Top 5 Business Computer Oversights
Posted on July 31, 2007
Filed Under Business Computing, Networking, Security, Software, Windows |
There’s no denying it, computers are at the heart of practically every business today. Finances are kept on computers, marketing material, trade secrets, employee and client data, everything. Many businesses simply wouldn’t exist were it not for computers.
With all of that important stuff stored on computers you’d think we’d be diligent in protecting it and insuring it never gets lost. The truth is, we’re all human and we sometimes overlook things that might put our business – or personal for that matter – data at risk.
What follows are the top 5 oversights we’ve seen businesses make when it comes to their computer systems.
1. Failing to backup or to ensure that backups are working.
One of my favorite clients owns a financial management business and the entire organization embraces technology. Calendars are kept in Microsoft Outlook and Exchange and everything is done electronically. When we first met, the server was backed up to tape and the tapes were changed daily.
Trouble was, someone would change the tape but no one was checking the backup log. Little did anyone know that the backup software they were using was a trial version that had expired – and stopped working – some 18 months prior. Needless to say, the backup hadn’t run in 18 months even though there was a fresh new tape waiting every day.
2. Plan for the worst.
Downtime can be a serious expense and in many cases can devastate a business. Think about the time it could take to fix a broken server or computer and possibly recreate lost data. It could easily run into days and if there is data loss, even weeks or months. A great way to ruin a perfectly good business is to go broke trying to recover from disaster.
Even a basic plan for recovering from data loss can save a ton of money and time. Consider what programs and data are most critical and plan to get them back first. It’s easy to think of email as “critical” and rush to recover it while financial data for example waits. Knowing what to recover before recovery is necessary gives you the best chance of recovering quickly and methodically.
3. Securing wireless networks and routers.
Possibly a pet peeve for me, an unsecured wireless network is just an accident waiting to happen. People tend to view a wireless network as merely access to the Internet when in fact it can – and usually does – provide access to your entire network. It’s always a bad practice to plug in a new wireless router and disregard the security settings.
Same goes for not changing the default password for a wired or wireless broadband router. Its incredible how even professionals will set up an Internet connection, possibly secure a wireless network, and then neglect to change the password on a router. Always change default passwords especially on devices – like routers – that are directly connected to the Internet.
4. No antivirus or antivirus is out of date.
Viruses and spyware are real threats that do real damage to data. A virus can damage data and spread across a network like wildfire. Antivirus software is an absolute must – at least on Windows networks – that if ignored will bite hard. And because new viruses and spyware are released daily, the software must be kept up to date.
5. No power protection
A battery backup can be worth its weight in – well they are pretty heavy so maybe not gold but something else really expensive!
Poor power leads to data corruption. Data is stored in temporary memory while it is being worked on and when the power goes out, some of that data may not get stored back in permanent memory. Bits of data get lost and soon the remaining data becomes useless. A decent battery backup unit is relatively inexpensive these days and is a great investment.
With a few well thought out plans in place and some simple software and equipment, even if disaster strikes, business will carry on.
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.