Integrated Computer Services Frequently Asked Questions

ICS is located at the Heritage Plaza II, 65 Harristown Road, Suite 309, Glen Rock, NJ and specializes in IT consulting and network support for businesses with 10 to 1000 employees and was established in 2002 offering an array of services for the SMB market including managed IT services, network installation and cloud migrations, cyber security and more. ICS has accumulated over 100 years of experience with its team of 20 technicians and strives to meet the growing needs of SMB market.

Integrated Computer Services, Inc. currently holds three Microsoft Certified partner Competencies: Hosting, Datacenter, and Midmarket Solution Provider, demonstrating a "best-in-class" ability and commitment to meet small and medium business. To uphold these competencies we have technicians certified in Microsoft Windows Server 2012 & 2019, Windows 10, Office 365, and Designing and Deploying a Small Business Network, as well as CompTIA A+, Network+, & Security+, and Apple’s Mac Integration certification.

We take cyber security very seriously and implement best of breed cyber security technologies and policies to protect your company data and intellectual property. We are continuously evaluating new technologies to improve our software stack and managed services deliverables.

This starts during onboarding we implement a basic set of best practices regarding password and active directory hygiene. In addition we run a cyber security assessment on your local area network and your cloud infrastructure to determine what major cyber security issues are present in your infrastructure and make suggestions based on the results.

As a standard, we implement 24/7 cyber security monitoring with active threat hunting, Zero Trust Network Security along with perimeter and cloud managed endpoint security services for an all-encompassing security solution.

On a daily basis, we monitor for security breaches via logon auditing, 24/7/365 Managed SOC services, and endpoint/perimeter virus and malware events. This allows us to react quickly and minimize risk. We also offer our secure email service to better filter out spam and malicious emails as well as send out phishing campaigns to test your users to see how susceptible they are to phishing attacks and train them on how to prevent falling victim.

We also assist in remediation to help conform with security compliance requirements for multiple industry standards including, but not limited to, PCI, HIPAA, CUI, and DFARS.

Once an agreement is met, our relationship starts with the initial onboarding. During this process we examine and document your entire network and servers. Our dedicated onboarding team will spend time learning your infrastructure. In addition information will be provided regarding how to contact support via email, phone, or our web portal.

Once onboarding is complete our technical team will begin supporting your company. Servers and equipment are proactively monitored for health and uptime and any issues detected are either remediated immediately or if necessary you will be contacted to resolve completely. At this time any of your employees can call in to request assistance.

This is facilitated through our customer relation liaison, who will make sure your issues are handled within SLA and assists in prioritizing and expediting support for our clients.

In addition we regularly check in on your systems and when something is coming up on warranty or support expiration. We do this to always make sure your infrastructure is operating at optimal capacity. We provide project management and virtual CTO services to assist in technology road mapping and planning any infrastructure changes.

Our team of 20 technicians is comprised of a helpdesk team well versed in many applications and technologies, a supporting team of road technicians to handle any issues that can’t be resolved remotely, a project team that is experienced at deployments of any size from small to large, and a management team that both oversees day to day support, but also researches and develops new technologies and services for our clients benefit.

Standard hours of operation are from 8:30 to 6:00PM Monday through Friday. All requests are services during these times within standard SLA. Critical down issues are typically addressed from 8:30AM to 6:00PM at no additional charge. Our Afterhours team provides support from 6:00PM to 8:30AM and 6:00PM to 10:00PM as well as from 8:00AM to 10:00PM on weekends.

Utilizing industry standard Autotask ticketing platform, every email sent to support or entered in the online form automatically generates a ticket and all calls to our support line are entered by our customer service liaison.

Ticket reports can be provided at any time upon request and portal access can be configured upon request for the ability to review all active tickets from the web.

Helpdesk availability is guaranteed from 8:30AM to 6:00PM. During this window our Customer Service Liaison will be available and technicians will actively be resolving all issues during these hours.

From 5:00PM to 6:00PM Critical issues will be actively worked on, however non critical issues will be handled the following day. Outside of these hours two technicians are regularly available to resolve afterhours issues at a rate of $199 - $249 per hour.

The Project Team availability is dependent on current projects in progress and may be subject to a wait. However when a team is working on your project they will be dedicated to your company until completion of the project during normal business hours.

To control who has the ability to request major changes to your network and infrastructure, we maintain a list of your “Approval Contacts”. In addition to restricting who can make these requests, all users are provided individual PIN codes. These must also be provided by anyone calling to verify they are authorized to make request for support.

Major changes will also be planned by a project manager who will be aware of the risks involved with work and will take all necessary precautions. These changes are documented via our ticketing system as well as documented in our notes system accordingly.

We utilize a suite of monitoring tools. Primarily we have 2 Remote Monitoring & Management platforms in use. The primary developed by SolarWinds is utilized to monitor and inventory all Windows and ESXi systems and the secondary is primarily utilized for MAC computer management. Both platforms monitor for hardware and software based issues as well as provide a platform for managing security patches for the monitored systems.

Weekly reports are sent to the requested person outlining the overall health of systems as well as any issues that have been reported. (see sample report)

Response Times

Remote Response Time: During Normal Business Hours (M-F, 8:00 AM-6:00 PM ET) Response time initiates upon receipt of the initial call
Priority 1: within 30 minutes from placement of request
Priority 2: within 2 hours from placement of request
Priority 3: within 1 Business Day
Priority 4: within 1 Business Day*
*Response time may vary depending on complexity of request and based on availability of technicians

After Normal Business Hours, Weekends & Holidays: Saturday, Sunday, M-F, 6:00 PM – 8:00 AM ET (Non-Guaranteed) Response time initiates upon receipt of the initial call
Priority 1: within 2 hours from placement of request*
Priority 2: within 4 hours from placement of request*
Priority 3: within 2 Business Day*
Priority 4: within 2 Business Day*
*Response time may vary depending on complexity of request and based on availability of level 3 technicians

On-Site Response Time: During Normal Business Hours (M-F, 9:00 AM-5:00 PM ET) if on site visit required for resolution
Priority 1: within 2 hours of ICS engineers’ decision.
Priority 2: within 2 hours of ICS engineers’ decision
Priority 3: within 1 Business Day of ICS engineers decision
Priority 4: Based of ICS Project Schedule and project tech availability

After Normal Business Hours, Weekends & Holidays: Saturday, Sunday, M-F, 5:00 PM – 9:00 AM ET (Non-Guaranteed) if on site visit required for resolution
Priority 1: within 4 hours of ICS engineers’ decision.*
Priority 2: within 4 hours of ICS engineers’ decision*
Priority 3: within 2 Business Day of ICS engineers decision*
Priority 4: Based of ICS Project Schedule and project tech availability*

Definitions of Priorities

Priority 1 - Critical Server \ Network Down

• Major disasters: loss of essential server(s) mission-critical LAN or widespread outage
• Inability by all users to access any mission Critical programs
• Multiple users are being prevented from serving company customers
• Data loss or corruption
• Network down
• Security breach

Priority 2 - High Priority Support

• Support for key employees, owners and management team
• Printing problems across multiple printers
• System continually producing incorrect results in isolated circumstances
• Constant error in generation from fundamental processes
• Chronic issue

Priority 3 - Non Critical

• Crash, no access to, or non-availability of a non-essential server
• Local and confined PC problems
• User is unable to process a particular type of service but has simple alternative
• User is prohibited from performing low priority work
• One user is affected
• One PC not working (except where it constitutes a significant portion of system)
• System produces incorrect results in a known and isolated set of circumstances which can be worked around
• Local printer/scanner problems
• Move Add Change Delete for User accounts, hardware \ software and AD Objects

Priority 4 - Consulting Services

• “How To” Questions
• Future projects discussions
• Analysis of networks for upgrades, work flow, processes, technology road mapping, etc.

Every Friday routine patch management maintenance is scheduled to start at 9:00PM. This is to guarantee patches are regularly applied without as little disruption as possible. This time window can be modified upon request.

Any additional maintenance that affects all clients would be subject to an email alert to all registered contact for your company describing the nature of the maintenance, what will be affected, and how long the expected down time will be. This will be sent out no sooner than 4 hours in advanced and will normally be communicated 12-24 hours in advance whenever possible.

For any maintenance specifically for your company, the primary contacts will be contacted for a final decision on when downtime can occur and maintenance can be completed.

Email alerts are regularly sent to the requested contacts alerting of potential security threats, new technologies, improvements in infrastructure and any major changes being made.

To keep your company’s technology infrastructure running smoothly and efficiently our team of technicians are watching warranty statuses and checking hardware regularly. If there are signs of impending issues or your hardware is reaching end of life our technicians will actively recommend upgrades or replacements to help prevent downtime. In addition, upon request we can assist in maximizing your IT budget and creating a road map for your company to follow to reach your IT goals.

ICS specializes in disaster recovery. In every agreement we bundle in offsite cloud backup storage to protect our client’s data. In addition we recommend and regularly implement VM replication, VM backups, physical server bare metal backups, and BDR devices depending on a given client’s situation and needs to ensure you follow the 321 rule of backups.

Keep at least three copies of your data
Store two backup copies on different devices or storage media
Keep at least one backup copy offsite

Minor upgrades of software are handled free of charge as long as they are performed within normal business hours.

Major upgrades that require contacting a vendor, project planning, or cause major changes to the software that may result in loss of data are billable per hour according to the rates outlined in your agreement.

All upgrades performed after hours will be billed at the standard afterhours rate according to your agreement.

Any special requests should be directed to our customer service liaison, they will be communicated to the management and project teams and your request will be fulfilled as quickly as possible. Sometimes special requests or requirements will require our team to gather additional information or perform research. In these cases you will be contacted alerting you that this is the case and we will get back to you once we are prepared to assist with your requests.

If a conference call is necessary in regards to special requests or project planning, please directly contact the customer service liaison to schedule an appointment with the necessary parties. Because these cases require typically require higher level staff, we highly suggest these requests be put in as soon as possible as some of our staff may be unavailable if requested last minute.

All actions performed by our technicians are tied to a ticket. If one of our technicians installed or upgraded a system there will be a ticket generated before they even look at your issue and can’t close out the case without entering notes on what was done. Every maintenance alert and support request we receive generates a ticket. All changes are tracked through this system. In addition all major changes are documented in our documentation system for ease of access by our support team. Ticket reports can be requested at any time.

Our documentation can be provided in the form of an encrypted OneNote Notebook. The document will contain notes on each piece of server and networking hardware managed by ICS and any vendor documentation gathered during support. All passwords will be included and any questions regarding the contents will be answered upon request.