Protection
Every IT company says they are proactive. What does it actually mean?
Work that gets done while nothing is wrong, funded on an argument rather than an emergency. In 2019 we replaced open remote access with VPNs across our client base because we did not like the exposure. A year later every client had to send staff home.
Answered by Nate Weigel, Protection Director
The word is meaningless on its own
Everybody's proposal says proactive. The only way to judge it is to ask for an example: something you did for clients before anything went wrong, that nobody asked you for, that cost you money at the time.
Ours
Through 2019 we worked across our client base replacing remote desktop exposed directly to the internet with proper VPN access, and closing the ports behind it. Nothing had happened. No client had asked. We simply did not like the door being open, because that exposure is one of the most common ways a small business gets encrypted.
The unglamorous part was the vendors. Every client has software suppliers who reach in to support their own systems, and each one had to be moved and verified. Skipping that is how these projects quietly fail.
Then 2020 arrived, and our clients had to send people home, some within a day. The secure remote access was already built, deployed and tested. The scramble was about laptops and home internet rather than about standing up remote access for a whole company over a weekend.
What it looks like today
Reaching out to clients who may fall under health information rules to ask whether they do, and who their compliance officer is, before an audit asks them. Writing AI usage policies before somebody pastes client data into a consumer chatbot. Neither is urgent this week. Both are much cheaper this week than later.
How we choose
The engineering team watches what is actually being exploited rather than what is being marketed, works out which clients are exposed, and what it would take to close it. Then somebody has to make the argument for spending money on a problem nobody has yet.
Where we did this
Order the internet circuit the week the lease is signed. Carriers take six to twelve weeks. Nothing else on a move fails as often.
The relocation checklist Did you knowA backup that has never been restored is a hope, not a plan. Ask for the date of the last tested restore.
What to actually testPeople also ask
How warm is too warm for our server room?
Equipment is designed for roughly 18 to 27 degrees Celsius, 64 to 81 Fahrenheit, measured at the front where it draws air in. The number that matters is not the one on a Tuesday afternoon; it is the one at 2am on a Sunday.
The full answerWhere should our server actually live?
In a space with airflow, stable power, no water above it and a door that locks. Heat is the most common environmental killer of business equipment, and the room that is fine in March is a different room in July.
The full answerWhat is a server room reorganization, and is it worth paying for?
It is making the room possible to reason about: inventory, cable management, labelling at both ends, documentation, power and airflow. It turns a two-hour outage into a twenty-minute one, and it is far cheaper scheduled than done in an emergency.
The full answer
"Another great job by Midwest IT. Our company just loves your fast response to our issues."
Client, 2024 surveyMore from the survey wall- A technician who knows your setup takes every request. Not a dispatcher, not a queue.
- Every closed ticket is surveyed and a partner reads every response.
- 99.5% of surveys come back positive.
- Family-owned since 2005. 21 years in the same corner of Wisconsin, not going anywhere.
"Another great job by Midwest IT. Our company just loves your fast response to our issues."
Client, 2024 surveyWhen did anyone last check what is exposed?
A protection assessment lists what is reachable from outside your building. Most owners have never seen it.
Talk to a partnerTalk to a partner, not a sales script.
Tell us what is going on. A partner will call you back the same business day, look at what you have, and tell you honestly whether we are the right fit. No pricing pressure, no pitch deck.