Communication is a very important part of any kind of business. It is especially important in law practices. One of the tried and true mediums of communication has been the telephone. Although technology for phones have not increased as rapidly as computers, there have been major developments and changes for telephones that you could be missing out on.

You law practice probably is still using a standard POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) such as a landline to answer phone calls from clients. Perhaps you are using a mobile phone as well to talk to clients. This system of having to pay expensive rates of separate, dedicated phone lines can start to add up and take away from your profit margin and increase your overhead. With that in mind, we often introduce to law practices something called Hosted VoIP (Voice Over IP). This new phone technology will allow you to use your current internet network connection as your phone line as well. Instead of paying a dedicated monthly rate for your POTS or PBX system, you can add only a nominal monthly fee to your internet service fees to have Hosted VoIP set up and ready to work for you. Here are some of the benefits of Hosted VoIP:

• Reduce overhead and consolidate monthly fees
• Receive voicemails in your emails as .mp3 attachments instead of having to call a voicemail number to check voicemails
• Create custom reports to track and view your phone usage as a company all the way down to an individual level
• Have an entire system integrated across the whole country, without having to send out a technician set up your VoIP phones
• Easy to use web interface for managing call trees, extensions and devices
• Customize your system number to ring on any device you designate such as a mobile phone or a home phone if you are ever away from the office
• Access the VoIP management console from anywhere you are on a computer with internet connection

As you can see, Hosted VoIP offers the above benefits and more over the old way to manage your phone lines. So if you think these benefits are enough for you to switch over to Hosted VoIP, give BIIS Solutions a call to start reaping the rewards of a managed VoIP system!

The answer is very simple you must perform a penetration test on your IT systems in order to determine what vulnerabilities you may have. A proper penetration test will purposely attempt to penetrate your IT security by exploiting any weakness in your policies, administration and procedures.

Liability is one of many reasons why you should be concern with security. Another is data integrity, you need to know that the information you have has not been alter or modified in any way. By having proper operational management you can ensure that your corporate policies will be enforced.

What signs do you need to be aware before a catastrophic event occurs?

1. You do not have a security policy blueprint
2. Your IT setup was implemented without any documentation
3. You do not have a security awareness training for your employees
4. Your business shares passwords
5. You do not have a discretionary or role base method to organize your data
6. You do not have security logs on your server that inform you of any network activity
7. You do not have any type of firewall in place

There are obviously more signs, but the above are just a few common ones that clearly require your attention.  Think of what can happen if your data is loss or stolen. Do you have a contingency plan in place that will keep your business running in case such events occur? You should. Consider having a working site such as a hot site or even a warm site. At the very least the business should have a real time backup solution that will give you peace of mind. 

Many law practices today are starting to see the benefits of being mobile while working at the office or in the court room. They often have a laptop as well as a smartphone such as a Blackberry or iPhone to help them conduct business. However, there is a large risk being taken when using these types of devices. This article will address these issues from a very general view so that you, as an attorney, can make a decision on whether or not to use a wireless network in your office. 

So should I set up a wireless network in my law office?

From an IT Manager’s perspective, setting up a wireless network in your law office should be fine. There is enough security for wireless networks today that will keep all your data being transferred on your network to be considered safe. However, as time passes, wireless network security is continually being penetrated and broken into as hackers and intruders eventually understand and figure out how to break the security. To put it simply, wired networks are always safer than wireless networks because wired networks need to be tapped into physically whereas a wireless network can always be joined by anyone who is within the broadcast range, who has a laptop, and who is able to find the signal. That is the constant risk that is made when setting up a wireless network. If a signal is being broadcasted, there is always the potential of someone who is unauthorized to be on it to join it.

Getting back to whether or not you should set up a wireless network in your office, it comes down to some very important factors of your business which are:

• Are you constantly working inside and outside the law office?
• Do you have legitimate reasons to be mobile or is it just a luxury/convenience to be mobile?
• Do you think it’s worth the risk of having a signal broadcasted and have the potential of having your client’s data intercepted?
• Do you have enough mobile users coming in and out of your office to use the wireless network to begin with?
• Can you ensure that no one within the broadcast range will have unauthorized access to your wireless network?

If you think that you have enough reason to set up a wireless network based upon the above questions, then it just might work out for you. Otherwise, a wireless network may not work for you and may not make enough sense for your practice. If, at some point, you do decide to take that step in setting up a wireless network for your office, you know who to call: BIIS Solutions.

One of the most overlooked aspects of IT that law practices need to consider on a daily basis is whether or not they have backups of their data. There are many law practices out there that do not even have a backup plan in place just in case a disaster happens. It is often these practices who end up having to face lawsuits themselves for not sufficiently keeping backups of their data on a regular basis. 

As most law firms today continue to move towards a completely digital law practice, it is not surprising to know that data can be easily lost. Users accidentally delete data, data becomes corrupt or sometimes data just simply gets misplaced. All these scenarios can easily be addressed by having sufficient and regular backups conducted so that multiple copies of a document or spreadsheets or scans can be used in times of a disaster.

Here, at BIIS Solutions, we implement a rigorous backup initiative that is constantly monitored and tested so that if ever there is an event which causes your practice to lose data, we are able to retrieve it within a reasonable amount of time. We have backups that back up daily, weekly and monthly as well as yearly, if needed, and we are always testing the integrity of those backups to ensure that when we need to restore data, we do not run into any kind of data corruption. Also, because our backups are not stored locally in your office or even in our offices, in the event of a natural disaster, we can still restore your data from a secure, remote location. 

As simple as the concept may be, backups can make or break your business. Having a good backup plan will save the day for your business. Backups should not be overlooked or even ignored just because you have a “feeling” that nothing will happen to your computers/servers. In most cases, it’s not really a question of if it will ever happen, it’s usually when. Is your data properly backed up?