FAQ’s

No. In fact we can guarantee that at some point, at least some part of your IT system will break. Multi-million dollar IT budgets in multinational companies and governments, have system issues from time to time. Mercury IT’s strength is our commitment to our customers and we will work tirelessly to get our customers back working. Customers with Managed Service Agreements are given priority to resolve issues, whereas customers on Ad Hoc arrangements are resolved on a ‘best efforts’ basis. We do however do everything we can to get all of our customers back working as soon as possible.

A Managed Service Provider is an IT company that provides services to business customers. Services include: support, consulting, cyber security, project services, advice and guidance. They become the business customer’s trusted IT partner utilising skilled staff to provide cost effective and scalable services.

The most effective engagement model is provided through an on-going monthly support agreement. This is called a Managed Service Agreement. Managed Service Agreements are tailored to the client’s specific needs including requirements for out of hours, on-site support or to augment existing IT staff.

Cyber Security is quite topical for a number of reasons: increased cyber-criminal activity, increased monetisation of stolen data, increased focus on protecting data by governments (such as the Notifiable Data Breach Scheme in Australia and the GPDR in Europe) and large corporations (such as Facebook). Cyber Security is squarely in the spotlight and for good reason, protecting our business and personal information is more important than ever as the consequences for failure are continuing to grow exponentially. Recent studies have shown that 60% of small businesses and 30% of large business never recover from a significant data breach event.

The Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Act 2017, also known as Notifiable Data Breach (NDB) legislation is an amendment to the Privacy Act 1988 that came into effect on February 22, 2018. The legislation is regulated by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

The NDB scheme requires organisations covered by the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act) to notify any individuals likely to be at risk of serious harm by a data breach.

• It affects a significant number of businesses including all those who have turned over $3million in revenue since 2001, it captures a number of other businesses regardless of turnover based on a number of different criteria
• Data breaches that cause serious harm to individuals are reportable
• In the event of non-compliance, the Office of the Information Commissioner (OAIC) can:
  • Apply for civil penalty orders of up to $420,000 for individuals (such as directors and sole traders) and $2.1million for organisations and;
  • The Commissioner can also make organisations pay compensation for damages and issue a public apology
• For more information regarding the NDB scheme click here

Yes, at Mercury IT, Cyber Security is a part of everything we do. We offer  a complete range of Cyber Security services, check out our Cyber Security pages for more information here  

The ‘Cloud’ has and continues to be a hot topic of conversation amongst both IT providers and businesses and the term ‘Something as a Service’ has been overused extensively. The short answer: cloud computing is simply utilising processing and storage systems that are not located within your site. The long answer: cloud computing is complex and includes multiple different offerings and technologies that are designed to achieve a number of outcomes, some of which include: leveraging economies of scale, provide enhanced resiliency, reduce capital costs and provide enhanced scalability. O365 is commonly touted by IT providers as ‘The Cloud’, O365 is a multi-faceted and comprehensive offering and includes a number of hosted components, for more information on 0365 click here. Cloud computing can be on public cloud infrastructure such as Azure, AWS, Google or private cloud infrastructure through bespoke cloud providers utilising data centres.

Some of the most common Cloud offerings include:

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – replaces on-premise infrastrucutre (such as servers) with hosted infrastructure.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) – moves applications from being locally installed to a delivery model utilising (often) a browser based software application. Common examples include O365, Salesforce, Xero etc.
• Desktop as a Service (DaaS) also sometimes referred to a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) – provides a complete desktop experience (similar to your Windows desktop PC) that is cloud hosted, these sessions can be accessed via multiple different devices from anywhere that has a stable and reasonable internet connection
• Backup as a Service (BaaS) – provides an off-site repository for backup data. BaaS is one of the most important, yet under exposed cloud offerings. Having an off-site, up-to-date backup set in a secure location is one of the best and cheapest insurance policies that a business can have.
• There are many other cloud services that utilise either full or partial cloud technology. An example of this is cloud managed network infrastructure, where there is a physical device installed onsite, however the management interface is provided via a cloud service, thus providing the best of both worlds

At Mercury IT, we understand that one size does not fit all. Cloud computing is absolutely an important component of the technology environment, however, when we work with a client, we ascertain the righttechnology for them. This may be a public and/or a private cloud offering, an on-premise offering or a hybrid arrangement. We build our recommendations around the specific requirements, objectives, security and operational needs of our customers.

There are many right reasons to move services to the Cloud, doing because someone else has, is definitely not one of them. When we work with a customer we get a comprehensive understanding of their organisational objectives, their operating environment, their users and their current and future technology requirements. We then look at the best solution for them and provide a complete solution that provides the best outcomes for them. For an honest appraisal of your Cloud needs, contact us.