We've all seen reports of businesses losing everything due to an unexpected disaster. Whether a pipe bursts and floods an entire office or a tornado strikes and leaves a building in shambles, these stories are devastating to hear about. Still, most people seeing these stories on television, or reading about them in the newspaper or online are left with the feeling of, "that could never happen to me." Well the truth is, it can.

The recent string of tornadoes in the south caused over $1 billion in damages to businesses and homes. In fact, according to an article published on Slate, at least 68 tornadoes were reported across 15 states during the week of December 21st. Meanwhile, the East Coast just received its first snowfall of the winter after a devastatingly cold and snowy 2014.

For small and mid-sized business owners, this should be alarming. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 40% of businesses do not reopen after a disaster and another 25% fail within one year. This is largely do to the high cost of downtime. After hearing this statistic, it should be clear that having a solid and reliable business continuity plan in place is imperative for any SMB.

The 2011 Business Continuity Planning in Severe Weather: Advice to Businesses on Preparing for Severe Weather lays out an extensive guide on how businesses should go about ensuring that they will be able to continue to operate in the event of a disaster.

Risk Evaluation and Control

The first thing that a business should do when evaluating its risk is to identify which portions of the business are critical and necessary to achieve objectives. Lets say a doctor's office in Maine experiences a power outage due to a large snow storm. Will they be able to access the critical patient data that is stored on their servers? If the doctor's office determines that patient data is critical and necessary to maintain business operations, the server that houses that data NEEDS to be operational in order to avoid downtime for the business.

The doctor's office should continue to do this for every aspect of the business that is needed to stay operational. Once a full list is developed, your clients should continue to the next step in the process.

Business Impact and Analysis
Once the list of critical business operations has been built out, the SMB needs to determine the potential risks to those critical operations. These risks should include things like severe weather, power outages, floods, etc. Research can be done to determine the amount of risk that the business is subject to depending on the area that it is located in. In the earlier example, the doctor's office was located in Maine. Since parts of Maine receive high average snowfall annually, that business would be at a higher risk of having to deal with a snow-related disaster than businesses in other areas. As such, that doctor's office should have a recovery plan in place.

Development of Business Continuity Strategies

For each determined risk, there needs to be an action plan. SMBs should work with their MSPs to establish a plan to stay up and running during each of the premeditated disaster scenarios. Is data being replicated off site so that it can be easily restored if a local server is damaged? MSPs can provide their clients with a Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution that will allow their businesses to stay operational and eliminate downtime in any disaster scenario.

Follow along with the remaining items in the chart here

Hope you enjoy the following post from one of our own employees, who got her start as a technician!

I started my IT career as a technician, originally working in a high volume call center-type help desk, and then later moving to a desktop support/system admin position for a local IT company closer to home. Within a few years, I found myself at a dead end with no vertical movement within the company. I was not learning anymore, as each person had a niche and refused to train anyone else on that product, which left me and my fellow technicians feeling rather bored with large gaps in our trainings. I enjoyed my job, but my growth was stagnant, and I wasn't being challenged with any new issues. Can any of you relate?

Keep reading!

What were some of your most memorable "a-ha" moments as techs?

In a recent KPMG survey of 223 healthcare executives, a full 80 percent stated that their information technology had been compromised by cyber attacks.

Let’s think about this for two seconds… 80 percent!!! Possibly, a portion of the remaining 20 percent had not yet known that they were a part of the 80 percent. After all, how many clients have you taken on only to find that their network was being compromised or had been compromised?

In healthcare especially, the question is not if providers will experience a breach or cyber attack, but rather when. How will they respond, and what will the fallout be?

Keep reading our latest blog post!

What is Thanksgiveness? It is a word I made up. This week we start a season of Thanksgiving that ends on New Year's Day. Let me share a secret to make this Thanksgiving the start of your best leadership years and the start of more opportunities for joy in your life and at work.
Thanksgiveness = Thanksgiving + Forgiveness. The reason for this new word is the two decisions are integrated. It may surprise you, but in typical servant leadership style the last comes first. Before we can experience true thankfulness we must accept forgiveness so deeply that we can forgive. This can be difficult because in many ways forgiveness is a much more complicated experience than thankfulness. It relates to our ego, wounds in life, spiritual beliefs, attitude, and habits.

Leaders who are thankful, and can express sincere gratitude to others, leave a much more powerful legacy than other managers. Yet one major hurdle for leaders is that if you truly want to experience the fullness of Thanksgiving every day, then you must comprehend the complications of forgiveness in your own life and overcome its challenges.

Here are three steps for any business owner to begin this journey.

We've all read some truly sucky sales emails in our day - one of our own rips apart a message he received the other day here - but what makes you click away? How do you use these examples of lackluster, unconvincing content to inform your own sales efforts? What are the pitfalls you try to avoid when crafting emails to prospects or attempting to upsell clients?

Good morning, all! I thought I'd share our latest blog post, straight from one of our clients...

Reactively fending off attacks is only part of the fight. Detection and prevention of attacks before they become a problem is just as (if not more so) important and vitally critical to protecting your clients’ workstations, servers and networks.

Here are some ideas to help you establish a proactive and aggressive battle plan that you can implement to better protect client security.

Keep reading!

How often are you monitoring your firewall? What trends have you noticed in your threat intelligence solution? Do you have anything to add that will help other MSPs? Sound off!

In case you didn't know, we've been creating white label quick tips you can download and share with your clients and prospects.

This month we're bringing you the 4 Ways to Increase Your Laptop Battery Life and Charge! You may know not to keep your laptop plugged in when it's fully charged, but do your clients? It's simple, but these little pointers can go along way in demonstrating your tech authority.

What questions do you constantly receive that you'd like to see in next month's installment of our series?

Do you know what annoys your prospects most about IT services providers? It’s your use of technical jargon instead of plain English. If you’ve been following our blog series about jargon, you know it can be detrimental to your marketing and client relations. In this article, we’ll give you some easy-to-implement tips on how to kick the jargon habit.

Keep reading!

What are some examples of IT jargon you've heard peers use? Have you found yourself using any?

We're making a list - hope you're checking it twice!

Before you take a break and relax for the holidays, don't leave your clients hanging like stockings on the hearth. As the New Year approaches, be proactive and use this time to reconnect with clients about their backup and disaster recovery (BDR) needs. The last thing you want while you're away is to field a frantic call from an important customer complaining that a server went down, preventing them from accessing key data. While you're at it, get a jumpstart on 2016 BDR sales by analyzing your current portfolio of clients and identifying new opportunities.

In order to help you close out Q4 and prepare for the coming year, we've compiled a checklist of BDR action items that are sure to land you on your clients' "nice" list, but we want to know what you're doing to prepare for the New Year!

Have you scheduled backup tests and revisited your DR plans with clients? Have you set goals for BDR adoption in 2016? Sound off!

Last week, I participated in CompTIA's IT Channel Management Executive Workshop, and while the two-day training was jam-packed with actionable lessons, one of the biggest eye-openers for me was that MSPs often don't understand their own finances. Here on the blog, we're always offering advice on services to add or relationships to leverage to grow your bottom line, but what does that actually mean? What goes into that metric? Revenue and profitability are two different key performance indicators (KPIs), and it's vital to know what impacts both in order to grow and scale your MSP business.

Understanding Your Income Statement
In order to understand your business's various line items, we'll look at a sample income statement:

image source: http://financetrain.com/income-statement/

Let's examine each of these in greater detail:

Sales (Revenue)
This is a figure you already understand because it represents what you make in sales. It's the amount you invoice for each of your customers.

Cost of Goods Sold - though often defined as Cost of Goods and Services for MSPs - (COGS)
COGS measures the direct expense associated with the products and services you sell. As you can see in the sample above, this number breaks down into the cost of materials, labor and overhead.

Gross Profit
Note: Gross profit and gross income are synonymous with one another. Here is the first key formula you need to know in order to think like a CFO:

Revenue - COGS = Gross Profit

That's right, gross profit represents the difference between the first two metrics above because it gauges how efficient a company is at using labor and materials. According to Investopedia's definition, gross profit "considers variable costs, that is, costs that fluctuate with the level of output."

Gross Profit Margin
While not included on the example income statement, this is another term to be knowledgeable of. To calculate your gross profit margin, simply follow this formula:

Gross Profit/Revenue = Gross Profit Margin

You always want to monitor this metric because over time, gross profit margins can decline while gross profits increase. What's the takeaway then? If for instance your gross profit were higher in 2015 compared to 2014, but your gross profit margin was lower in 2015, you know your use of raw material and labor during the production process in 2015 was not as efficient as it was in 2014.

Operating Expenses
Operating expenses cover the cost of maintaining business operations daily. These are typically fixed costs that you must pay even when no sales occur. What we often really care about when looking at operating expenses, however, is selling, general and administrative costs (SG&A). These are costs such as advertising, rent, utilities, insurance, benefits, etc.

Operating Income or Profit
Note: Operating income and operating profit are used interchangeably. To calculate this metric, we use two of the others we've already found:

Gross Profit - Operating Expenses = Operating Income

Note: You technically also deduct depreciation and amortization, but we'll keep it simple for the purpose of our example.

Investopedia defines operating income as "the amount of profit realized from a business's operations after taking out operating expenses."

Operating Margin
Similar to calculating your gross profit margin, to find operating margin, use this equation:

Operating Income/Revenue = Operating Margin*

Operating Margin measures your MSP business's operating efficiency. Following the same logic as earlier, it's not enough to only look at your operating income over time. You have to know how your margins behave in order to make adjustments.

Other Income & Expenses & Income Before Tax
Then, you'll notice in the example that we add other income and expenses (like interest) to operating income to find income before tax. From there, we apply the tax rate and deduct it from our income before tax to find net income.

Net Income
At last, we've reached the bottom line item on your income statement! Net income is an important metric because it tracks how profitable a company is over time, hence why it's also referred to as net profit.

Revenue - COGs - Operating Expenses - Interest and Taxes = Net Profit

or

Gross Profit - Operating Expenses - Interest and Taxes = Net Profit

or

Operating Income - Interest and Taxes = Net Profit

Net Margin
This is the number you want to pay close attention to, as it tells you "how much of each dollar earned by the company is translated into profits" according to Investopedia.

Note: For longer descriptions and examples of each of these line items, check out Investopedia's full dictionary of terms.

So How Can You Increase Your Net Margin? Keep reading!

Was this helpful? Would you like more financial advice content? What else do you look at when growing your margins?

Hi guys,

Random question, but are any of you in the web hosting space? If so, where do you get your industry news and what other communities are you members of? I'm really trying to get a feel for how best to reach the market with content. Thank you, and hope you all had wonderful Thanksgivings with plenty of turkey comas!

The presidential primary debate season is well underway with another Republican debate taking place tonight – and while we’re not expecting the candidates to spend too much time focusing on IT, there’s no shortage of tech issues to debate today.

In the spirit of the political season, we’ve put together our own debate around one of today’s leading IT topics – the cloud. Watch below as public, private and hybrid clouds each make their case for why they should be the go-to platform of choice and debate the merits of their respective architectures!

Stream the debate here!

Alriiiiiiight! As with any political debate, it's time to review what you just watched. Yep, we want YOU to be the talking heads by answering any of the following:

1. Who do you think won the debate, and why?

2. What new information did you learn from the cloud candidates?

3. What questions do you have that weren't answered in the debate?

4. What show would you like to see Brody Rhombus host next?

Hope you enjoyed our video!

Well hello!

Every Friday, we release an episode of IT Rewind, a short video sharing the top 2-3 headlines in IT that week.
Here's what we're serving up in today's installment...

Thousands of Java applications are currently at risk, and you'll be surprised to hear what the profile of a fraudster looks like! To hear more, just click play!
...Oh and we know Ben looks kind of creepy in that screen grab, but hopefully that doesn't deter you from watching...

Watch the episode here!

Are these kinds of programs helpful for you? What other stories stuck out to you? Thanks!

In case you’re stuck at the office today, we’ve put an IT spin on and old classic to try and bring a bit of holiday cheer to MSPs and IT professionals out there – so sit back, relax, and enjoy this cheesy tech rendition of a holiday classic...

We highly recommend you listen to Brandon's dramatic reading over a crackling fire here, but here's the poem in its entirety:

Twas the night before Sysmas, when all through the NOC

Not a data byte was stirring, not a file nor block.

The servers were stacked in the back room with care,

In hopes that an MSP soon would be there.

Technicians were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of end users danced in their heads.

And the boss in ‘PJs, and I in my cap,

Had just settled down to develop a new app.

When out of my phone there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my chair to see what was the matter.

Away to the office I flew like a flash,

And entered my password – 9 characters, one upper case, one lower, two symbols, and a backslash.

We’d been hit with CryptoWall! I was filled with woe,

And soon the hackers demanded their dough.

When, what to my wondering eyes did I see,

But a miniature keyboard and tiny PC.

With an outdated driver, and slow as can be,

I knew in a moment it was Windows XP.

More rapid than emails the viruses came,

And I frantically tried to back up the mainframe!

"Now Accounting! now, Marketing! now, Corporate and Sales!

On, IT! On, Engineering! Before the server fails!

To the top of the cloud! Overcome the sprawl!

Now back up! Back up! Back up all!"

And then, in a moment, I heard just outside

Our MSP checking whether servers had fried.

I went to the back room, was turning around,

And saw a Level 3 tech, ready to astound.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to work,

Fixed all the computers, then turned with a smirk.

And working his magic on top the keys,

Got rid of that CryptoWall virus with ease!

He sprang to his van, and gave us good guidance,

And away he flew to go help his next clients.

But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,

"Happy Sysmas to all, and to all a good-night!"*

Feel free to share around, and happy holidays from all of us at Continuum!!!

The gloves have been tapped, and two major forces are about to square off. In one corner is Apple, and in the other is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It all comes down to an iPhone that belonged to one of the San Bernardino shooters, but may turn out to have far-reaching implications for the entire tech industry. Indeed, it was a topic of discussion during last night's Republican debate!

The Situation

A court has ordered that Apple assist the FBI in opening up the iPhone, specifically through the use of a password crack. According to Wired, this would involve Apple writing code for a new tool that would be able to subvert or eliminate security controls put in place on the iOS operating system. You may think that while this is technically complicated, it shouldn’t be a problem for a non-Apple group to overcome, given appropriate time and resources—things that the FBI certainly has access to. However, iPhones only accept updates to their firmware if they are digitally signed by Apple, so in order for the FBI to have access, they need Apple to provide their digital key to sign that software. This would essentially communicate that this is an Apple-approved piece of software, an endorsement that Apple does not agree with.

Furthermore, if the FBI tries to tamper with the encrypted phone too many times, a built-in security feature will wipe all the data from the device.

The FBI Perspective

The FBI believes the encrypted data on this phone is critical in the fight against terrorism, and is a matter of national security. It has asked for narrow assistance in the matter, which it states pertains only to this iPhone. It highlights the growing propensity for technology to collect more and personal data and the growing urge for collaboration between the government and companies that collect that data. Government organizations intend to use it for the purposes of keeping the country safe.

In its case, the government is invoking the “All Writs Act,” an 18th century statute that compels private companies to assist law enforcement investigations. According to NPR, Apple has received orders to help unlock 12 other devices as well.

The Apple Perspective

Apple has refused to comply with these orders, stating a number of reasons. At the core of these arguments is the idea of the “slippery slope” in terms of cracking encrypted devices. Currently, as long as Apple refuses to compromise their encryptions, they state that personal information is essentially safe. However, if a backdoor were to be created, that compromise is out there, and Apple is wary to release that out into the world.

Apple is expected to defend its position by invoking the First Amendment of the Constitution, where it was established years ago that code is protected as free speech. This may be important in respect to the digital signature that Apple has been asked for, because this would essentially be an endorsement on behalf of Apple, and it may be construed as compelled speech.

Keep reading!

To gate or not to gate – that is the question. Gated content is an important element of inbound and digital marketing strategy, but knowing what and when to gate isn’t always obvious. In this edition of The Weekly Byte, we try and define gated content and answer these questions in fewer than 90 seconds!

The Weekly Byte is a video series that provides quick, digestible tips and best practices you can use to help your business succeed. Get in touch with us via the comments section below if you have any questions about today’s episode or have ideas for topics you’d like to see covered in the future!

In this episode, we cover:

• What is gated content?

• Why do you gate content?

• What should you ask for?

• What should you be gating

Watch now, and share your feedback below!

Hi, I'm Mary! I'm so excited to have found this community of IT professionals. I manage and write blog content and can really benefit from your years of experience and expertise. If, at any point, you think any of us at Continuum are being too self-promotional, please let us know! Our primary aim is to produce the best, most educational content. We're all thrilled to join the conversation and learn from you all!

@MattSpeller

There has never been a thread that can't be cured with breakfast food.

Nearly 22 million businesses have merchant accounts that accept credit cards and are subject to PCI Data Security Standards. Offering PCI compliance to clients and prospects that process, store or transmit credit card information is a tremendous opportunity for MSPs. Currently, 92% of attacks target small businesses with low processing volume. Small businesses are especially prime targets for data thieves because many have more lax security standards for cardholder data than larger corporations like Target and Hilton Hotels, two companies that still suffered severe data breaches!

Business fallout for security breaches is severe. If hit, your clients could incur fines, penalties, lost sales and could even face the risk of going out of business. How can you stay ahead of the curve and help them avoid a tarnished image and business-crippling costs? For one, you can offer PCI compliance risk assessments to ensure liable customers stay safe and abide by security regulations.

Keep reading!

Are you offering PCI compliance services? How has it helped you grow your book of business?

Working in IT, you have a love/hate relationship (i'll let you determine the ratio) with end users.

What are some things they do that really irk you? Let's make these as specific as possible. Instead of saying "when they're dumb and don't understand security," you could put "when they click on suspicious links from unknown email sources"

Have at it!!