IT Support

6 simple steps YOU can take to protect your business from disaster

Many small business owners don’t realise preventative IT Support and maintenance can and should be implemented early on – before disaster strikes. While it's impossible to plan for every potential computer problem or emergency, a little proactive monitoring and maintenance of your computer network will help you avoid or greatly reduce the impact of the vast majority of computer disasters you could experience due to non-existing or poor IT Support measures.

Unfortunately most small business owners are NOT conducting any type of proactive IT Support like monitoring or maintaining their network, which leaves them completely vulnerable to the types of disasters you just read about. This is primarily for three reasons:

1. They don’t understand the importance of regular IT Support and network maintenance.

2. Even if they do understand the importance of regular IT Support, they simply do not know what computer network maintenance is required, or how to do it.

3. They are already swamped with more immediate day-to-day fires demanding their attention. If their computer network is working fine today, it goes to the bottom of the pile of things to worry about. That means no one is watching their IT support systems to make sure the backups are working properly, the virus protection is up-to-date, that critical security patches are being applied, or that the computer network is “healthy” overall.

While there are over 37 critical checks and IT Support maintenance tasks that need to be performed on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, here are the 6 most important IT Support tasks you can do to protect your company.

IT Support Step #1:

Make Sure You Are Backing Up Your Files Every Day

It’s an IT Support basic fundamental but many businesses never back up their computer network. Imagine this: you write the most important piece of information you could ever write on a chalkboard and someone just comes along and erases it. How are you going to get it back? You’re not. Because unless you can remember it or MADE A COPY OF IT, you can’t recover the data. It’s gone. That’s why it’s so important to back up your computer network as part of your IT Support and network maintenance. There are a number of things that could cause you to lose data files. So if the information on the disk is important to you, make sure you have more than one copy of it!

IT Support Step #2:

Check Your Backups On A Regular Basis To Make Sure They Are Working Properly

Another big mistake many business owners make is that they set up some type of backup system as part of their IT Support process, but then never check to make sure it’s working properly. It’s not uncommon for a system to APPEAR to be backing up when in reality, it’s not. There are dozens of things that can go wrong and cause your backup to become corrupt and useless. That’s why it’s not enough to simply back up your system; you have to check it on a regular basis as part of your IT Support and maintenance schedule to make sure the data is recoverable in the event of an emergency.

IT Support Step #3:

Keep An Offsite Copy Of Your Backups

IT Support is about being diligent both in and out of the office. What happens if a fire or flood destroys your small business server AND the backup tapes or drive? In America this is how hurricane Katrina devastated many businesses that have now been forced into bankruptcy. What happens if your office gets robbed and they take EVERYTHING? Having an offsite backup is an IT Support safeguard measure that is a simple, yet smart way to make sure you can get your business back up and running in a relatively short period of time.

IT Support Step #4:

Make Sure Your Virus Protection Is ALWAYS On AND Up-To-Date

You would have to be living under a rock to not know how devastating a virus can be to your computer network. As such, a big part of IT Support is keeping your data (and reputation) safe and secure. With virus attacks coming from spam, downloaded data and music files, instant messages, web sites, and e-mails from friends and clients, you cannot afford to be without up-to-date virus protection as part of your IT Support and maintenance plan.

Not only can a virus corrupt your files and bring down your computer network, but it can also hurt your reputation. If you or one of your employees, unknowingly spreads a virus to a customer - or if the virus hijacks your e-mail address book, you’re going to make a lot of people very angry. These days having properly functioning and effective virus protection goes hand in hand with the very foundations of any wise IT Support Strategy.

IT Support Step #5:

Set Up A Firewall

Small business owners tend to think that because they are 'just a small business', no one would waste time trying to hack in to their computer network - when nothing could be further from the truth. The simple fact is, that without a dedicated firewall as part of your IT Support Strategy, you’ll be vulnerable to the thousands of unscrupulous individuals out there who think it’s ‘fun’ to disable your computer just because they can.

These individuals strike randomly by searching the Internet for open, unprotected ports. As soon as they find one, they may delete your files, or infect your system with malicious programs that render your system inoperable. They can also use your computer as a zombie for storing pirated software or sending spam, which will cause your ISP to shut YOU down and prevent you from accessing the Internet or sending and receiving e-mail.

If the malicious programs can’t be deleted, you’ll have to re-format the entire hard drive causing you to lose every piece of information you’ve ever owned UNLESS you were backing up your files properly (see 1 to 3 above). Needless to say, setting up a firewall is an IT Support MUST HAVE.

IT Support Step #6:

Update Your System With Critical Security Patches As They Become Available

If your IT Support Strategy does not include installing the most up-to-date security patches and virus definitions on your computer network, hackers can access your computer through a simple e-mail attachment.

Not too long ago Microsoft released a security bulletin about three newly discovered vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to gain control of your computer by tricking users into downloading and opening a maliciously crafted picture. At the same time, Microsoft released a Windows update to correct the vulnerabilities - but if you didn’t have an IT Support process to ensure you were applying critical updates as soon as they become available, you were completely vulnerable to this attack.

Here’s another compelling reason to ensure your computer network stays up-to-date with the latest security patches…

Most hackers do not discover these computer network security loopholes on their own. Instead, they learn about them when Microsoft (or any other software vendor for that matter) announces the vulnerability and issues an update. That is their cue to spring into action and they immediately go to work to analyse the update and craft an exploit (like a virus) that allows them access to any computer or network that has not yet installed the security patch as part of their IT Support schedule.

In essence, the time between the release of the update and the release of the exploit that targets the underlying vulnerability is getting shorter every day.

When the ‘nimda’ worm was first discovered back in the fall of 2001, Microsoft had already released the patch that protected against that vulnerability almost a year before (331 days). So computer network administrators had plenty of time to apply the update. Of course, many still hadn’t done so and the nimda worm caused lots of damage. But in the summer of 2003 there were only 25 days between the release of the Microsoft update that would have protected against the “blaster” worm and the detection of the worm itself!

Clearly, someone needs to be paying close attention to your IT Support systems to ensure that critical updates are applied as soon as possible. That’s why it’s highly recommended for small business owners without full-time IT staff to allow an IT consultant to monitor and maintain their computer network and IT support systems.

This article was supplied by Human IT providers of IT Support in Melbourne, Australia. Including dedicated IT Services to small businesses, IT Support Consultants and IT Strategy.

Human IT is Australia’s only IT Services company with the ‘IT Roadmap Planner’... designed to help small business owners reduce IT Support costs, improve staff productivity and achieve better profits.