Security gaps
More significant were the security flaws the customer was experiencing prior to the rollout and clean up, Atkinson said.
“From a security point of view, it was vital to get all the latest patches and antivirus updates across the organisation sorted out – it’s stuff that seems fairly basic but if it’s not done properly it can cause some problems,” he said.
From there, the next step for Netforce was to begin engaging the client in strategic decisions, having moved beyond providing a break/fix level of service.
“Now we have a solid foundation which allows us do a health check on where the organisation was, as well as give them instructions and timeframes for fixes and updates,” Atkinson said. “Once all of that was done, we were then able to start having strategic discussions around where the organisation wanted the business to grow to and what systems will cater to that.
“We needed to look at the growth plans, otherwise there was the risk of running into problems like what was present before as the organisation adds more users and fill up resources.”
The initial rollout of the solution across the organisation occurred over a half day, and was fairly pain-free, according to Atkinson.
“We didn’t run into any difficulties that weren’t anticipated,” he said. “We know that certain things take more time than others, and of course we needed to organise and schedule time after hours when we wanted to bring down servers to apply patches or bring them up to date. But nothing really jumps out to say it was a problem – it was one of the things that has shone through among everything that has happened for us – providing you do it in a controlled manner and don’t try to be a cowboy about it then it’s good.”
