Protect your Technological Assets - and the Business They Support
Protecting your business starts at the foundation. So we start with:
The Five Fundamentals for Avoiding Technology Stress
Backups
Your data must be protected, first and foremost. You need to have systems and procedures in place to copy your information to a safe place. That safe place is not in the same room with your server, nor even in the same building. In certain regulated industries, the backup of your data can’t be in the same county. There are many ways to accomplish this, and several different kinds of backup. One is right for your company – because you cannot do without it.
Virus Protection
To paraphrase Uncle Ben, the character in Spiderman, “With great power comes great potential for abuse.” It is far too easy for individuals to create nefarious computer programs and sic them on your computer. You need good, up-to-date, easily managed virus protection. It does not have to be expensive. It just needs to do its job and not interfere with yours.
Firewall
In the same vein as Virus Protection, there are people out there who want to take advantage of your wide-open Internet connection to either annoy or harm others. A firewall monitors and protects your connection to the outside world. Consider the distinction between the two this way: If your Internet connection is a pipe, then virus protection detects and eliminates poison in the water supply. A firewall protects the pipe from people drilling holes and siphoning off the water, or injecting poison into the water supply.
Power Protection
In this day and age, you’d think that plugging your computer into the wall wouldn’t be such a huge risk. Well, as good as the power grid is in this country, there is still plenty that can go wrong. Spikes, surges, brownouts, blackouts – they happen all the time, often undetected. Each time one of these events happens – the voltage higher or lower than it should be – it takes a toll on an unprotected computer. A surge protector only protects against too much voltage. But too little voltage is just as bad and can even be worse. That’s where battery backups and generators come in. Not only do they prevent service interruptions, they act to smooth the flow of power to your systems. And that keeps systems running better longer.
Succession Planning
This is an often-overlooked Fundamental. It’s also the first rung on the ladder up to Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery Planning (see below). In every company, there is one person who knows everything (from a systems standpoint, at any rate). Succession planning simply accounts for the possibility that this person might win the Lottery. It is a conscious, formal effort to collect the information needed to run, manage, access, and support the systems, so that the information can be transmitted to the next person to take the job. If Mr. Lottery Winner gets on a plane to Tahiti without bothering to tell you, the succession plan needs to be in a form that can be understood by his successor – without his help.
Once the fundamentals are in place, ps: Consulting Group can also help you take the next steps, with Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery planning.
Backups –
Ø Virus Protection –
Ø
Firewall –
Ø Power Protection –
Ø Succession Planning –
