When you think about getting IT support for your business, there are a lot of options to choose from and companies providing IT support. But which one is the best for you? Here’s the pros and cons of one.

Option #1: Don’t do anything UNTIL something breaks or stops working.

This is really foolish, but we see it every day: businesses that don’t pay attention to the care and maintenance of their computer network until it stops working. Then they are forced to call in an expert to repair or replace whatever caused the problem.

This reactive model of network support is no different than ignoring the “change oil” light in your car until smoke starts pouring out from under the hood. Taking a reactive approach to IT support is a surefire path to getting hit with ransomware and losing data, as well as having ongoing IT issues that slow you and your staff down.

Even if your computer network appears to be working fine, there are a number of daily, weekly and monthly maintenance tasks that must be performed to make sure you don’t fall victim to a cyber-attack and lose your data. A short list of these tasks includes:

  • Security monitoring
  • Verification of backups
  • Security patches and updates
  • Disaster recovery planning
  • Server and desktop optimization
  • Employee policies and monitoring
  • Intrusion detection
  • Spam filtering

If you run specialized practice management, customer relationship management or production software, or if you have multiple locations, a wireless network, highly sensitive data (such as financial or medical organizations, any government agencies or any company that has regulatory compliance considerations) or other specialized needs, the list is even longer.

If you learn only one lesson from this, I hope it will be to proactively monitor, maintain and secure your network instead of choosing to react to network and IT problems as they arise. Aside from your staff members, your network and the data on it are undoubtedly some of the most valuable assets your business possesses – client data, contracts, work product, conversation histories, e-mails and more.

As the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; this goes double for your computer network. Unfortunately, some business owners are too cheap and end up paying for it in other ways. Stupid.

In my book, I offer multiple checklists to make sure the IT company you hire is the correct one for YOUR business.  Grab your book here: https://www.creativeresources.net/up_in_smoke/