With the weather raging across Essex today, we hope you’re keeping safe. In the build up to this storm we’ve seen plenty of articles and information about how to keep safe, the sort of information that tells you to make sure anything that isn’t tied down in your garden is secured, and not to park under trees.

Obviously, with severe weather conditions there are always possible problems. This could mean things like power cuts and travel disruptions, things that really have the opportunity to have a detrimental effect on your business.

Unfortunately, we can’t promise to stop a force of nature from causing a power outages. But this does seem like a good opportunity to talk about some of the ways that you can protect your business from more “man made” technology outages.

With more and more of our work being dependent on computers, one of the biggest security threats to businesses is from malware.

Malware comes in many forms, but commonly makes its way into a system through a phishing or scam email. We’ve covered some different types of malware in a previous blog – its well worth making sure you’re aware of the different types around.

The best things you can do on this front to protect yourself are:

1 – Invest in a good anti-malware to protect your IT system from harm.

2 – Make sure your IT system doesn’t come to harm in the first place by investing in security awareness and training for your staff.

Putting these two things in place will pay back many times over.

If you’ve got decent malware protection in place, the other thing you should focus on is how to keep your data safe and secure.

If you’re making sure the data you’re using to work is secure then it will reduce the risk of downtime by not being able to access it, or costing additional time to correct it if it’s been compromised.

Two things that you can do to build additional security around the data in your business are:

1 – Make use of a cloud system as a way to store your data. Many solutions available are very secure and being cloud based give you and other team members great accessibility.

2 – Use strong passwords, and password tools. This is an underrated tip, we’ve written previously about the benefits of strong passwords.

Following the two tips above will certainly start moving you away from the risks of downtime to your business.

The one other thing to look at is making sure you have a great IT team in place to support you in the event that the worst happens. The best way to protect yourself from technology outages as a small business owner is through managed IT.

As we said above, we can’t do anything about the weather, but we can do our best to keep your business safe and secure using the latest IT solutions.

 Learn about the full range of services offered by WebbyTech here, or contact us directly to discuss how we can best help you.