Happy New Year from Avende! As 2015 gets rolling, why not make a couple of resolutions regarding your business’ IT systems?

Resolve to protect personal data.
In the wake of the Sony hacking scandal, many businesses have become more aware of just how much of their own personal and employee data is stored in their systems. Do you have an HR person who has social security numbers on an unsecured laptop?

Resolve to create a realistic IT budget.
Equipment and services are probably line items in your budget, but are those numbers proactive or reactive? Planning for your equipment lifecycle in advance can prevent costly downtime or emergency replacements, and using managed services can give you steady support at an unchanging rate.

Resolve to store business critical information in a central place with regular backups.
All that stuff on your laptop is just one dead hard drive away from being gone forever. Enforce the use of a central storage system (e.g. server) with daily backups. While we’re at it, resolve to keep a backup at some other location – a fire that destroys a server will also destroy the backup tapes or other backup media sitting on near it. Or, consider implementing a private cloud, with your servers and data all safe in a datacenter.

Even if you can’t fix all of these things tomorrow, it’s a good idea to at least think them through and consider what liabilities might need to take priority and begin to knock those off your list. As always, we are available to assist with these or any other technology needs you have.