The network above the cable.

Why a flat network is the problem

Most small-business networks we inspect are flat: laptops, servers, cameras, door controllers, printers and guest phones all on one address range, able to reach each other freely. It works, which is why nobody changes it.

The trouble is that anything compromised reaches everything. A guest laptop with malware can see your accounts server. A cheap camera with a default password becomes a door into the network. Segmentation costs nothing but configuration and removes most of that exposure.

What we configure

The work is mostly design and configuration rather than hardware.

• VLANs separating staff, guests, cameras, building systems and servers
• Firewall rules written to a policy you can read, not accumulated ad hoc
• Switching sized to actual traffic, with uplinks that will not bottleneck
• Wireless integrated properly rather than bolted on as an afterthought
• Remote access for staff that does not expose the whole network
• Monitoring, so a failing link is noticed before somebody reports it

Multiple sites

A second branch changes the questions: how do the sites reach each other, does the ERP live at one of them, and what happens when the link between them drops.

Site-to-site links can run over the internet with encryption, or over a dedicated circuit where the traffic justifies the cost. We size that on your actual usage rather than defaulting to the expensive option, and we plan for the outage rather than assuming it away.