Words From Paul: December Edition

Beware the Network Scan!

I want to use this edition of Words from Paul to shine some light on one of our industry’s dirtiest sales tactics, the “Network Scan.” And I need to apologize at the start for all of the “quotes” but they are terms used by the “marketing consultants” in our industry and I want to make sure you know them when or if you hear them.

This is done when an IT firm offers to perform a network scan on your network as part of their “sales process.” It involves running some software on your network, against your network connection, and on your Office 365 accounts. The goal during the sales process is to “identify areas where your current IT provider may be dropping the ball” or leaving you “vulnerable to hackers.” While this seems to be useful and even a good business decision, it gets really ugly when you look behind the scenes.

I was at an industry conference, listening to one of these “marketing consultants” and he was advising everyone to “always lead with the network scan” with the goal of “showing the prospect lots of red areas” because “that will scare the shit out of them, and they’ll buy.” Interestingly enough he went on to say “we’ll all agree that if we scan our client networks, we’ll have red items also, but that’s not the point.”

Maybe you have a program that requires your users to be local administrators on their PCs for it to work, but yes, that’s a “red.” Maybe you have a $50,000 piece of equipment that only runs with a Windows 7 PC, yep, that’s another “red.” And maybe the “missing updates” on your server is because it needs rebooted and we prefer to do that in person so we can make sure everything comes back up OK, but that’s another “red.”

Now you see the point. Here’s an outsider that knows nothing about your network, or even your business using FEAR to SCARE you into buying from them. So, why do they do it? Because it’s easy, robotic, and repeatable. An “expert” is telling them to do it and that it’s the easy route to sales. And because they can’t articulate the value of their services over your current provider.

So, now that you’ve seen the dirt. Where and when do they fit in? We occasionally use them as part of our new client onboarding process. Not to point out how the prior IT firm was doing things “wrong” but to help us quickly compare where you are with our best practices. We’ll do this behind the scenes and won’t cast any blame on the prior firm. We all do things differently and maybe how they’re doing things really makes sense for your business or organization. We also use them from time to time to make sure things still align with our best practices.

If you’re a client of ours and want a health check on your network or have questions about your security and what you should be doing, reach out. Our team would love to talk with you about it.

Not a client and still have questions? Want to hear why we are REALLY BETTER than your current IT firm? We’re happy to chat about that without having to resort to scare tactics.

Here’s to a HAPPY, SAFE, and CYBER-SAFE New Year to all of you.