‘Tis the season to … do some network housekeeping. What would you do if the unexpected happens while you’re on the beach? Check your system before closedown.

What’s your festive season backup plan? A blackout, a stolen laptop, or the dancing turkey video infecting the system with a virus could dampen the Christmas cheer. 

Even if you don’t have a contract with an IT provider, it may be worthwhile to have them audit your system and review your IT plan. Establish clear protocols with your team so they don’t put the business at risk by failing to backup key files or unwittingly downloading a virus.

Start the holidays with peace of mind and come back in the new year good to go. Check:

• Virus protection: Is it up to date to carry you through the holiday period? 
• Backup: Does routine backup of data and files include all shared drives or just some? What about your laptops? Make sure you and team are saving to the shared drives and not leaving the latest versions of critical files in local My Documents folders. Are backups stored securely offsite or in the cloud? Are laptops and hard drives synchronised to cloud storage? Does this happen automatically on login or is it a manual process?
• Future proof: Plan to replace out of date equipment. Even if your computer setup isn’t absolutely up to the minute, it should be able to handle your business applications’ operating requirements. If your systems are cloud-based, make sure hardware capability and internet speeds don’t slow the team down whether downloading, uploading and just getting things done. Should this be a priority?

The Sharpe Marketing team use Mark from IT Star. They are professional services experts.