Protecting Your Data

There are a number of topics under this main heading, each of which could be expanded to full articles. We’ll cover the basics here.

UPS – Uninterruptible Power Supply

The UPS is an essential part of any office – and there should be one for each desktop and notebook computer you have. A UPS is basically a big battery – it’s usually 3 or 4 ni-cad batteries housed in a plastic case. You plug the UPS into the wall and plug your computers and monitors, printers into the UPS.

The UPS has a circuit breaker that protects your computer equipment from fluctuations in the line – the quality of the electricity reaching your electronics. IT should cover lightening strikes as well – depending how close it is.

The other thing a UPS does is give you a few minutes of power in the case your office suddenly loses power. You’ll have time to quickly save whatever you need before shutting down the computers.

Data Backups

You probably don’t need a RAID 5 configured computer network in your office if you’re one or two people. If the data you save is priceless – you do. They are expensive and you’ll want an expert to set it up for you – also expensive.

Most companies can do with backing up their essential files to DVD or USB memory sticks. There are 32GB memory sticks now that can save quite a bit of data. I have a number of 8GB USB drives that I back up essential data to every couple days. In fact, I have multiple backups of the same data. There’s something to be said for redundancy!

Something to keep in mind if you do lose a hard drive to breakage… If you send that hard drive to a tech place to get fixed they WILL look at your data out of curiousity and they might grab your passwords out of files you have saved… they might login to any accounts you have auto-login enabled with in your internet browser. For me – that’s an unacceptable risk. I always just destroy the hard drive because I always have the info backed up pretty well. You should too.

AntiVirus Programs

Yes you need one. A good one. A great one even. Norton has a 2009 product out that has a smaller footprint than previous versions of it’s software. That means it consumes less resources on your computer and won’t slow your computer down much – which antivirus programs are notorious for. Get the whole internet protection package that protects you from everything.

There is no point at all just having a virus scanner that doesn’t protect you from getting the viruses proactively to start with.

If your antivirus manufacturer offers a firewall – get that too.