Have you ever had that ominous hunch that something bad is going to happen – and then it does? Unfortunately, this gut-wrenching feeling is far-too-familiar for small businesses facing the complexity of information technology.
By its nature, IT is a confusing, expensive and forever-changing animal. Hardware and software sometimes become obsolete within months, let alone a few years. And thanks to budget restraints, many small businesses fall into lethal traps like hiring inexperienced personnel to handle their IT. But it only takes a single mistake to lead to a catastrophic loss of company data, and starting over can be heartbreaking.
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are many ways small business owners can learn from the mistakes of others. As a veteran IT professional on the front lines each day, I’m going to blog about the top 12 most common errors that small businesses make with IT. Each day will bring a new mistake, starting with Mistake #1 today.
Mistake #1: Using broken backup systems
Many small business owners assume that just because hardware or software is present, data itself is protected. This is a terrible assumption. Just because a server has an appendage that looks like a tape spooler attached doesn’t mean that the tape backups are actually working. Even if the tapes pop out every day and the backup software says it’s working, it may not be. At a bare minimum, small businesses should perform testing on backup systems every few months. It is far more costly to recover lost data than to perform the routine testing.
Some of this content written by Brian Roach of Evolve Partners