Krevolin & Horst, LLC Turns To 360 Smart Networks For Law Firm IT Services

Krevolin & Horst, LLC Turns To 360 Smart Networks

Krevolin & Horst, LLC is an active law firm, providing a range of services for individuals, entrepreneurs, and companies. Their team offers legal support for corporate, technology, commercial real estate, and complex business disputes, as well as providing education, intellectual property, trial and appellate litigation including white-collar defense and whistleblower claims.

Law Firm IT Services In Atlanta

While Krevolin & Horst’s staff has always seen the value of IT support, over time as their firm has grown and developed, they’ve had to increase the level of support they invest in. Most recently, in 2014, they chose 360 Smart Networks as their IT support company, for a number of reasons.

“I liked the [360 Smart Networks] team,” says Erica McVicker, firm administrator for Krevolin & Horst. “Their pricing was great, and it was a very simple choice. There wasn’t anything complicated about it, and they’re a very uncomplicated company – very down to earth.”

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IT Project Management

Challenge

Overseeing an organization’s IT can be a daily struggle. Without the right resources or experience, an IT team will tend to spend most of their time just “putting out fires” one after another.

As important as that is, the constant stream of requests, troubleshooting, and maintenance tasks can keep the IT personnel from tackling the larger goals that a client may have for their business technology, such as new IT projects.

Starting an IT project is easy; for a few days, or even a week, there may be a lull in Help Desk support requests, and so beginning a project is a simple matter. Unfortunately, finishing the project isn’t quite as easy.

Projects take time to accomplish carefully and properly, and when the IT team is swamped with support requests, project deadlines will keep getting pushed back while more immediately pressing matters are attended to.

When looking for their next IT services provider in 2014, Krevolin & Horst knew they needed a team that could handle the daily IT support requests as their firm grew, as well as manage and complete projects on time and within budget.

“At the time, we were working with an IT company that was based in South Carolina,” says Erica. “Nothing really wrong with it, other than that we had some large projects that we wanted to complete. It was time to move on and find someone local.”

“I can’t say enough about these guys, I think they’re a terrific group, honestly, every single one of them.”

Erica McVicker
Firm Administrator, Krevolin & Horst

Solution

Krevolin & Horst chose to partner with 360 Smart Networks, and in the years since, has seen a number of projects proceed from planning to completion with few complications:

• 2014: 360 Smart Networks replaced one of Krevolin & Horst’s old server hosts and network switches.
• 2016: 360 Smart Networks replaced an old physical fax server with a cloud-hosted fax solution, and implemented a cybersecurity initiative called “Raising The Walls” (see details below).
• 2017: 360 Smart Networks refreshed half of Krevolin & Horst’s computers that were past warranty (and later replaced the rest of their computers at the end of 2018).
• 2018: 360 Smart Networks initiated a migration from a local Exchange email server to Microsoft Office 365 for cloud-hosted email. They also implemented MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) as a requirement for accessing/using their new Office 365 email system in order to enhance their security.  That year, they also replaced Krevolin & Horst’s battery backup UPS units in order to achieve full redundancy, as well as upgraded their network with VLANs to allow for better management and security.
• 2019: 360 Smart Networks started a project to replace Krevolin & Horst’s server and SAN infrastructure, building new virtual servers to replace their older servers that are at the end of their life in terms of being supported by Microsoft.

Result

Over the course of a few years, Krevolin & Horst’s IT infrastructure has been upgraded and refreshed from the foundation up. This has achieved a better user-experience for the Krevolin & Horst staff, as well as providing more effective cybersecurity standards.

Furthermore, each project was completed by the 360 Smart Networks team with little requirement for oversight from the Krevolin & Horst team. Erica reports having to only ever hold a preliminary strategic meeting to plan to project, after which she and the staff at the firm could leave it to 360 Smart Networks.

“I’m quite pleased with how smoothly our projects have gone,” says Erica.

Cybersecurity Support

Challenge

The legal industry is fraught with cybercrime threats. As of a few years ago, a third of in-house counsel respondents in “The State of Cybersecurity Report: an in-house perspective” reported that they had experienced a data breach – and cybercrime is only expected to grow, with the occurrence rate of data breaches estimated to increase by 22.5% each year up to 2023.

That’s one of the reasons Krevolin & Horst chose to work with 360 Smart Networks. They wanted an IT company that could provide expert cybersecurity support and keep their data safe.

“Cybersecurity is at the top of our list,” says Erica. “This should be of utmost importance to any company today.”

Solution

As technology advances and legal firms operate more and more in the digital space, their clients expect a higher standard of cybersecurity. Partnering with 360 Smart Networks has allowed Krevolin & Horst to improve their cybersecurity posture.

“One of the primary reasons we decided to step up a lot of our security is because of a client,” says Erica. “They had several questions about security that we were able to address, so we felt good about that. In the long run, it was the right thing to do. Not only for our clients, but our firm as a whole.”

In 2016, 360 Smart Networks implemented a “Raising The Walls” cybersecurity initiative, which rolled out a range of upgrades:

• Installation of a new firewall
• Implementation of a more advanced email spam filtering solution
• Delivery of cybersecurity awareness training for Krevolin & Horst staff members
• Network cleanup processes
• Security upgrades to better detect intrusion
• Removal of older, less secure servers from the network

Result

“They’ve always gone above and beyond the call of duty,” says Erica. “Their tech support is always calm and responsive. To me, that’s one of the most important aspects about an IT support company, as well as the knowledge and awareness they can provide. Everything 360 has done for us has been so professional and well thought out.”