When it comes to technology disasters, many businesses think it won’t happen to them. They believe they are too small, too big, or even too protected. Unfortunately, businesses in all of those categories have experienced technology disasters. Our Houston office technology experts want to help your business make sure you avoid these common technology disasters before they happen.
Computer Viruses
Protecting against computer viruses may seem like a given, but protection isn’t a “one size fits all.” There are many different types of viruses out there, and you need to be aware of what they are and how they can affect your systems. A virus can cause a minor annoyance to a major catastrophe. Make sure each computer in your business system has up-to-date anti-virus software and monitor it regularly. Also be sure that each employee is cautious of how they are using the network while on your business systems. Train them to be diligent and aware of sites or emails that may be pose a threat.
Website Issues
With a large percentage of consumers on the internet, having a fully functioning website is important. Unfortunately, things don’t always go as smoothly as we hope. Once in a while websites experience some downtime here and there for a variety of reasons, but what happens when a website is down for hours at a time or, worse, days? Well, you definitely should send out apologies to current customers and expect to appear non-existent to new customers looking for you on the web. It’s really not a disaster most businesses can afford.
So what can you do? Be sure your server can handle your traffic. Is your site growing larger? Is your current server equipped to handle the size of your website and the traffic it receives? Is your website protected from hackers that can encrypt malware and other harmful codes in it? A website hack is another dangerous disaster as it sends a warning to Google to no longer list your business in search results. You have to clean up the mess and resubmit your site again to start receiving traffic from Google again.
Evaluating these regularly should ensure your website doesn’t experience a downtime disaster or get hacked. If there are problems with a shared hosting account, it might be a good idea to change hosts.
Compromised Information
One of the scariest technology disasters is compromised information. No matter what type of business you run chances are high you have important information that should not be in anyone else’s hands be it payroll information, client information, etc. Protecting your valuable information is important as is protecting your clients’ information, which can result in many negative consequences should it be compromised. When such an incident occurs, a business is responsible for notifying all customers about the security breach and taking any action necessary to compensate them for any losses or damages.
Data Loss
Data Loss is another potentially expensive technology disaster. It’s also one of the most common disasters. It can happen for a variety of reasons – theft, viruses, unprotected local servers, local or hardware disasters. It is always advised to backup your data regularly. This is key, though some businesses fail to implement even this one step.
It’s also important to take it beyond this and backup your data off-site. If you have a local disaster and everything gets wiped out, and you don’t have data backed up off-site, you will still lose everything even though you performed regular backups. With cloud technology available, backing up data off-site is more convenient than ever.
Because it’s important to backup your data off-site, it is also important to make sure that data is secure by encrypting your data. Data available on laptops and mobile devices can easily be stolen, and this type of theft is very common. Be sure that your data is encrypted to avoid compromising information through this type of theft.
If you need to be sure your business is prepared to ward off these technology disasters, give our Houston office technology experts a call today or Request a Quote to get started!