5 Ways To Avoid IT Downtime

Businesses don’t often consider IT as a growth area for their company but they should.

On a daily basis, businesses will carry out their daily activities without a thought for the IT systems they use and the very thing that allows them to keep working. When IT systems do go down what happens then?

5 Ways to Avoid IT Downtime

IT is a necessity and that means downtime can also become inevitable. When this happens it can become a big problem quickly.

The best thing to do is a plan for minimising downtime and make it either something that doesn’t happen or minimise the effect if it does.

Let us give you some advice that can keep you in business while your competitors suffer, see 5 Ways to Avoid IT Downtime.

Managed Antivirus

The worst thing you can do in a business is to use a free or low-cost product that is unmanaged,

an SMB is a primary target for Malware and Viruses so having software that is monitored is always recommended.

A Managed Antivirus product can proactively manage your network and protect computers from attack.

Reports and alerts are created that can be reviewed and the decision to react now or schedule an appointment to make a change later can be done at your convenience.

Not only will your systems be protected by up-to-date threats but a Managed Antivirus means we can check to make sure systems are kept up to date, this prevents infections from slipping through.

Plan For Disasters

No one wants to think about a disaster happening, either natural disasters or Ransomware, phishing attacks, and viruses.

But if you are affected do you have a suitable plan in place? Our article asking What Is Your Disaster Recovery Plan? generated so many calls from businesses wanting to get something in place,

it just shows that people don’t normally consider the what-if scenarios.

You need to have a comprehensive recovery plan in place, this will help minimise downtime and potential financial loss by any such downtime.

Backups

The most important item businesses should consider when it comes to protecting their longevity is to make backups.

A good backup can protect you from Malware, Ransomware, and Viruses. An offsite backup can also protect you from robberies, natural disasters such as floods, lightning, and earthquakes, or in the case of the recent events in the news from fires too.

Our best backup approach is to make one backup onsite,

another from an external drive, and then for this to be taken offsite and the third is an online backup backed up to the cloud.

By having a cloud option it is possible to spin up a backup,

and if the worst happens where your server is offline then we can point to the backup by use of a Virtual Machine (VM).

You can be back up temporarily in minutes while your onsite server is replaced or repaired.

Monitor Hardware For Failure

Unfortunately, our computers are unable to last forever, while we may not want to think of their demise it is inevitable that computers will wear out.

Businesses often plan to replace computers within 3 to 5 years and this is a wise decision. Often you will know when the time to replace the device is coming near,

from a computer getting loud or making clicking noises while it loads anything or finding batteries wearing out quick.

An alternative is to use a Managed Service Plan, to look after and monitor your devices to catch potential failure.

Pre-failure warnings or glitches can be picked up by the monitoring software so we can proactively Investigate and fix them.

Not only will this help avoid downtime but it will prevent staff not being able to work and reduce costs due to catching the issues before they turn catastrophic.

Monitor Windows Updates & Third-Party patching

Many businesses completely forget about updates, I am shocked when we receive a call from a potential client who found our details,

and after having a brief conversation it turns out they don’t bother to run Windows Updates or never bother to research or look into updating third-party apps.

I am sure you have heard news stories about mass issues with Ransomware but did you know that often these issues were fixed in a Windows Update?

Companies often fail to roll out sufficient patching beforehand.

Our Managed Services Plan can look after both Windows Updates and Third-party patching, useful to avoid installing Windows Updates that may break something.

We perform vigorous testing and only roll out once it is confirmed to be without issues that will affect you. Choosing to hire an outsourced Managed Services team rather than hiring in-house can be a good cost-saving, and generally are more specialised in the areas to help you stay protected and prevent downtime, read our article called 5 Reasons to choose Managed Services over hiring an in-house team.