WAYNESBORO – This is the first of 6 parts of an interview by Samantha Wolfe of the Law Offices of Samantha K. Wolfe LLC, with Cermak Technologies, Inc. owner Mike Cermak, Jr. The interview is lightly edited.
Sam: Let’s start off with what you do at your business and what services do you offer?
Mike: We work for all different kinds of clients – residential and business. We can still do house calls. If someone has a problem and we need to go out to their home, we are happy to do that. We also have a lot of people bring their computers in and drop them off to have them repaired or cleaned up. If you buy a new computer and need something transferred to the new one, we can do that.
We specialize in small businesses like yours, where we have technicians come out for service or regular maintenance. We take care of networks for small businesses anywhere from 5 to 50 computers, which is our sweet spot.
We aim to help people out and have become experts in the needs of these groups. They don’t have an unlimited budget and don’t have the whole Information Technology (IT) department behind them to support them like a large business would, so we act like their IT department. Whenever they have some weird computer issue, they have someone they can go to who is not just going to point the finger at someone else.
That’s a big thing, right? When no one wants to take responsibility for the problem. We are happy to do that and work with whatever vendors are needed to sort out the problem.
Obviously, we also do computers and networking, but also web development, phone systems, and all the routine computer systems stuff you would expect.
Sam: Tell us what cybersecurity is?
Mike: Good cybersecurity limits your risk as much as possible and sets up as many firewalls or steps as you can to reduce your risk.
For example, we often find a customer granted everyone in the office full access to everything. Sometimes that is fine, especially for small businesses because you trust those people. You wouldn’t have hired them otherwise. But best practice is to try to limit them to as little access as you can.
We had a customer with surveillance cameras whose front office staff had full access to the cameras. That was great so they could look at them before they leave for the day. What they didn’t realize was that when they closed down their computer every day, they stopped the cameras from recording.
There was no need for those people to have the ability to do that. Giving access to view the cameras, but not giving access to delete stuff – that sort of fine-tuning often doesn’t matter, but there are times when it does.
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See part 2 of this interview in tomorrow’s edition. If you have technical questions you would like to ask, email news@ln1.obzservices.com with the title “Ask the Tech Guy”. Mike will respond to your questions in the Voices section of LocalNews1.org.
Mike Cermak is President of Cermak Technologies Inc, with offices at 46 South Potomac Street in Waynesboro and 201 Prospect Avenue in Hagerstown. For over 20 years, Cermak has managed computers and networks for businesses in Franklin County, PA and Washington County, MD. They specialize in IT services for small businesses, including computer service, system management, business phone systems, surveillance cameras, and website development. Cermak Technologies can be reached at (717) 762-8234, 1-888-4-CERMAK, or contact@cermaktech.com.
Samantha Wolfe is an attorney in Waynesboro PA, located at 20 East Sixth Street, Suite 206, Waynesboro PA 17268. She can be contacted at 717-655-2676, or through her website, www.skwlawoffice.com
