As a west suburban business owner, the operations of your organization may keep you up at night, but the fear of a cyber attack should never be a recurring nightmare.
Would you believe such a serene solution is in Chicago’s backyard? In the city of DeKalb, an Operation Desert Storm veteran and the city’s elected mayor runs a B2B IT firm that makes the fear of cyber attack disappear.
The solution is as unique as the company’s name — Sundog IT.
A sundog is the appearance of multiple suns in the sky, a phenomenon that happens when sunlight passes through ice crystals in the atmosphere. That’s what Sundog IT Owner and President Cohen Barnes saw during one of his regular runs in the blistering Illinois winter air — and what sparked inspiration for the organization’s name.
Barnes also happens to be the mayor of DeKalb. And the traits that make him a good leader — drive, dedication and decisiveness — extend to his determination to fend off cyber thieves.
Businesses that hire Sundog IT are assigned their own technical adviser, ensured certified engineers, and sign no long-term contracts.
The company’s secret weapon is its membership in invitation-only cybersecurity groups that get to see, test and use the latest antivirus software and other tools that IT leaders like Microsoft and Dell roll out.
“We get to work first-hand with amazing vendors — including household names plus emerging ones,” Barnes says.
As Barnes described this level of expertise during an Illinois Manufacturers’ Association’s webinar: Sundog can enable manufacturers to run their operations more efficiently by leveraging specific capabilities of Microsoft products to increase productivity.
“We see the changes coming down the road in the next one to three years,” Barnes says. “It helps us make strategic investments in tools that will protect our clients and stay ahead of the ever-evolving cyber criminals’ methods.”
Sundog’s experience and exclusive insights allow it to offer a layered security model. That means no single vendor offers an all-encompassing solution.
Instead, Sundog implements several independent vendors’ solutions to do what they do best, and the company trains its clients to be the first line of defense for their organization. Clients are trained to recognize and respond to cyber threats, using strong and unique passwords for company accounts to prevent a data breach, which IBM Research shows can cost a business, on average, $4.24 million.
“Imagine an experienced mechanic who can immediately notice a million things when he opens the hood of your car,” Barnes says. “That’s how we look at your business when you have us come in to evaluate your existing IT network.”
“We look at the firewall, the spam filter, email security, basic network security, the age of the equipment, patches and updates, anti-virus software and other details,” he says. “We usually find many things are implemented poorly, incorrectly or only minimally.”
Many IT companies aren’t keeping pace, which can leave clients vulnerable. Don’t let your business get caught off guard. For a phenomenal IT experience, let Sundog assess your organization’s unique needs and hard-to-spot vulnerabilities.