Scorpion Software Blog

HTG: Hands that Give - Business Contingency Planning that matters

I have always had a lot of respect for Arlin Sorensen from Heartland Technology Solutions. Not just because HTS is a customer, but because of his excellent work in helping other IT service companies through Heartland Technology Groups (HTG). We work with several dozen HTG members, and I have always been amazed at the quality of the partner and the professionalism they have shown to their own clients, and to my team here at Scorpion Software.

This week, I have seen a lot of interesting news about Arlin's latest vision as it relates to "Hands that Give", a program for HTG members to help them during personal or professional crisis. VarVid had a great video where they interviewed Arlin about it, which you can find below.

An example of the outcome of this work can be seen with the recent tornado that leveled Joplin, Missouri. SNC Squared apparently lost their office and through a combination of their business contingency planning and the action from Hands that Give, they were back up in no time. They proudly show at the top of their page that "We are up! Despite the disaster in Joplin, SNC² is online and all of our clients data is now available to them".

That's impressive.

It got me to thinking this afternoon. For all our HTG customers who are part of the Hands that Give program, I want you to consider as part of your business contingency planning an option to set up a new proxied user in AuthAnvil called htgadmin and point it to one of your peers in your local group who also has AuthAnvil. From there, setup a matching account on your client networks with a strong, shared password that can be released in case of an emergency. And here is where this gets interesting. If for some reason you or your peers have to execute your action plan and need help from fellow HTG members, you can enable the htgadmin account in AuthAnvil and authorize your peers access to help with client administrative and support needs. They can use their own AuthAnvil tokens to provide identity assurance on your networks, while using the htgadmin account to log into systems. When the incident is over, you can disable or delete the proxied user, locking access back down. And you can retain the audit trail if it is ever needed to cross reference with tickets in Connectwise to folow what has taken place, and where work was performed.

If you would like help setting this up, please reach out to us. Let us know which HTG group you are in and we will work to make sure you and your peers get the AuthAnvil servers setup to delegate trust between systems. And if you have no peers in your group, let us know and we will introduce you to another group that does.

Business contingency planning is important. HTG standards in setting this up are showing its business value. SNC Squared is proof of that. Since you have already invested in AuthAnvil, you should consider using it to allow your peers to get immediate and secure remote access in emergencies when Hands that Give needs to take action. And if you are not an HTG member who has AuthAnvil yet, we'd like to hear from you too. Let's talk.

Meeting Regulatory Compliance Requirements when Managing IT Systems

This month Kaseya held a webinar about looking at regulatory compliance requirements when managing IT systems, especially when using powerful RMM platforms like Kaseya. I was asked to present along with Tony Rampacek from Partech, since his company focuses a lot on having to address the high levels of PCI compliance with their solutions. As a mutual customer, Partech came to both our companies with some interesting requirements for controlling and auditing remote access, which we could do with a combination of Kaseya Live Connect and the AuthAnvil AddIn for Kaseya. The result you can see in this webinar.

Tony provides some great stats on the industry, especially as it relates to where the pain exists, and what the true attack vectors are. And then I follow up showing how to address much of that pain with the solutions you may already have in place. You should really check it out in the video below. 

How to meet Regulatory Compliance Requirements when Managing IT Systems from Kaseya on Vimeo.

If compliance is a concern for you when you are providing remote access to sensitive systems, let's talk.