Even before the pandemic, information technology played an increasingly important role in businesses at every level. After all, some businesses existed as online-only entities engaged in pure eCommerce. Yet, the pandemic pushed even die-hard businesses with no web presence online.
All of that existing IT infrastructure along with a huge influx of new players in the online world creates the opportunity for all kinds of tech problems. For the business owner looking to limit those problems to minor issues instead of catastrophes, what can you do?
Keep reading for five ways you can prevent those tech problems from leaving your business crippled.
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Employee Training
From a network security standpoint, employee training is probably one of the most important things you can do. After all, the human element is one of the more commonly exploited weaknesses in the tech infrastructure. Many hacks begin with some kind of social engineering.
Giving your employees a solid grounding in basic digital security can help you prevent a lot of avoidable tech issues.
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Use Backups
Something far too few businesses do is back up their data on a regular basis. Daily backups are the best because they strike a balance between minimizing potential data loss and spending resources wisely.
The backups themselves help you avoid problems like ransomware or catastrophic failures of things like in-house servers.
Also read: How Can Tech Advancements in Design Help You Create Great Presentations?
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Update Your Software and Hardware
Software producers routinely issue security updates to their software. Keeping that software up to date is one of the more effective methods of keeping out hackers. They exploit those security weaknesses to get into your systems.
Hardware updates happen on a cyclical schedule of about 3 to 5 years. That’s the approximate working life of most IT hardware. The older the hardware gets, the more likely it becomes that you’ll have technology problems.
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Maintain IT Help
Some businesses maintain an in-house IT staff to provide support to their systems. Some businesses outsource it and rely on virtual IT support. Some kind of hybrid model is fairly common.
You do, however, need some kind of IT help ready to go for when problems do occur.
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Service Monitoring
Your business network likely touches almost all parts of your business. You can’t watch the whole network all of the time. That’s where service monitoring comes into the picture.
Service monitoring keeps an eye on your whole network and watches for abnormal activity. When it happens, the service may alert you or take action to resolve the problem.
You can learn about service monitoring here.
Limiting Tech Problems at Your Company
Sadly, no single action you can take will dramatically reduce the number of tech problems at your company. It typically takes a group of related actions that add up to a more secure and better functioning IT infrastructure.
Basic security training for employees and backing up data are good starting points. Updating software and hardware goes a long way.
Having IT help on hand or a phone call away lets you solve some problems quickly. Service monitoring can catch problems you might not catch in time.
Looking for more tech tips? Check out our Tech section for more posts.
