Onboarding
After you've accepted our proposal for monthly IT support, we plan and schedule the onboarding project.
Info
The onboarding is a rebuild project wherein we overhaul a business computing environment to produce something that is reliable, understood, and maintainable.
We look at everything from the low level copper wiring in the walls to the high level public DNS records.
The project will involve every computer, server, router, application, printer, and wireless access point, just to name a few items. Nothing is left unconsidered.
Example
Windows computers almost never arrive in an optimal state from the major manufacturers. They ship with unnecessary third party software and insecure configurations. This can result in a significant degradation of performance compared to a pure configuration consisting solely of a security-hardened operating system and drivers.
We rebuild each operating system, including workstations and servers, from a clean slate. Why? For security and speed.
Danger
It can be impossible to detect an operating system that has been rooted1 or compromised by an attacker with full administrator rights. A clean installation is the only way to guarantee the security of a system; this secure state will persist only if followed by the removal of administrator rights.
In addition to hardened security, another benefit to this process is a noticeable performance improvement. Your computers will be faster.
the great physicist Richard Feynman said
What I cannot create, I do not understand.
As we build a clean new IT environment, we discover every facet of your technology and business processes. We document everything as we proceed, creating a comprehensive knowledgebase. This is the primary differentiator between Bitstream and our competitors. This process requires an incredible amount of effort, but pays dividends for years.
Example
Below is a real world example of a Bitstream rebuild project. Here you see the conditions of a server room MDF before and after onboarding. Which one looks like your server room?
| Before | After |
|---|---|
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We take great care to structure the project so as not to interrupt business operations.
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"Rootkit". Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 July 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit. ↩