The big theme from my clients for the past couple of weeks has been pretty consistent. I receive an email from a staff member at one of my clients, with a forwarded email message, and a question – “Is this legit?”. Without fail, the answer is no… the email is not legitimate. It’s another attempt by someone to do a Bad Thing to your computer. If you happen to click the link in the email, then BAM! you have a virus, or a Trojan horse, or some other piece of nastiness.

Too often though, these same staff members feel bad for asking, worrying that they’re “wasting my time”. Here’s why you should never wonder if you’re wasting your IT tech’s time.

The simple fact is that personally, I don’t feel there’s such a thing as wasting IT’s time. Granted that some people may disagree, and that’s their right. But for me, it’s never the case.

I’d be more concerned about the client who was afraid to contact me for something like this, and decided instead to just follow the instructions in the (bogus) email. As an IT support person, I’d rather spend 90 seconds telling people that an email is fake, than deal with the stress of trying to debug an infected computer. Some of those viruses are really nasty to clean up!

The sheer frequency of these message these past two weeks also has shown me that I can do a better job of communicating to my clients, to let them know that certain things are covered. If staff know that all their Windows patches are managed regularly, they’re less likely to believe it when a fake email is received. Too often IT will become surly, unresponsive or just plain cranky about answering questions from clients. And IT should take the lion’s share of the responsibility in the first place for not keeping their clients informed. (Other IT people may hate me for saying this, but it’s the truth.)

And at the same time, staffers should also have a way of knowing that things are up to date. Too often, people will be asked to set their update settings, and will click the button that says ‘ask me later’. And ‘later’ never comes. Or worse still, the update process will lead to confusion… What do I need? What can I skip, since I’m pressed for time? I heard on the news about X vulnerability… how do I fix it?

Having something like the CPG Systems Total Guard Protection Package can really help businesses, since it takes all the guesswork out of the equation. Your patches and updates are taken care of, period. For business, it’s all about peace of mind, and knowing that when you do get those fake emails (and you will), you can just delete them without worrying about it.

Ultimately though, the whole issue really comes down to communication. Are you happy with the amount and quality of information you’re receiving from your tech support? If not, you should talk to your IT people about opening up the channels. And make sure you’re never left wondering.