks. The good […]

Cybersecurity Beyond the Basics: Managed Detection and Response

Posted on March 23, 2022 by Merrick Sloss

Web apps have made it easy for just about anyone to start a service business. All you have to do is buy a subscription to the software and off you go. Along with the latest software, you’ll get access to tutorials and tech support, and you can even join an online forum where you can interact and learn from others in the same business. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Yes, it’s great except this is not what it seems. This is the cyber-criminal ecosystem and the improvements that have allowed business technology to evolve so quickly are the same kind of […]

Bellwether Technology Corporation Recognized as a Top Managed IT Service Provider

Posted on March 21, 2022 by Merrick Sloss

(March 21, 2022 – New Orleans, LA) – Bellwether Technology Corporation is on CRN’s list of the Top 500 Managed IT Service Providers in the nation. This annual list identifies the leading service providers in North America whose forward-thinking approaches to managed services are changing the landscape of the IT channel, helping end-users increase efficiency and simplify IT solutions, while maximizing their return on investment. Bellwether’s consistent presence on the Top Managed Service Provider (MSP) list since 2014 is a sign of their commitment to bringing clients the highest quality of IT strategy and management. While Bellwether provides managed and […]

I Can Do That – A Spotlight on Zasha

Posted on March 14, 2022 by Merrick Sloss

Zasha, Director of Operations at Bellwether Technology, hasn’t always worked in IT. In fact, when she landed her first IT job as an assistant systems administrator for a government contractor, she didn’t have any experience in the field except for being her family’s go-to IT resource. During the course of the job interview, she didn’t know the answers to all of the technical questions that she was asked. But it turned out that how she did answer revealed a lot of about who Zasha is and not just what she knew. “I had no professional experience in IT and there […]

Cybersecurity Beyond the Basics: Network Segmentation

Posted on February 18, 2022 by Merrick Sloss

An employee gets an email that says their invoice is attached. Opening the attachment downloads a computer virus that encrypts the files on their computer in seconds. The virus spreads to other computers in the company and soon the entire network is taken down and a cyber-criminal is demanding a hefty ransom in return for the encryption key that’s required to release the data. This is what cyber experts call – a cold, dark day. It’s the day when you have a cyber-attack. While cyber-attacks like this ransomware scenario can happen quickly, these days it’s more common for the bad […]

5 Benefits of Technology Strategy

Posted on February 9, 2022 by Merrick Sloss

The starting place for technology strategy is a mindset. It’s an awareness that IT is more than just overhead, an awareness that IT is not only integral to keep business operations humming along, but that it can be used to move the business forward. While technology strategy includes the utilization of best practices to create and scale high functioning IT systems, there is no cookie cutter template that you can use to create IT strategy. Strategy sets out a path to take you from where you are today, to where you want to go tomorrow and that’s unique for every […]