What You Get in Your Free Consultation

This is not a vague conversation that ends with a sales pitch. When you sit down with our team, you walk away with specific, actionable information about your business technology. Here is exactly what we cover in your complimentary consultation.

Who This Consultation Is For

We designed this consultation for business leaders who make or influence technology decisions. If any of the following situations sound familiar, this conversation will be worth your time.

• Business owners and CEOs who suspect their current IT setup is costing them more than it should, either in direct expenses or lost productivity, but do not have the technical background to pinpoint the problem
• Companies evaluating their IT provider who want an objective second opinion on whether they are getting the service quality and security posture they are paying for
• Growing businesses in the Research Triangle that have outgrown their current technology infrastructure and need guidance on scaling without creating security holes or operational bottlenecks
• Organizations facing compliance requirements for the first time, whether that is HIPAA for a medical practice, CMMC for a defense contractor, or SOC 2 for a SaaS company, and need to understand the scope and timeline of what compliance actually requires
• Executives who have experienced a security incident or near-miss and want to understand what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again
• Decision-makers at nonprofits, law firms, financial services firms, and healthcare organizations throughout Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary, Apex, and the surrounding Research Triangle Park area who need IT guidance from someone who understands their industry
• Anyone who wants a straight answer about their technology situation from a team with twenty-plus years of experience, not a generalist account rep reading from a script

How the Consultation Works

We keep the process simple. Four steps, no runaround, and you are in control the entire time.

The entire consultation typically runs thirty to sixty minutes. We can meet in person at our Raleigh office, over a video call, or by phone. Whatever works best for your schedule.

What We Cover in Detail

Every business is different, and your consultation will be tailored to your specific situation. That said, here are the core areas we typically address and why each one matters for businesses operating in the Triangle.

Security Posture and Threat Landscape

Cyberattacks against small and mid-size businesses have increased dramatically. Ransomware groups now specifically target companies in the twenty-to-five-hundred-employee range because they often have valuable data but lack enterprise-grade defenses. During your consultation, we review your current security tools, policies, and practices against real-world attack patterns. We look at your endpoint protection, email security, multi-factor authentication, network segmentation, and backup strategy. If there are critical gaps, we tell you what they are and how attackers would exploit them. Our security program has maintained zero breaches among clients who follow our recommended security protocols, and we will share the same thinking that makes that possible.

Compliance Gaps and Regulatory Risk

Regulatory compliance is not optional, and the penalties for non-compliance are getting steeper every year. Businesses in the Research Triangle operate across industries with overlapping regulatory requirements. A medical practice needs HIPAA compliance. A defense subcontractor needs CMMC. A financial services firm may need SOC 2 and PCI DSS. A company doing business with European customers needs GDPR. During your consultation, we help you map out exactly which regulations apply to your business and identify where your current practices fall short. Craig Petronella is a CMMC Certified Registered Practitioner and has guided hundreds of organizations through complex compliance audits, so the guidance you receive comes from direct, hands-on experience.

IT Infrastructure and Performance

Your technology infrastructure is the backbone of your daily operations. When it works, nobody notices. When it fails, everything stops. We assess whether your current infrastructure, including servers, networking equipment, cloud services, workstations, and mobile devices, is properly sized, configured, and maintained for your operational needs. We look at your disaster recovery and business continuity plans to determine whether you could actually recover from a major outage or data loss event. For businesses running hybrid or fully cloud environments, we evaluate your cloud architecture against best practices for security, cost optimization, and performance. Many Triangle businesses are paying for cloud resources they do not need or are missing configurations that expose them to unnecessary risk.

Cost Optimization and IT Budget

Technology spending should be an investment that delivers measurable returns, not a black hole that consumes budget with unclear results. We have seen businesses overpaying for underperforming solutions and businesses cutting IT budgets to the point where a single incident could cost more than years of proper investment. During your consultation, we review your current IT spending and help you understand where your money is going, where it is delivering value, and where there are opportunities to reduce costs without increasing risk. We are honest about what things should cost, and we will flag it if you are being overcharged by a current vendor or if you are underinvesting in areas that could expose you to serious financial risk.

Why Petronella Technology Group

There are a lot of IT companies in the Raleigh-Durham area. Here is why businesses choose to work with us and why our free consultation is genuinely different from what you will get elsewhere.

• Twenty-three years in the Triangle. PTG was founded in 2002 by Craig Petronella. We have been serving businesses in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Cary, Apex, Research Triangle Park, and the surrounding communities for over two decades. We are not a franchise or a national chain. We are a local company with deep roots in this community and a reputation we have earned one client at a time.
• 2,500+ businesses served. From solo practitioners to mid-market companies with hundreds of employees, we have worked with organizations across healthcare, legal, finance, manufacturing, government contracting, education, and technology. This breadth of experience means we have likely seen a situation similar to yours and know what works.
• BBB Accredited since 2003. We have maintained our Better Business Bureau accreditation for over twenty years because we believe in accountability, transparency, and doing what we say we will do. That philosophy extends to our free consultation. We promise you honest answers, and that is exactly what you get.
• Real credentials, not marketing fluff. Craig Petronella is a Licensed Digital Forensic Examiner, CMMC Certified Registered Practitioner, and holds MIT certifications in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and compliance. He is an Amazon number-one best-selling author and has been featured on ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and WRAL. He serves as an expert witness for law firms in cybercrime and compliance cases. The expertise behind your consultation comes from someone who testifies in court on these topics.
• Comprehensive capabilities under one roof. Unlike firms that specialize in only one area, PTG provides managed IT services, cybersecurity, compliance consulting, digital forensics, cloud services, and emerging technology guidance. This means your consultation covers your entire technology landscape, not just one narrow slice of it.
• Zero pressure, every time. We offer this consultation because we believe that informed business leaders make better technology decisions. Some of those leaders will choose to work with us. Many will take our advice and implement it on their own. Either outcome is fine with us. Our goal is to demonstrate our expertise and build trust, not to close a deal.

Common Questions We Answer During Consultations

Over the past two decades, we have noticed that business owners tend to have the same core concerns about their technology. Here are the questions that come up most often and a preview of how we approach them.

Am I paying too much for IT?

It depends on what you are getting. We see businesses paying premium prices for reactive, break-fix support that never actually prevents problems. We also see businesses paying rock-bottom prices for providers who cut corners on security and monitoring. The right answer is not the cheapest option or the most expensive one. It is the option that provides proactive management, real security, fast response times, and transparent reporting at a fair price for your company size and complexity. We will help you benchmark your spending and understand what you should expect for your investment.

Is my business actually at risk for a cyberattack?

Yes. If your business uses email, has a website, stores customer data, or processes payments, you are a target. Attackers use automated tools that scan millions of businesses looking for common vulnerabilities. They do not care if you are a fifty-person law firm or a three-hundred-person medical practice. They care about whether your defenses are weak enough to exploit. We will help you understand your specific risk profile based on your industry, data types, and current security controls.

My IT provider says everything is fine. How do I know if that is true?

A good IT provider can demonstrate that everything is fine with evidence: monitoring dashboards, patch compliance reports, security scan results, backup test logs, and incident response documentation. If your provider tells you everything is fine but cannot show you the data to prove it, that is a red flag. During your consultation, we will tell you exactly what reports and metrics you should be receiving and what questions to ask your current provider.

We need to get compliant, but we do not know where to start.

Start with understanding which frameworks actually apply to your business. Many companies waste time and money pursuing certifications or compliance programs they do not actually need, while ignoring the ones they do. We help you map your regulatory obligations based on your industry, the data you handle, and the contracts you hold. Then we outline the gap between where you are and where you need to be, including realistic timelines and budget ranges so you can plan accordingly.

Should we move to the cloud or stay on-premises?

There is no universal answer. Some workloads are better in the cloud. Some are more cost-effective and performant on-premises. Many businesses benefit from a hybrid approach. The right answer depends on your data sensitivity requirements, compliance obligations, bandwidth and connectivity situation, growth trajectory, and budget constraints. We help you evaluate each workload individually rather than making a blanket decision that might not serve all parts of your business equally well.

What happens if we get hit with ransomware?

If you do not have a tested incident response plan, tested backups, and a clear chain of command for crisis decisions, a ransomware attack can shut your business down for days or weeks and cost tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. During your consultation, we assess whether you have the three things that matter most: immutable backups that ransomware cannot encrypt, an incident response plan your team actually knows how to execute, and cyber insurance that will actually pay out when you need it.

IT Consulting for the Research Triangle

The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area is one of the fastest-growing technology corridors on the East Coast. Research Triangle Park attracts businesses that operate in regulated industries, handle sensitive data, and need IT infrastructure that can keep pace with rapid growth. At the same time, the region is home to thousands of small and mid-size businesses that face the same cybersecurity threats as larger organizations but without the budget for a full in-house IT department.

PTG was built for this market. We understand the regulatory landscape that Triangle businesses navigate. We know the compliance requirements that affect medical practices in the Duke Health corridor, defense contractors in the RTP region, financial services firms in downtown Raleigh, and law firms across Wake and Durham counties. Our team lives and works here. When you call us, you talk to someone who understands your business environment, not a call center in another state.

Whether your office is on Fayetteville Street, off I-40 near the airport, in one of the RTP office parks, or in a growing suburb like Apex, Holly Springs, or Morrisville, we provide the same hands-on, expert consultation. We have clients across Wake County, Durham County, Orange County, and beyond. Our Centerview Drive office in West Raleigh makes us accessible to businesses throughout the Triangle, and we also offer phone and video consultations for anyone who prefers to meet remotely.

Frequently Asked Questions