4 Ways to Avoid IT Downtime

4 Ways to Avoid IT Downtime

Technology is a wonderful addition to every business. Everything you do now that was unthinkable 30 years ago has become part of your day-to-day life. It lets you compete on a more level playing field with big business. You can connect with customers from far away, boost productivity, efficiency, and add more zeros to your bottom line. IT is a necessity. Unfortunately, this means when downtime hits, you have a BIG problem.  

It may be from a virus, a bug, hardware failure or something else...whatever the cause, the impact is real. Gartner reports that 43% of small businesses close right after a major data loss. Only 6% of these businesses survive long term. The financial cost of each hour down can be in the thousands. The damage to your brand could be ruinous. While downtime hits every business, you can reduce the duration and frequency. Taking a few simple actions now may result in your business staying open.

Use Monitored Antivirus and Firewalls

Most businesses have these protections. Not all embrace the idea of monitored antivirus and firewalls. Instead, the default setup has more in common with a home setup than a robust professional system. Unmonitored systems are a primary target for malware and cyber-attacks. You should consider moving to a secure version. Our Managed Services Team can set up custom protection to block all attacks, both known and emerging. We take care of all updates. We apply company-wide protections so users cannot infect the network. When something does not look quite right our monitors take immediate action to protect your business.

Have Backups you can Count on

A great backup can protect you from digital threats like viruses and ransomware. They also protect against physical threats like robbery, fire, or natural disasters. The last thing you want is for your business to close because of data loss. A robust backup system can be as simple as asking our Managed Services Team to take care of it. If you have an on-site technician, use the rule of 3. One backup on the server, one unplugged from the server, and one off-site. If anything goes wrong, you will be able to pull up the most recent backup and continue as normal. Businesses without good backups tend to be down or limping along for days, if not weeks.

Plan for Disaster

Nobody likes to think about their business flooding or getting hit with ransomware. Would your employees know what to do if something happened? Having a comprehensive Disaster Recovery Plan helps you get back to work quicker. While minimizing downtime. Everyone knows what steps to take, who to tell, who should be doing what, and which systems take priority.

Watch Hardware for Early Signs of Failure

Computer hardware is like any piece of equipment. When it is getting old or cranky, it will let you know! This could be anything from making noises. Becoming louder or slower than normal. You can also have system crashes. Each symptom is your early warning system. It lets you act before a crash that sends everything into downtime. Our hardware monitoring service runs in the background. It tracks various metrics to predict time until failure. We can tell if the signs point to imminent failure. We will let you know and can often repair/replace the affected hardware with little or no downtime.

Downtime is an unavoidable part of any tech-enabled business. Your preparation can dictate whether it goes on for one minute or one week and how often it happens. According to one study, most firms experience 43 hours (about 2 days) average downtime per year. Scheduled downtime can be unavoidable. Scheduling downtime can help skip the panic of surprise downtime events. Reducing your risk is the best action you can take, making downtime a rare occasion. Our Managed Services Plans can take care of this for you. Stopping many downtime events before they occur.

Talk to us about minimizing your downtime! Call us at 877-686-6642.

‍