Lessons to Learn from the Top 3 SMB IT Failures

Downtime and inefficiency are some of the biggest issues that businesses experience on an everyday basis with their technology. While interruptions can and will happen, there’s no reason that your business should be crippled by downtime or inefficiency. Proactive measures go a long way when we’re talking about technology failure. From setting up business continuity solutions to proactively refreshing workstations and servers, there’s a lot that you can do to avoid outages and failures. Every day we come across organizations that are experiencing technology failures, and most of the time we’re able to help them through it and come up with a solution for how to avoid the issue happening in the future. So frequently they say to us, “I wish I would’ve found you sooner.” Here are some lessons from the top SMB IT failures and what you should know to avoid them in your organization:

1. Data loss due to backup failure.
   No matter how data is lost, whether an employee accidentally deletes a file or folder or your server fails, you need to be able to recover that data. All too often, business owners discover that their backups have been failing and that the data is not viable. They’re forced to pay thousands a day forensics service that isn’t always successful and are left with many regrets.
   Lesson: Backups should be checked to ensure that they’re running on a daily basis, but ideally several times per day. Those backups should be tested on a weekly basis to ensure that they’re viable and be used to recover your data. There’s nothing worse than investing in a backup solution that fails you.

2. Virus infection causing a server crash.
   An employee opens and phishing e-mail and clicks a link that infects the server with a virus. The virus encrypts the data on the server and locks out all employees, including the IT department. Business operations come to a screeching halt.
   Lesson: IT security and virus protection should be actively monitored in real time. Infections can be prevented by adhering to best practices, which means that antivirus definitions are updated frequently and the environment is proactively managed to avoid and block viruses. Organizations that adopt Managed Antivirus are 99.9% impervious to threats.

3. Lightning strikes and power surges causing firewall failure and internet outages.
   It’s summer time here in Florida and that means our regular thunderstorms come rolling through in the afternoon with some pretty crazy lightning. Storms are a major problem for business owners that don’t have battery backup protection in place, but protects against surging and also allows employees to save their work by offering home a buffer time period in the event of a power outage.
   Lesson: Having the proper power surge and battery backup protection in place can ensure that not only the equipment is safe during storms or power surges but also that when the power goes out for short periods there is no lag time when it comes back on. The system continues running without interruption.

Resoundingly in the managed technology services industry, you’ll find that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. But being proactive bout these popular (and often recurring) issues is important. Businesses are learning hard lessons every day when they refuse to invest in proactive planning for their technology. But data loss, downtime and failures are very real problems that bring productivity to a halt and have your business bleeding in minutes. Common technology failures are preventable.