“Disaster Recovery as a Service”

Kaiseki is to food what Paul Berndt is to 1’s and 0’s. Both require meticulous focus on the details and interrelationships of the dependent ingredients and the platforms on which they are arranged, each playing a major role leading to an incredible dining or IT experience.

In certain circles, Paul Berndt is considered to be the Back Up King. In 2000, he set up the Disaster Recovery system for Independent Printing in a motel room across the street from the brick and mortar headquarters in Green Bay, WI. He concluded this would be the best way to keep the data safe by getting it outside of the main structure. In a following position in 2006, he was the first Security Officer Brown County WI ever had. He went to the Sans Institute to get his Breach Remediation Certification, and instituted their first security protocols, some of which are still in place today. The major security protocols implemented were One Time Use Passwords for all consultants and recording all of their activities. He also created a Separate Network for Public Access to the Internet for all of Brown County Libraries. Paul encrypted all laptop hard drives, tracked all USB drive activities and disabled all unauthorized USB drives. He helped to implement MARS, which was an advanced Cisco security solution, and accomplished internal and external security scans.

As a Field Engineer with Compellent and subsequently Dell, he installed well over 100 SAN solutions around the country, overcoming both physical and thought provoking obstacles to ultimately deploy successful networks.

Then in May of 2010, he could no longer deny his entrepreneurial spirit, born of dissecting every radio he could get his hands on as a child to understand how it worked. Thus was born Network Virtualization Professionals, in short NetVPro, initially designing Disaster Recovery Solutions such as the one deployed 10 years earlier at Independent Printing.

"NetVPro does not believe in funding hackers by paying ransomware requests. We believe in robust backups, resilience and incident response plans, prevention with education, EndPoint Protection along with NGAV and installing SOC’s where appropriate."

The company has since grown with a national footprint in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Florida with Data Centers in St. Cloud, MN, Rockford, IL and Atlanta GA. NetVPro is a Full Service Managed Service Provider for Hardware, Software, Back up, DR and Security based on customized solutions, which give other companies the ability to NOT be an IT company instead enabling them to use technology for their individual business growth.

NetVPro does not believe in funding hackers by paying ransomware requests. We believe in robust backups, resilience and incident response plans, prevention with education, EndPoint Protection along with NGAV and installing SOC’s where appropriate.

In light of the recent ransomware threats on MSP’s, NetVPro has enlisted a third-party SOC. We’ve done our due diligence on internal security audits on our practices. We also implemented security training for all personnel and continue to educate anyone who will listen. This requires a robust team of really smart people who are always learning and paying great attention to each of those details that are so very interconnected.

“My viewpoint on the path to security is the triad of Recovery with Back ups, Replication and Testing. Monitoring is important to know if there’s been any breaches or Incidents of Compromise and prevention is key with your security products and software. Educating your personnel on using strong passwords, changing those passwords often, two factor authentication and risk recognition.”

“Test Test Test” is a common mantra heard often by our leader, and we rigidly adhere to that philosophy. Paul commonly delegates and empowers at the same time. Which is the philosophy which led him to establish a new kind of peer group. The Look Ahead Peer Group is based on the adage of “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself!”

He wanted to Look Ahead and gain insight by creating this Peer Group as outlined growing his business as well as helping others do the same.

Understanding people are wired very differently, being radically open minded in a Trusting Safe Environment, cultivating meaningful work and a culture in which it is ok to make mistakes and unacceptable not to learn from them is the driving force behind the peer group.

As an IT provider for SMB’s, Paul saw many successes and some falters and wanted to start this Look Ahead Peer Group to accelerate through collective learning working through issues in running various businesses.

Security is not a destination, it is a complex arduous journey of both Hardware and Software where knowledge of both is necessary to achieve that Kaiseki like experience in Information Technology.IE