Cybersecurity

Organizations can be more complex than they may seem. The Audit is required for us to fully understand an organization, then formulate a plan to implement the UCONNECT Complete service stack most effectively in your environment. There is quite a bit involved in the audit, and you get to keep the final report to do with as you wish:

• Compare us directly to our competitors
• Validate just how detailed we are
• Do your own research!
• See how the sausage is made

The audit is a very labor-intensive and involved process for us, which yields a massive amount of data to consider and sort through. Every customer is different, so performing an audit makes sure that you aren’t getting a cookie-cutter solution, but rather a tailored, white-glove experience. For customers already on UCONNECT plans and looking to upgrade, an audit is not required because we already have a good understanding of your environment. New customers or customers who have never had a UCONNECT agreement must perform the UCONNECT Audit, that way we both know for a fact that neither of us missed anything.

UCONNECT Complete is a package developed by us, Umbrella IT Solutions, to help businesses of all sizes operate securely in the ever-evolving world of cyber security. With the increasing sophistication of cyber attacks, the pressure from insurance providers and regulators to upgrade technology, Umbrella has developed UCONNECT Complete to provide businesses with the essential tools they need, no matter where they are in their journey.

Every UCONNECT plan is designed primarily with:

• A security forward approach – No compromises on security posturing, even at the most basic levels.
• Budget friendliness - each plan is designed to meet the needs of the organization at the exact price point they are ready for.
• Providing adequate coverage for all reasonable and foreseeable future management costs of IT infrastructure.
• Supporting the business in its growth, encouraging productivity, flexibility and security.
• Leading the way towards compliance and safety in the use of technology.

UCONNECT is constantly being optimized with new tools, technologies, and best practices to ensure that businesses are optimally protected from threats in cyberspace. Our plans have been designed to give you the most bang-for-your-buck to meet your business needs, and it all starts with the Umbrella IT audit.

All good MSP’s are moving in the same direction. MSP’s (or Managed IT Service Providers such as us) have become popular targets of attackers because it’s lucrative and makes sense to the bad guys – after all, an MSP is a single company who has access to many companies’ data!

When you compare apples-to-apples, you may discover that our pricing is below average compared to other MSPs for equivalent of services and tools stack. We run our company lean, without overhead for upper management or a ton of office space, so we’re able to operate with much tighter margins than most! We’ve done it this way from the very beginning and we pass the savings right down to our customers. As long as our team and our customers are safe and well taken care of, we consider ourselves successful.

You may likely find other MSPs that appear cheaper, but remember that not all services are apples to apples. The raw per month numbers only say so much about the kind of service being provided, because these variables can significantly affect cost. We encourage you to ask our competitors about their:

• Average response times to customer requests
• Hours of operation during which they’re able to fulfil requests
• Overall service stack being used and how effective it is
• Audits of their Security, Compliance and SLA metrics

We tirelessly audit and review our entire stack to make sure we’re not wasting money on services that aren't bringing desired value to our customers, as well as constantly reviewing our response times and SLA metrics for each customer.

We perform live penetration tests by bringing in professional hackers to test our products in both our own, and live customer environments to measure the response of our security stack, service tools, and engineer response. This helps us gauge the effectiveness level of our company in providing valuable IT services, making improvements and setting future goals. If you would like to see the results of this testing, Contact Us and we’ll be happy to share! If you’re into hacking, internet security, or just plain interested in how we keep your company safe, you're guaranteed to find this information interesting!

Yes! For all new customers, we offer a 6-month first-time agreement instead of the standard 1- or 3-year term so that you can truly test-drive our support capabilities, response times, and project management processes.

The shorter agreement gives us a mutual ability to trial our relationship and fully ascertain that our companies are the right fit for each other without having a long-term commitment. After the first 6 months fly by, we will propose the 1 or 3-year agreement, complete with a full budget spreadsheet to predict IT expenditures over the next six years for your company. This helps plan and scope IT costs and savings for the foreseeable future; that way, we can minimize surprises!

All UCONNECT Plans are specifically made to manage and maintain an existing environment, and provide gradual improvements in productivity and security over time.

UCONNECT Complete Plans will not cover things such as:

• Your Microsoft Licensing costs, or other existing IT operating costs
• Dedicated Hosted Services such as Terminal Servers or Virtual Networks
• Any rented or hosted hardware, physically located at our datacenters or other providers
• Project costs associated with installing, upgrading or consulting on major infrastructure overhauls

UCONNECT Complete aims to fill the gaps beyond the equipment owned or rented by the customer, plus any other services the customer would typically need IT-knowledgeable humans for, full or part-time. Such as:

• Maintaining and managing communication, collaboration and productivity platforms
• Monitoring and regular maintenance on systems
• First responders to information security alerts and monitoring network traffic and applications
• Administrative IT Department tasks, such as creating users and file shares, troubleshooting support requests, and more.
• Advanced UCONNECT packages include using us as a full vCSO (Chief Security Officer role), in the same way as a part-time accountant.

Think of us and UCONNECT as lifecycle management for existing equipment, networks, and a guiding light for the company’s direction in the information technology space. Rest assured that you will never see an unexpected bill while partnered with a UCONNECT plan, without approving a project proposal or discussing pricing with an engineer first.

The most important aspects in the UCONNECT Agreement are:

• The agreement will have a 1-year or a 3-year term. For new customers, we offer a 6-month agreement as a trial period before committing to a longer-term partnership.
• Labor requiring over 4 consecutive hours for things such as: Additional equipment installed, major upgrades to operating systems, or Line of Business applications will require a separate project proposal and will be billed separately from the UCONNECT Agreement.
• You must maintain your own Cyber-Liability Insurance policy.
• Any Onsite, Project or Emergency Onsite Labor is never included. However,

UCONNECT Complete provides a minimum of 1 hour of labor per month in each package above Basic. This is to help ensure that if we do need to go onsite in a rare case, having to approve on-site hours is less of an issue with our customers. The 1-hour block may be applied towards any project work, emergency on-site labor, or anything else not covered as per the previous paragraph. The 1 Hour block cannot be applied towards hardware purchases or replacements.

We recognize that each customer's business and situation is unique, so we will occasionally work with customers to offer flexible payment options or tailor-made plans. As long as you can provide proof of cyber liability insurance and agree to a plan that covers the costs of tools and management that your cyber liability insurance requires, we are willing to work with you. The most important thing for us is ensuring your business is secure and your assets protected.

The full Terms of Service for UCONNECT Complete will be provided when the agreement is sent for approval.