What IT support does your startup need to stay productive and secure from the kitchen table to Series A, Series B, and beyond?
So glad you asked.
IT support for startups is probably not something you’ll consider during seed state–your head will be too full of pitching That Clever Thing You Do. But it might raise its ugly head at Series A, because you’ll be way too chunky for the CTO to keep doing the IT, even though she’s already working 26.7 hours a day. And IT support will be an “Oh crap, we need it, like, now” moment during Series B, when you’re scaling so fast you just realized all those thrift-store-pants-and-Smiths-t-shirt people you sneered at in the elevator are actually your new colleagues.
Sometimes scaling is more important than profitability. Each growth milestone has its own IT challenges. And that means different stages need different levels and types of IT support. But wherever you are on the startup trail, you’ll get all up in some productivity and security challenges that’ll benefit from some flavor of IT support.
IT Support for Startups: What to Do?!?
First, don’t panic. Here is the scoop.
Sort Out Mobile Device Management (MDM) Super-Pronto
Whether you have a fleet of two or two thousand devices, MDM is the enabler for a ton of operational, security, compliance, and productivity needs that will scale up with you. It gives you, your knackered IT person, or your outsourced IT team (pick us! pick us!) a way of managing the interesting stuff and automating the boring stuff–all from a single pane of glass.
Managed MDM is probably the most comprehensive IT support that gives you the most whoop for your dollar. With it, you’ll be able to:
- Onboard and offboard quickly and securely, which is handy if your team is growing like slime in a petri dish or you want to remain bendy and agile.
- Stay on top of your IT asset inventory: keeping software and licenses updated, keeping track of devices, and creating a firm foundation for compliance officer nirvana.
- Create standardized operating procedures for your fleet. Not the most exciting of sentences, but, holy cowchips, standardization is a doozer of a thing.
Choose Your Security Priorities
This isn’t just for start-ups. Every organization should be protecting its data and that of its clients, as well as securing its business ops. It should also be kicking back against the unholy and overbreeding plague of malware and phishing attacks. MDM and Cloud Single Sign On will help a lot with this, but any decent outsourced IT support outfit will help you with:
- Patch management: Keeping operating systems updated at the right time. It’s important not to schedule non-critical updates when you’re about to press the “Launch our product!” button.
- Managed antivirus protection: Keeping antivirus software licensed and updated.
- Fleet encryption: Locking down your fleet when disaster pops up.
- Enforcing compliance with company policies for BYOB devices.
- Automatic offsite backups.
- Content filtering and reporting, customized for team roles.
- Securing file sharing on a need-to-know basis.
- Email security: You’re looking at the delights of URL and DNS filtering, web threat detection, and threat sandboxing.
All done for you. Probably before breakfast.
Use Compliance-as-a-Service
If you’re planning to grab a tasty contract with someone like Google or work with government departments, you’ll need to demonstrate compliance before you even qualify. The flavor of compliance depends on your sector or market, but you’ll be looking at jumping over the custard of regulatory or voluntary frameworks such as SOC 2, HIPAA, SEC, and PCI-DISS.
Unless you’re actually a security start-up, you probably won’t have the time or expertise to prod your IT infrastructure and topology to find where the holes are–unless you’ve already been breached, and then you’ll know about it.
This is where you’ll call in a specialist auditor to identify those holes, and a hole-fixer to go through your infrastructure and topology to bring you up to compliance standards and keep you there.
Note 1: Conflict of interest has no place in the betterment of society, so the auditor and hole-fixer should not be from the same organization.
Note 2: We fix holes. Yes, this is a shameful plug, but it is a hole-free one.
Get Strategic
When you’re up to your armpits in operations, it’s difficult to see the big picture for IT. But, it’s important to make sure that your IT strategy (wait, you got one, right?) aligns with your business objectives. Are you scanning that horizon for problems or opportunities? Do you spend time stroking your imaginary beard, musing whether your IT can support new business initiatives?
Periodic, strategic IT support can help you create, schedule, and execute IT projects that give your start-up the beautiful wings it deserves.
Have Someone on the End of a Phone
If you don’t have in-house expertise, the next best thing is an IT helpdesk or expert on-call to help you with IT blips and prevent panic attacks from all the weird stuff you don’t understand. It’s always good to find a help desk that actually answers the phone or emails you back within 30 minutes. Shouting into the void is so last year.
Ignition Provides IT Support for Startups
Ignition lives and breathes IT support for startups. It is what we love to do. Also, we’re very good at it. If you’d like to find out how we can help your awesome startup become even more awesome, give us a call. We always pick up. Always.
Ignition is Silicon Valley’s best (and friendliest) IT security, compliance, and support team. Contact us today–chatting about IT support and cybersecurity is our favorite thing to do!