Many IT Professionals deliberately abstain from social media because of the profound risks to data privacy and security. Having intimate knowledge of how platforms harvest, store and monetize user data, IRQ recognizes the inherent risks when you surrender personal information to opaque algorithms and third party data miners.

Unlike non-technical professionals, IT specialists like IRQ understand the technical mechanisms behind tracking cookies, facial recognition, and behavioral profiling — tools that can expose people to identity theft, surveillance and algorithmic manipulation.

For example, a single overshared post can inadvertently reveal network structure or workplace routines that sophisticated attackers can exploit. Consequently, IT professionals like IRQ, often adopt a stance of minimal exposure. We view social media not as a benign communication tool; but, a high risk vector that compromises both personal and organizational security.

Moreover, IT professional need to stay current with rapidly evolving technologies and hold the line against the Gartner Hype Cycle of new (often over promising) tech. By opting out of social media, you’ll reclaim many hours each week to focus on more productive endeavors.

Botton line, many IT professionals like IRQ Solutions LLC reject social media in favor of cultivating more authentic and meaningful relationships both in our personal and professional lives. By rejecting social media, IRQ believes it serves its client better, allowing relationships to be based on mutual respect and shared business goals instead of market jargon and over-promised nonsense.

So if you’d like an old time professional relationship with a straight shooter, Contact US via the link above…

Sure, the cloud seems like a secure space, but it’s NOT. A “cloud” is just someone else’s server sitting in a datacenter somewhere. If it’s a big datacenter with a lot of high value targets that store high value data, that “cloud” datacenter is going to be a prime target for attacks.

Salesforce customers are the latest people to learn that lesson. That’s why IRQ recommends self hosting everything and using physical off-site backups. The Korean Government just gave us an excellent example of the need for off-site physical media backups of critical data…

Just like A.I, don’t believe the hype about SeaS and cloud services. Self Hosted Open Source Alternatives are often safer and superior.

Windows 10 is End of Life in October 2025. The security implications of this fact mean that YOU must move to a new OS. You can move to Windows 11, if your current computer supports it. Not upgrading is not an option, Windows is a high value target for hackers, so a Windows computer not getting regular security updates is a disaster waiting to happen. (It’s not a matter of if, it is when…)

Worse, IMHO, is the fact that Windows 11 is a spyware system. And that’s before you address the privacy problem named Copilot and the absolute nightmare that is Recall!

With all those problems, IRQ suggests two paths forward for people sick of Microsoft’s ecosystem… Move to MacOS or Linux which are – objectively – more secure than Windows.

Beyond security, MacOS and Linux offer superior long-term stability and performance on modern hardware. For example, Apple Silicon bests Intel/AMD counterparts. Both MacOS and Linux can run an excellent alternative Office 365 Suite called ONLYOFFICE. And if you’re an accountant, you should have switched to a Python/MySQL system from Excel long ago.

So if you’d like to have a discussion about making a switch from Windows to MacOS or Linux, Contact Us.

While convenient, using a third party to share or store sensitive company data often ends in disaster. This is because the large players in this field are a HUGE target for hackers. In other words, very skilled hackers dedicate their resources to specifically break into those well known systems (often undetected for months, if not years). Worse, all of those proprietary systems allow them to look at all the meta data surrounding your data and some actually scan it (i.e Gmail).

But perhaps the biggest threat comes from your managed service provider, who doesn’t personally know anyone who works at your organization. Sure you get unrealistic promises that make you feel good, but nothing beats a good personal relationship with an IT professional who knows your small business workforce personally and designed the systems you use and that’s what IRQ offers.

There is much ado over A.I causing layoffs in the tech sector; but, IRQ believes the layoffs are actually occurring because of bad business decisions.  In other words, those who hype A.I, use it as a scapegoat for layoffs, without acknowledging that A.I’s future is far less certain and “vibe coding” is a disaster waiting to happen. Remember Melissa?

From a business perspective, IRQ educates its clients about the Gartner hype cycle when evaluating any new technology. Succinctly, this cycle explains how new technologies are always overhyped. For example, remember how the blockchain was going to change everything in 2017? Or how about Meta’s Metaverse? 

IRQ would urge you to consider the fact that the A.I layoffs (like at Meta in 2025) have more to do with wasting money of ill conceived projects (like Meta’s $40 billion bet on the Metaverse), and current economic conditions caused by the uncertainty of the Trump Administration’s regulatory environment, NOT A.I. This is especially true when you consider generative A.I’s propensity to generate slop and thus will likely continue to be a flop (Not to be confused with predictive A.I, which has serious potential (you can learn the difference here).

For example, any lawyer who uses generative A.I to write a brief is a damn fool who will quickly put his or her bar card in jeopardy. In contrast, a lawyer who uses predictive A.I to assess the success of a particular legal argument will have an advantage over a lawyer who doesn’t use A.I to analyze documents. (The same goes for every other intellectual profession)

Bottom line, IRQ can predict with reasonable certainty, that AI will not replace humans for intellectual work, but it will help lawyers, doctors, accountants, bankers, coders and others do better work, faster. In other words, don’t believe the hype, hire knowledgable IT professionals like IRQ Solutions to help you make informed (grounded in reality) IT decisions.

We have a very simple pricing structure for our Independent Contractor (IC) services:

• $50 per month for a Business Info and Contact domain (Includes 1 hour of IC Service each month)
• $100 per month for a Restaurant Menu and Reservation domain (includes 2 hours of IC Service each month)
• $150 per month for a E-Commerce domain (Includes 2 hours of IC Service each month)

Our IC Service Rate is $50 per hour during normal business hours (10AM to 6PM Mon-Fri) & $200 per hour for times outside of normal business hours.

BUSINESS CONTACT & INFORMATION

Professionals need to advertise their services. If you are a lawyer, doctor or accountant; you need a professional looking website with an enticing contact form and/or chat feature. WordPress is the ideal platform for such a website because it allows for easy cataloging of contacts and a forum to share your expertise on various topics in the blog section of the site. Lawyers can provide legal tips, doctors can provide health tips and accountants can provide financial tips. Since multiple users are easy to manage with WordPress, anyone can author these blog posts, including hired writers.

Regardless, if you want your website to be offered to those seeking your services when using a search engine like “google”, then you’ll need to provide consistent new content to your blog. And an easy to use WordPress site is the easiest way to provide that content. (See About Search Engine Optimization on our main page for further explanation.)

Here is what your $50 per month gets you:

• Unique Domain Name
• Unlimited E-Mail Addresses @yourdomain.com
• Unlimited Pages for your WordPress Site
• Unique site look and home page using a Unique (i.e not free) theme
• Contact form connected to the e-mail account of your choice with CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) to discourage spambots from contacting you.
• Up to 2 Hours of in person training on how to update the content of your pages and blog posts on your WordPress site.
• 1 Hour of maintenance (IC Service) each month, to be used in any way you desire.
• 24/7 Hosting and unlimited WordPress accounts.
• A Managed Site (We will provide all management services regarding your domain) For example, if you want to add or subtract an e-mail account you’ll e-mail or call us and we’ll handle it from there. All updating and backups will be handled by us as well, pursuant to our contract.

RESTAURANT MENU & RESERVATION

As a Pizza Cafe, Diner or Upscale restaurant owner, you want to have a unique website that shows potential guests what you have to offer (a menu) and when they can get it (a reservation). Words cannot really express to you what we’re offering, so we suggest you visit this site to see an example of what you could have for your business…

Here is what your $100 per month gets you:

• Unique Domain Name
• Unlimited E-Mail Addresses @yourdomain.com
• Unlimited Pages for your WordPress Site
• Unique site look and home page using a Unique (i.e not free) restaurant theme
• Contact form connected to the e-mail account of your choice with CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) to discourage spambots from contacting you.
• Five Star Reservation System Ultimate
• Up to 4 Hours of in person training on how to update the content of your pages, blog posts and how to use the reservation system on your WordPress site.
• 2 Hours of maintenance (IC Service) each month to be used in any way that you desire.
• 24/7 Hosting on a Virtual Private Server (VPS) with 60GBs of storage for your website and e-mail accounts.
• A Managed VPS (We will provide all management services regarding your domain) For example, if you want to add or subtract an e-mail account you’ll e-mail or call us and we’ll handle it from there. All updating and backups will be handled by us as well, pursuant to our contract.

E-COMMERCE SITE

As a store owner or an individual seeking to sell their creations online; OR, a Pizza Cafe, Diner or Upscale restaurant owner that wants to present their visitors with a way to order food online (for pickup or delivery) our E-Commerce site is for you.

Here is what your $150 per month gets you:

• Unique Domain Name
• Unlimited E-Mail Addresses @yourdomain.com
• Unlimited Pages and Items for your WordPress Site
• Unique site look and home page using a Unique (i.e not free) restaurant theme
• Contact form connected to the e-mail account of your choice with CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) to discourage spambots from contacting you.
• Five Star Reservation System Ultimate (If you’re a restaurant)
• Woocommerce Plugin with an optional Point of Sale (POS) platform if desired.
• Up to 8 Hours of in person training on how to update the content of your pages blog posts and how to use the Woocommerce and the reservation system or POS (if applicable) on your WordPress site