‘Tis the season to … do some network housekeeping. What would you do if the unexpected happens? There’s a blackout, your laptop is stolen from your car, or downloading someone’s dancing turkey video has infected one or more computers on the network with a virus? A backup plan takes it from what could be an utter disaster to somewhere on the inconvenience scale.

Even if you don’t have a rolling contract with an IT provider, it might be worthwhile for peace of mind to have them audit your system and review your IT plan. It should cover backup for all data and files and protection for viruses and malware. It can also be good to have clear protocols for all users so they don’t put the business at risk by failing to backup key files or unwittingly attracting a virus.

Review your network and start the year with all systems go.

Network health check

Virus protection
Do you have protection from viruses and malware? Is it up-to-date?

Backup
Do you have a routine backup of data and files? If you backup to external disk or tape, does this include all shared drives or just some? What happens with your laptops? Do you need to make sure you and your team are saving to the shared drives and not leaving critical files or the latest versions in their My Documents folders? Are your backups stored securely off-site?

If you have cloud data backup, does it cover all cloud data and desktops? Do you need to synchronise office laptops and hard drives to your cloud storage? If so does this happen automatically whenever users log into the network or do all users need to follow a manual process?

Future proof
It’s important to have some kind of rolling plan to replace out-of-date equipment. Even if your computer setup isn’t all absolutely up to the minute, it should at least be up to the operating requirements of the applications you need to run your business. If you’re largely operating in the cloud, hardware capability (and internet speeds) should be such that it doesn’t slow you and your team down whether downloading, uploading and just getting things done. Give some thought to whether this should be a priority.