How many times have you read about XYZ company leaving thousands of sensitive accounts open and available to some kid in the 7th grade who finds them with a computer in his school's library who is 3,000 miles away?

If you are the owner, office administrator or the manager of the data systems in your organization you NEED to know what is going on at all levels of your business. Do you really want Tom surfing the internet half of the day looking for new golf clubs while he is pretending to be working? Does he really need access to the internet? Does he need access to your sensitive files? What if Tom accidentally picks up a Trojan virus program while surfing the web that secretly infects all of the other machines in your office? You need to limit access to computer resources on a need to know basis.

Thatch Computer Consulting can install and maintain an office networking system you can trust implicitly. You can limit the levels of access to individual employees and monitor their activities. Not as a purely voyeuristic whim, but as a valid and necessary reason to protect and preserve your companies sensitive, personally identifiable files and data.

Without even realizing your system was compromised Tom could have left the floodgate open for some hackers or corporate raiders to gain access to your entire mailing lists or even worse more sensitive data such as credit files, card numbers, names and addresses.

You can be liable for a hefty lawsuit if you don't take reasonable and prudent levels of precaution to protect your personally identifiable data from theft. Yes, you could probably hire a $250,000 Philadelphia lawyer to get you out of hot water and be in and out of court for the next year, but the bad publicity generated would be far worse. If a computer networking or security professional came and reviewed your office's computer system for leakage would he say you were using reasonable levels of protection? If you are not sure, then as they say; "Houston, we have a problem."

How about the employee who is secretly downloading song's while he is working and has installed a file sharing program on his PC that allows anyone in the world to access his hard drive files with a few stealth manipulations? Do you have employees that use chat programs while they are working like ICQ or Yahoo Messenger? Do you know that those programs have file sharing transfer programs? A disgruntled employee could be transferring your sensitive information or corporate strategies to anyone. You need to have a standard hierarchy of need plan that you can say in black and white who gets to do what in your organization. Just issuing an interoffice memo won't keep it from happening. You need to keep it from happening with a controlled networking environment with access levels of user permissions.

Let's not even think about unscrupulous employees that can install secret portals or "Backdoors" for their own job security. With these cracks in your system they can wreak havoc if they get fired by accessing your system without you even suspecting it from the local library and make your business come to a grinding halt. No one will be the wiser and you may even be in a terrible bind and wind up calling the employee you recently fired to come and fix the problems he created. That is a very standard thing for unethical people to do who have some advanced computer knowledge.

Now comes a very tough subject to address. We almost hate to even suggest it. But, it needs addressing. This doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen and the tell-tale signs are easy to read. What about the employee who purposefully causes a problem in order to justify his job? Nobody is any wiser. All you know is that your computing system or network is down. Everyone runs to Bob and tells him that system is down. Bob spends 30 minutes, fixes the problem he created and winds up looking like a hero. Does your system go on the fritz more than you think it should? That is the tell-tale sign. A properly installed networking system NEVER goes bad after it has been set up and tested. The reliability factor on today's networking systems is 99.9% and if something goes wrong in virtually all cases someone has messed with the settings.

Have Thatch build you a locked-down tight system which limits access to only those individuals with a need, or right to know certain things. He can tighten up your security, make all your machines work together at the proper access levels to get your business' work done more efficiently and with exacting precision.

Take the time to give him a call and discuss your networking needs.