A construction company doesn’t work in one building. Project managers run jobs from a truck, superintendents need drawings in a jobsite trailer, estimators need the office server at 9 p.m. before a bid is due, and accounting is moving six-figure payments to subcontractors and suppliers every month. Your IT has to work everywhere your people do, and it has to protect the money.
Aspendora Technologies has supported Houston-area businesses from our La Porte office since 2010. For general contractors, specialty subcontractors and trades, we keep the office and the field connected, and we put controls in place against the invoice and payment fraud that targets the industry.
Construction is a favorite target for business email compromise because it runs on large, routine payments between parties who communicate by email. The pattern is familiar: a criminal gets into a supplier’s, subcontractor’s or your own mailbox, watches the conversation for weeks, then sends a perfectly timed “we’ve changed banks” message or an invoice with new wiring instructions. The payment goes out, and it is rarely recovered. The same thing happens in reverse when a customer’s payment to you is redirected. Read how business email compromise hits Houston-area companies and what stops it.
Technology helps, and we provide it, but the most effective control is a process: never change payment details based on an email alone. Confirm every banking change by calling a phone number you already have on file, not one in the message. We help you write that into your accounting procedures and train your team to follow it.
Plans, submittals, RFIs, estimates and job-cost reports live on an office server or in the cloud. Field staff need them from a trailer, a hotspot or a phone. Too often the answer is a remote desktop port left open to the internet or one shared password for everyone, which is how ransomware gets in. We replace that with secure remote access that gives each person only what they need.
Laptops and tablets ride in trucks, sit in trailers and get left at jobsites. Lost equipment should cost you the hardware, not your data.
Project teams grow and shrink with your backlog. When a PM or estimator leaves, their access to email, files and systems needs to end right away, and their mailbox and files need to stay with the company.
An advanced email filtering layer catches phishing and impersonation that get past Microsoft’s own filters. Multi-factor authentication and Conditional Access protect every Microsoft 365 account, and sign-ins are monitored around the clock for account takeover, including the hidden inbox rules criminals use to intercept replies about payments. We set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC so it is harder to send email pretending to be your company, and security awareness training with simulated phishing teaches your office staff to recognize a fake bank-change request. See our cybersecurity services.
Zero-trust remote access replaces the VPN and the exposed remote desktop. Each person or device is granted only the specific systems they need, such as the estimating server or the accounting application, nothing on your network is exposed to the internet, and access can be revoked the moment someone leaves.
We help plan and support the internet connection, Wi-Fi and network equipment for field offices and jobsite trailers, and set up laptops so they work the same way in the trailer as they do at the main office.
Company laptops are managed through Microsoft Intune with enforced security policies and BitLocker encryption. Phones and tablets that access company email and files are held to Microsoft 365 security requirements, and company data can be removed from a lost or stolen device.
We support the servers, workstations, networks and Microsoft 365 your estimating, takeoff, project-management and construction accounting software depend on, whether they run in the office or in the cloud. We handle the updates and work directly with your software vendors’ support teams when the problem is on their side, so your staff don’t have to.
Endpoint detection and response on every computer, monitored 24/7 by a security operations center, plus regular patching and no everyday administrator rights. Servers are backed up to immutable offsite storage that ransomware can’t reach, and Microsoft 365 email, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams are backed up separately, so years of project records survive a deleted account or an attack. See data backup and recovery and Microsoft 365 backup.
Houston contractors are busiest after a storm, which is exactly when your own systems need to be working. Offsite backups and cloud access keep the office running if the building doesn’t. See our hurricane business continuity checklist.
Want us to handle it all? See managed IT services. Already have someone in-house? Co-managed IT adds the security layer and backup coverage.
A spoofed “new bank details” email can redirect a supplier payment, and the money is rarely recovered.
Superintendents and PMs can’t get to plans and job-cost data from the site, or they get there through an unsafe shortcut.
Former employees still have email, file-sharing or remote access weeks after they’ve moved on.
Tell us how your office and field teams work, what software you run, and how payments are approved.
We review your setup and give you a prioritized, plain-English plan, starting with the biggest financial risks.
We run and protect the technology in the office and the field, so your team can focus on the work.
Use layers. Email filtering catches most impersonation attempts, multi-factor authentication and sign-in monitoring protect your own mailboxes from being taken over, and DMARC makes it harder to spoof your domain. The control that matters most is a process: verify every change to payment details by calling a known phone number, never one from the email, and require a second approval for new or changed payees. We help you put both in place and train your team on them.
Call your bank immediately and ask them to recall the transfer; speed matters. Report it to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), and notify your cyber insurer. At the same time, have us check whether one of your own mailboxes was compromised, so the criminal can’t keep watching your conversations or try again.
Yes. We set up zero-trust secure remote access, so each person or device reaches only the specific systems they need, such as the estimating server or accounting application, without a traditional VPN and without exposing anything on your network to the internet. Files stored in Microsoft 365 are available from anywhere with MFA protecting them.
We support the servers, workstations, networks and Microsoft 365 your estimating, project-management and construction accounting applications run on, handle their updates and backups, and work directly with the software vendors’ support teams when needed. Tell us what you use on a discovery call.
Company laptops are encrypted with BitLocker, so the data on them can’t be read without the user’s sign-in. We can disable the user’s sessions and reset their password right away, and company data can be removed from phones and tablets that access company email and files.
As soon as you tell us. A new hire gets their account, laptop and the right access, and a departing employee’s email, file sharing and remote access are shut off, while their mailbox and files stay with the company for whoever takes over their projects.
Size doesn’t protect you from payment fraud. Criminals target the payments, not the company, and a single redirected supplier payment can cost more than years of IT support. Managed IT gives a small contractor the same core protections as a large one on a predictable monthly plan. See managed IT services.
Book a free discovery call. We’ll learn how your office and field teams work, look at how payments are requested and approved, and give you a clear plan that tackles the biggest risks first. Prefer to talk now? Call 281-941-4028.
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