Welcome to Summertime!

There’s a lot of peace of mind gained by vacationing. Unfortunately, summer in the South is one of the times when we experience our worst weather. Severe thunderstorms happen on a weekly, if not daily basis. With lightning, hail, and heavy rain, threats to the security of your business abound. The question begs to be asked: how do you keep your peace of mind while on vacation with the threat of losing computers and data near at hand?

Finally, the chance to relax after six months of focus. School is finally out, the kids are doing swim team or summer camp, and your vacation is just around the corner. What could be better?

Here are several simple ways:

Make sure your data is backed up and rotated offsite. You can accomplish this many ways. We recommend using the Cloud to get your data offsite. Doing so protects you from human error. There’s nothing worse than someone forgetting to take the backup drive home, only to find out the roof leaked and your backup drive and your server are dead. If offsite means a building next door, make sure your backup is in a secure location, like a safe, or if it’s networked, make sure it has power protection.

Make sure your server closet is running on a good battery backup. APC makes fantastic battery backups that stop lightning surges and brownouts, condition your power, and keep your server up long enough for it to shut down properly when the power goes out.

Put a battery backup on each of your desktop computers. This item gets missed quite a bit. It’s that extra investment that protects against the computer getting popped by lightning. Surge protectors are great, and the minimum you should invest in, but these devices, like the protection for the server closet, are worth their weight in gold this time of year. The most common way PCs get popped is through the network cable. Desktop battery backups have network protection built in.

Following these three steps can give you that peace of mind you are looking for during your summer vacation. If you haven’t taken these steps to protect your network, and you would like to find out more about how to make it happen, contact us and we will be glad to help you out.