It’s safe to say that only the luckiest few in the world of work can completely avoid having to interact with computers in order to make it through the day. For the rest of us, having to start the day punching in your password is standard protocol. Always with that worry that an IT disaster will strike!
From logging on, it’s onto inboxes, updates and productivity. Hopefully.
Some mornings however, the IT Gods just aren’t looking down favourably on you and the initial thrill of having a solid reason for not getting much done today evaporates quickly when you remember, it’s payday, you work in payroll, you’re the only one in today and you’re not going home tonight until everyone in the building is paid.
Thankfully, there are those of us that love getting up to our necks in execution errors, invalid page files and system shutdowns. We ones that return home happy after they’ve rectified what went wrong, stopped it happening again and in short, saved the day the for everyone.
As much as we enjoy preventing your I.T. meltdowns, there are some common sense steps that everyone can take to stop things escalating to this point. Here’s our top 3…
Updates.
In these connected times, updates are available for everything from your socks to your sockets to whatever is plugged into them. Largely, it’s a painless process perhaps punctuated by a reboot, but the benefits of keeping your devices updated outweighs a spot of downtime in most circumstances. While it might seem that companies release their relentless upgrades with an evil cackle, it’s worth remembering that they are the first line in keeping you safe from hackers, viruses and all the other internet-borne woes. Updates also bring you new features and can expand your connectivity with the wider world. You should make sure that your systems are set to regularly check for updates and consider upgrading any piece of equipment in your network that has ceased receiving support from the manufacturer.
Backups
These days, the only excuse for not having a backup solution for your data is perhaps not having the time to organise one. But imagine how much time (and tears) it would take to get your business back on its feet in the event of losing everything. Not only do backups provide you with a crucial escape route from data disaster, the fact you have a plan in place should also give you peace of mind. Thanks to high speed broadband, backups can now happen incrementally as files are created, to secure off-site locations. Also due to ever-decreasing price per gigabyte of storage media, it’s very cost effective to have your own secondary backup on-site.
Encryption.
In May 2018, the Data Protection Act became GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation. For most businesses it simply means that they must protect any information they hold on their clients which allows them to be identified. The fines for non-compliancy are astronomical so as with everything else we’ve mentioned; a little bit of forethought is all that’s required. The ability to encrypt your existing data and continuing to encrypt it going forwards is a feature built into most modern workstations and servers. It simply needs a little bit of I.T. know-how to enable it and make sure you retain the ability to de-encrypt it if required. Combined with a common sense approach to data storage, encryption is the fool-proof way to ensure that in the event of theft, anything stolen remains unreadable by anyone but the original owner.
