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Effective SMB Change Management is a rare beast. Most client organizations don't demand change management procedures until after a series of troubling failures has soured a relationship. Many Managed Service Providers (MSP's) don't introduce the topic early in the life of an organization as it increases management costs. MSP's rarely monitor system changes to ensure that undocumented changes aren't being made by well meaning consultant. While loose change management policies increase management efficiencies in the short term, they create long term problems that are best avoided.

POOR CHANGE MANAGEMENT DOCTRINE INEVITABLY LEADS TOWARDS UNDOCUMENTED OR ILL-DOCUMENTED DESIGNS.

From a security perspective, loose change management policies create situations where originally secure and well documented designs are slowly eroded into grotesque shapes of random and varied security protections. The attack surface of such systems are very hard to define as protection and stability vary from system to system. It is likely that with this much variation something is going to slip between the cracks and create a security compromise, it is also likely that it will not get noticed till after damage has occurred.

Bringing systems like this back from the brink is something that we have had ample experience doing. Correcting problems that were created through improper change management procedures and officially documenting required design exceptions is the type of valuable work that is covered wholly under our Flat-Rate Managed Services plans.