Tag Archive for: Go West IT

The Business Cost of Downtime: Planning for IT Resilience

What is the business cost of IT downtime? How do IT outages affect financial firms? What is a resilience-first IT approach?

These are all common questions we are asked here at Go West It. So, what is the true cost of IT downtime to a business? For financial firms, accounting professionals, and attorney practices, it’s more than just lost hours—it’s lost trust, delayed transactions, regulatory risk, and potential damage to reputation. When client data becomes inaccessible or communications go dark, even briefly, the impact can echo far beyond the outage itself. That’s why a resilience-first IT approach isn’t just a smart strategy—it’s a critical business imperative. By planning for disruption before it happens, firms can protect operations, preserve client confidence, and stay focused on growth instead of damage control.

IT Outages Don’t Just Interrupt—They Impact Everything

An IT outage isn’t just an inconvenience—it’s a chain reaction. For financial firms, accounting professionals, and attorney practices, even a short disruption can bring operations to a standstill, strain client relationships, and trigger costly compliance concerns. When systems go dark, so does visibility, responsiveness, and credibility. In a space where trust and timing are everything, consistent uptime is not optional—it’s foundational.

That’s why forward-thinking firms are shifting their focus to IT resilience: a proactive strategy that ensures business continuity, protects data, and keeps services running even when technology falters.

Case Study: When Minutes Turned Into Thousands

Let us share a quick story to bring home the level of impact an IT outage can have on your business. Last quarter, a Denver-based wealth advisory firm experienced a full-day outage during peak client reporting season. A failed firmware update on their firewall triggered a cascade of failures. Their internal IT support couldn’t recover the systems fast enough, and client communications stalled.

The fallout?

• Delayed reporting for dozens of high-net-worth clients

• $33,000 in emergency IT response and client retention costs

• A reputational hit that affected three potential client deals

• Team morale and productivity took weeks to rebound

It wasn’t just the actual outage that impacted this organization—it was the recovery, the distraction, and the business opportunities lost.

What an Outage Actually Looks Like

Outages are more than a few moments of screen-free frustration. In a financial services environment, they can spiral quickly:

• Internal communication grinds to a halt—no email, no CRM, no internal chat

• Files become inaccessible—advisors can’t pull up needed documentation

• Phone systems fail—calls are missed or dropped

• Scramble mode kicks in—staff shift focus from core tasks to damage control

• Tension rises—leadership juggles vendors, legal concerns, and client reassurance

By the time systems are restored, the firm isn’t just catching up—it’s cleaning up.

QUOTE: When asked about best practices for staying protected from IT outages, David Lewien of Go West It commented, Essential planning focuses not only on how to resume services but how to manage communications internally and with clients when key systems are down.  Ask, how do we communicate internally or with clients if we don’t have access to email, Teams chat, or phones?  Planning for alternative communication paths, such a private messaging apps for internal communications and pre-planned methods to send client communications from hosted CRM systems or via websites, are common approaches.”

The Turnaround: Partnering with Go West IT

After the incident, the advisory firm brought in Go West IT as its managed services partner to assess and rebuild its IT strategy. Go West IT got to work and implemented a resilience-first approach designed to keep downtime from spiraling into disaster:

• Risk-based firmware update planning with approved maintenance windows

• Business continuity and disaster recovery planning tailored to preserve communication options

• Layered cybersecurity controls to minimize single points of failure

• 24/7 monitoring to catch early signs of failure

• Cloud-based backups for critical data availability

• Quarterly system health checks and testing routines

Today, their team runs confidently knowing they’re supported by proactive infrastructure and a partner that’s always thinking ahead.

Downtime Costs More Than You Think

A momentary outage can ripple into:

• Loss of trust from clients expecting real-time visibility and uptime

• Regulatory concerns if communications or financial data are delayed

• Operational disruption as teams scramble to recover and regroup

• Business development setbacks occur when attention is pulled away from growth

IT Resilience Isn’t Luck—It’s a Plan

IT security should always be in a proactive mode to reduce the need to be reactive. Here’s how financial firms, accounting professionals, and attorney practices are preparing:

1. Mapping critical vulnerabilities across systems and workflows

2. Building redundancy and cloud-based failovers

3. Automating maintenance, especially for firmware and patching

4. Defining downtime protocols so no one scrambles in a crisis

5. Partnering with experts like Go West IT to monitor and guide the entire strategy

Don’t Wait for the Next Outage

Downtime is inevitable. Disruption doesn’t have to be. Go West IT gives financial firms, accountants, and lawyers, along with other businesses, the foundation to bounce back and bounce forward. Because real resilience is proactive, not reactive.

Talk to us today and future-proof your firm.

Why Your Business Needs a DMARC Reject Policy

Email remains a primary communication tool for businesses. However, with the rise of cyber threats such as phishing, spoofing, and email impersonation, ensuring the security of your email communications has never been more critical. One effective way to protect your business from these threats is by implementing a DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) reject policy. But what exactly is a DMARC reject policy, and why is it so valuable for your business? Let’s dive in.

What is DMARC?

DMARC is an email authentication protocol that helps protect your domain from being used in email spoofing attacks. It works by aligning two existing email authentication technologies: SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). By setting up a DMARC policy, you can instruct receiving email servers on how to handle emails that fail SPF and DKIM checks.

The Role of a DMARC Reject Policy

A DMARC policy can be set to one of three modes: none, quarantine, or reject. The reject policy is the strictest and most effective option. When you set a DMARC reject policy, you are instructing receiving email servers to outright reject any emails that fail DMARC checks. This means that fraudulent emails attempting to spoof your domain will never reach the recipient’s inbox.

Practical Value for Business Owners

  1. Enhanced Email Deliverability: By implementing a DMARC reject policy, you ensure that only legitimate emails from your domain are delivered to recipients. This reduces the chances of your emails being marked as spam or junk, thereby improving your email deliverability rates.
  2. Brand Protection: Email spoofing can severely damage your brand’s reputation. When cybercriminals send fraudulent emails pretending to be from your domain, it can lead to a loss of trust among your customers and partners. A DMARC reject policy helps protect your brand by preventing these malicious emails from reaching their targets.
  3. Customer Trust and Confidence: Customers are more likely to trust and engage with your emails when they know that your domain is protected by DMARC. This trust can lead to higher open rates, click-through rates, and overall engagement with your email campaigns.  DMARC policies are easily queried to see the status of your policy.

Cybersecurity Value

  1. Protection Against Phishing and Spoofing: Phishing attacks often rely on email spoofing to trick recipients into believing that the email is from a trusted source. By implementing a DMARC reject policy, you can significantly reduce the risk of phishing attacks targeting your domain.
  2. Compliance with Security Standards: Many industry regulations and security standards now recommend or require the use of DMARC to protect email communications. By setting a DMARC reject policy, you demonstrate your commitment to cybersecurity best practices and regulatory compliance.
  3. Actionable Insights: DMARC provides detailed reports on email authentication results, allowing you to monitor and analyze email traffic. These insights can help you identify potential security issues and proactively address them.

Conclusion

Setting a DMARC reject policy is a crucial step in safeguarding your business’s email communications. It not only enhances your email deliverability and protects your brand but also provides robust cybersecurity benefits. By taking this proactive approach, you can build customer trust, comply with industry standards, and stay ahead of cyber threats. Don’t wait until it’s too late—implement a DMARC reject policy today and secure your business’s digital future.

Go West IT now offers a service to implement a DMARC Reject Policy and monitor DMARC for new sending sources and potential spoofing attacks. Contact us to discuss protecting your business email communications.

Announcing Tom Hynek as President of Go West IT

August 1, 2022 – Go West IT is pleased to announce the promotion of Tom Hynek to the role of President. In this new role, Tom will oversee daily operations, service and product development, as well as facilitate continued collaboration and growth of the Go West IT team.

Since joining Go West IT in 2017, Tom has quickly advanced through positions with progressively more responsibility. He has demonstrated strong leadership skills, excellent character and is poised to guide Go West IT into this next phase.

“I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my first 5 years at Go West IT and I’m thankful for the opportunity to continue to watch our talented team evolve and seek out challenges in an ever-changing cybersecurity landscape,” said Hynek. “I’m proud to work with a team that truly lives and breathes our core values, while supporting and protecting our customers.”

Tom succeeds David Lewien, Go West IT’s founding President, who will shift into a new role as CEO, focusing on strategy and business development. David will remain deeply involved in stewarding Go West IT into the future.

“I am appreciative of what Tom has already done for Go West IT and excited for what he will bring as our President,”  said Lewien. “I look forward to continuing work as our CEO, shoulder to shoulder, with our leadership team to make Go West IT the very best MSP, period. This is an incredible group of people focused on empowering people, solving problems, and protecting livelihoods.”

At Go West IT, our mission is to guide customers through secure digital transformation by providing access to industry leading platforms and highly skilled technical resources. We succeed at this mission by embracing constant improvement, a willingness to tackle tough challenges, and caring about our people and customers.

With that, please join in congratulating Tom on this new role.

Go West IT’s 10 Year Anniversary

Go West IT started business ten years ago today. 

I remember the day very well. The similarities between then and now are striking. We were faced with many unknowns. We watched cashflow very closely. We innovated and adapted quickly. Most importantly, we focused on taking care of customers and employees. We knew there would be challenges and we knew we would rise to the occasion and thrive. We have and we will.

Ten years is an important benchmark. In late 2019 we began talking about how to celebrate. We are moving into new office space this July and decided to combine our anniversary celebration with an open house in our space. That was pre-COVID-19. I am embarrassed to say that we have not talked much about our anniversary internally since then and to be honest, the date caught me by surprise this week.  

We are, once again, intensely focused on our core purpose to empower people, solve problems, and protect livelihoods. Despite the worry that accompanies uncertainty, I believe we are doing some of our best work ever to improve our solutions and systems with the objective of helping our customers through secure digital transformation. It is truly energizing in the same way it was when Go West IT started ten years ago today. 

I want to express my sincere thanks to our customers, many of whom started with us on May 15, 2010. I want to thank the many friends, vendors, and trusted advisors who have helped Go West IT. I want also to express my sincere thanks to our people at Go West IT, past and present. This is simply the best team I have ever worked with, period.