Why You Should Choose Us To Protect Your Business Digital Assets

Who We Are

Essential Consulting is a Cyber Security and IT support company for small and medium size businesses. We have been in business since 2002 and have clients in many different industries. We are based in Northfield Minnesota, but service the Twin Cities Metro area and areas south of that. We also work with virtual location companies that have no headquarters.

What We Do

We do both Cyber Security and IT support. We do both because they are closely intertwined for small businesses. If there is no real IT support, or a Break Fix IT contractor in place, it will be difficult to properly secure the IT infrastructure and your company. Because un-trained or Break Fix IT contractors could undo cyber security settings in the process of debugging a problem, and not understand the consequences of what they just did. If that change was never communicated to us, we cannot fix it, and your company is more vulnerable than either of us know. That is a position that does not work for us because it destroys our Best Effort principle.

Our Expertise

  • 20+ years of experience in cyber security
  • Involvement in design, implementation and support of Java EE websites and web services, and Java and C++ applications
  • Designed databases in MS SQL Server and MySql
  • We implement firewalls from Fortinet, Cisco, WatchGuard and Meraki
  • Introduction to Cloud Identity
  • G Suite Administrator Fundamentals
  • Certified Scrum Master
  • Security+ce

What We Believe

  • We believe in Win / Win situations. This permeates our business philosophy. It carries through our free Cyber Security assessment for small business, through our service and support plans and into how we handle any disputes. In short, we believe that the only way we can be successful is if our clients are successful.
  • We believe in making Best Efforts. That means we do not take the easy way out, or shortchange our clients with half baked solutions. We work hard to provide the best solution we can given a set of constraints.
  • We do not believe in the Break Fix model. Many IT firms operate on this model, where they will come and fix something when it breaks. The trouble with this model is that it has no incentive for the IT firm to do something to keep things from breaking. Conversely, the incentive is to insure things will break, which insures a revenue stream for the IT firm. We believe that this model breaks Win / Win and Best Efforts. We strive to improve your Cyber Security and IT equipment to reduce the likelihood of breaking. Of course, servers, workstations, printers, switches, routers and access points all need care and feeding to keep things running smoothly, and that is why we have service plans.
  • We understand business. We understand the importance of protecting margins and the bottom line, and that service plans increase the burden per employee. So we do not take our prices lightly. Going back to Win / Win, we try to find a balance point that is within the industry averages, but at the low end of those averages. One way we can achieve this is by keeping our overhead low.
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