Downtown Glendale and Brand Boulevard
Downtown Glendale grew up along Brand Boulevard, and today it mixes office towers with the Glendale Galleria and the Americana at Brand. LegalZoom and Public Storage have their headquarters in Glendale, DreamWorks Animation is one of its largest employers, and smaller law, accounting, insurance and real estate firms rent suites in the same buildings. The Glendale Courthouse on Broadway keeps law practices close by.
Firms like these hold client files, financial records and identity documents, and many move money by wire. The most common threat to offices like this is email fraud: a fake invoice, or a hijacked mailbox that changes payment instructions. Email security, multi-factor sign-in on every account, and a call-back rule for any change to wire details stop most of it. Our guide to business email compromise shows how these scams work.
Creative campuses on Flower Street
Around Flower Street and the old Grand Central Air Terminal, Glendale hosts large creative campuses, including Walt Disney Imagineering and DreamWorks Animation, along with design, animation and post-production companies of every size. Their work looks a lot like Burbank's next door: very large files, render and edit workstations, and studio clients who send security questionnaires.
For smaller creative shops, the job is to keep artists productive without leaving content exposed: fast, separated networks, workstations that are patched and monitored, secure remote access for artists who work from home, and backups of project files that are tested by restoring them. Our Burbank page covers studio security assessments in more depth.
Medical practices around Glendale's hospitals
Glendale has three hospitals: Adventist Health Glendale, Dignity Health Glendale Memorial Hospital and USC Verdugo Hills Hospital. Around them are physician groups, dental offices, imaging centers, pharmacies and therapy practices, many in older medical buildings where the network was added one cable at a time.
Every one of these practices works under HIPAA. In practice that means a current risk analysis, encrypted laptops and phones, secure email and texting with patients, and access that ends when someone leaves. We set up HIPAA compliance safeguards and keep the records that prove them. See IT for healthcare practices and dental offices.
Family-owned firms, and support in Farsi
Glendale has one of the largest Armenian communities outside Armenia, and many of its families came to Glendale by way of Iran. Family-owned firms of every kind are common here, from retail and service businesses to medical groups and law offices. Many have grown for years without an IT plan, so a new hire, a second location or a ransomware scare is often what starts the conversation.
Support is available in Farsi as well as English, and the person who picks up is often an owner, George Mansoor or Nazy Rafaeil. For owners who would rather talk through a new system or a security plan in Farsi, that makes planning easier. We don't offer support in Armenian.
Hillsides, fire risk and Glendale's own utility
Glendale backs onto the Verdugo Mountains. The city has adopted updated state fire maps that put much more of it in the Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone because of wind-driven embers from the Verdugos, and its fire chief has said 63 percent of the city is wildland urban interface. A fire or an evacuation can close an office for days even if the building is fine.
Glendale also has its own utility, Glendale Water & Power, which supplies the city's electricity and water. Whoever supplies your power, outages happen. Cloud-based files, battery backup for network gear, a second internet connection and a written business continuity plan let your team keep working from home when the office can't open.
How we work with Glendale businesses
Most help starts remotely, within minutes of your call. When something needs hands, such as new equipment, a failed switch or a move to a new suite, an engineer comes to you. Businesses with a second site in Burbank, Pasadena or the Valley get one setup and one number to call. See our pages for Pasadena and the San Fernando Valley.
