For many small businesses, getting onto the Internet is a downright scary thought. Entrepreneurs question whether it's worth the time, effort and money spent in pursuing a Web presence, especially if the business is not retail in nature. Security concerns, too, can be overwhelming.

However, with new technology, small businesses are increasingly finding value - and a comfort level - in being accessible online. A case in point is the Palo Alto Dental Group. The lessons learned by this association of six dentists (it's scouting a seventh) that serves 12,000 patients are of interest to any small business thinking about making a larger investment on the Internet.

The Palo Alto Dental Group previously used its computer systems for patient records, billing, and other applications, but avoided accessing the Internet directly because of security concerns. "We heard of several other dentists who've had catastrophic virus problems costing thousands of dollars, which made us very leery of taking our practice online," said Steven Keller, D.D.S, partner in Palo Alto Dental Group.

"When we initially put in our computer systems, it was primarily to maintain all our patient treatment records within an internal network," Keller continued. "That changed and we needed to get online for more activities, such as billing, ordering supplies and patient communications. Securing our systems, especially our patient data, was of the utmost importance."

In fact, the group's original method of backup was pretty elementary, according to Tom Block, the solution provider who ultimately put a top-of-the-line system into place for the practice. "Every day they were backing up to an external hard drive and the office manager was taking the disk home in his car," Block explained.

Surprisingly, the system wasn't that uncommon, Block noted; before he started Block Data Systems, he worked at a security solutions company who had dental offices as clients. What he saw were dental offices working with people who were "really good folks," but who didn't understand enterprise-grade business security. Those dental groups were entrusting their businesses to people who were familiar with setting up home networks, which are substantially different from those in a business environment.

"There's a big difference between losing your vacation photos and losing your patient records and yet these two types of networks were often being secured the same way," Block said. In addition, the practice did not have a pipe to the open Internet as the dentists were concerned that would potentially open their practice up to viruses and other problems.

The dentists came to the upgrade decision due to a combination of factors: Their business manager was getting ready to retire and the current system was impacting the productivity of the doctors. Although many got in around 7 a.m. in the morning, the doctor staff would be unable to access their practice management while the system was being manually backed up. Initially, this only took about 10/15 minutes, but as the volume of data being backed up increased, that amount of time grew, eventually taking up the first hour of the day. When Block, who was familiar with the company from his days with that other solution provider, came in to suggest a better way to ensure secure, automatic backup of the business' mission critical information and data, one requirement was an internet connection. Blocks says it took "a lot of golf games" and a demo of SonicWALL and PermaStore devices at work in another local dentists' office, but Palo Alto Dental was finally willing to move technologically into the 21st century.

A secure connection to the Internet needed to be established, but, because the dentists had concerns about issues including patient privacy and viruses, the new backup system required the Internet to backup offsite. A SonicWALL TZ 170W with comprehensive gateway security services (intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, gateway anti-virus, and gateway anti-spam) was installed as was a TZ 150 Total Secure with a mirrored box. Data is backed up locally in the office and mirrored. PermaStore Network Attached Storage (NAS) was also installed. By installing an additional SonicWALL firewall at a dentist's home office as part of the dental group's disaster recovery plan with a data backup system, the dental group no longer needed to rely on someone bringing the backup disk home each night. Block took the very "hands-on" backup process and automated it.

The system also offers a separate port on the firewall to allow the practice to offer wireless access that doesn't touch the secure internal network. The group's wireless network was initially installed for use by the doctors in their lounge, but has since been extended to provide free wireless to patients in the waiting room. With high-tech centers such as Stanford close by, PA Dental saw offering a "hotspot" as a necessary service to to help patients stay competitive.

Still, some of the dentists' concerns could not be overcome. For instance, after a detailed assessment of a system to allows patients to make account payments online, for now, the group has decided to handle payment the "old-fashioned" way. However, it will be moving to a Web-based insurance billing management system early next year, which will take the place of a time-consuming phone-based system currently in use.

In the near term, the group is looking to expand the system by using the additional filtering functionality within the TZ 170 that allows the network administrator to define who can access the open Internet. The plan is to limit Internet use to doctors - blocking use of receptionists and other support staff who do not need that functionality to perform their jobs. Also, the practice is considering also implementing a virtual private network (VPN) to support a more flexible work environment. That idea is being driven by one of their female doctors who recently gave birth and, with a small child at home, often finds herself having to come back to work in the late evenings to finish up her work day. A VPN would allow her to access the business network securely and finish her work from home.

"We're also looking into new ways to improve patient service," Keller said. "We're implementing a new online patient confirmation system that also allows patients to view their account, make payments, and process payments."

In all, the high-tech capital improvement program undertaken by the Palo Alto Dental Group not only drove the practice into the 21st century, but also greatly increased productivity. The new system provides the advantages of providing full, on-demand access to critical business applications whenever needed with less administrative overhead to mange the back-up process. Furthermore, the business has now mitigated the risk of losing or corrupting their critical business data by making backup a secure, automatic process with offsite backup.