One of the challenges of building and maintaining a high speed network, is knowing when to take it off line and when not to interrupting the least amount of people as possible without pulling all-nighters or paying an IT company approximately $190 to do it for you.

1: Perform a Comprehensive System Back and Then Do a Complete Restore From That Back Up

During your holiday break look into doing a comprehensive back up for the year, but then recover from that back up. Many organizations invest thousands in back up services but have never done a run through of recovering from their back up ensuring that it really works. Your back up, unlike an insurance policy, can be tested before you have to file a claim.  The last thing you would ever want to find out is that you are not fully covered.

2: Schedule Server Consolidation, Server Replacement, or Any Major Network Maintenance

Now can be a time of year to look into consolidating any servers that you may be ready to take out of service or for installing a new server. Other things to review are hard drive space being used and if they need to be upgraded to take on expected growth for the upcoming year. If you have been getting complaints the server is running slow, this would be a good time to upgrade the RAM. Remove any past users who may no longer be with the company and whose managers may still be accessing their files and emails.

3: Evaluate New Technology Products and Services

As a busy business owner this can be the best time of year to test new products and services that you have wanted to explore.  Setting up a test environment would be the best way to test a new software or hardware product.  The team at Expetec of Rochester recommends having the people who are impacted most test a product and then provide some feedback. In addition, you and your Network Administrator can verify if your current business computer network has enough horsepower to handle whatever the product is you chose to test.

4: Review Your Security and Usage Policies

In today’s world of “Bring Your Own Device”, it is important to ensure that when your employees are using these devices your corporate security policies are protecting that data and protecting your proprietary information.  Equally important, they should be protecting your customer’s information. The rules governing PCI Compliance and HIPAA are forever changing, so this is a good time to update these policies.

5: Plan and Budget Your Life Cycle for The Year

Take a look at your inventory of switches, firewalls, servers, computers, software and devices that run on your business computer network. This is a good time to budget for the replacement of any of these devices or software so that there are no surprises throughout the year. In addition, take a look at what devices and software have had reoccurring issues that are costing your organization more in repairs than it would to replace that product.

Tips for Staying Productive During Technology Outages

Below are 10 ways of staying productive when you just can’t seem to connect to the Internet. Keep in mind that most of the items on the list are geared toward specific situations. For example, some are appropriate only for unscheduled computer network outages, while others will work only if you plan ahead.

1: Use Windows offline folders

When I’m traveling, I can’t always depend on being able to access the files on the servers at my office. That being the case, I take advantage of the Windows offline files feature. It allows you to mark folders on network drives as available for offline use. The contents of the folders are then cached to the laptop’s hard drive. This way, I can always access my files, regardless of whether I am connected to my network.

2: Print what you’ll need

Earlier this year, a friend wrote a book and the publisher asked me if I would help out with the technical editing. Unfortunately, there was a really tight turn-around time, and I had to fly to London the next day. My first instinct was to copy the manuscript to my laptop so that I could review the book while I was on the plane, but I knew that my laptop battery would never hold out long enough to get the job done. Since I knew I was going to be offline and without AC power for the duration of the flight — and since I really needed to get the review done — I printed a copy of the manuscript and worked from paper. Granted, it wasn’t the most elegant solution to the problem, but it worked and I met my deadline.

3: Find another way to get online

There are some situations when you just can’t get online. For instance, if you’re at 35,000 feet and the airline doesn’t offer Wi-Fi, you’re pretty much stuck. However, if you’re at home or at the office and the Internet goes down, the most sensible solution might be to find another connection. When my Internet service goes down and I have a lot to get done, I usually end up working from my cell phone or finding a coffee shop that offers Wi-Fi.

4: Take care of other neglected tasks

I’m not always in the middle of a critical, deadline-driven project when my Internet service drops offline. So it doesn’t always make sense to pack up all of my stuff and go heading off to the nearest coffee shop. If I’m not super busy, I often try to use the outage as an excuse to get some neglected chores taken care of. For example, I might clean my desk or work on my latest travel expense report.

5: Take the Internet offline with you

A few months ago, I was asked to write an article that compared a hand full of competing products. I was traveling at the time, and I knew that I couldn’t depend on having reliable Internet service. I had worked with the products enough that I knew what I wanted to say. But I needed some basic information off the vendor’s Web sites, such as pricing and system requirements. Thankfully, Internet Explorer can make Web page contents available offline. I simply cached the pages I needed before I left home so that I had them at my disposal while I was on the go.

6: Answer emails

Another thing I do when I have no Internet access is answer email messages. While this might seem counter-intuitive, it actually works well. Microsoft Outlook caches Exchange Server mailboxes in an .OST file. This means that Outlook can display your email messages, contacts, tasks, and calendar, even if it can’t connect to Exchange. This caching makes it possible to reply to email messages even without Internet connectivity. Of course, your replies are not actually sent until a connection to the mail server can be established.

7: Have an impromptu staff meeting

If you work in an office environment and your Internet service goes offline, one way to remain productive is to have an impromptu IT staff meeting. The outage may give you time to brainstorm, catch up on the status of various projects, and discuss issues that might ordinarily have been neglected.

8: Return phone calls

At the end of the day, I usually have a number of phone calls to return. And because my phone system is not based on VoIP, I can use the time that would otherwise have been wasted during an Internet outage to work through my call backlog.

9: Catch up on your reading

Sometimes, the unavailability of Internet service can be a blessing. The lack of connectivity gives you the opportunity to do things you might otherwise neglect. A couple of weeks ago, for example, I had to fly out to the west coast and I knew I probably wouldn’t have Internet access on the flight. I took the opportunity to read a SQL Server book I hadn’t had a chance to look at.

10: Give your brain a break

The idea of taking a brain break probably seems really out of place, especially since this article is all about staying productive when no Internet service is available. I can’t speak for anyone else, but taking a short break often improves my productivity. And what better time to take a break than when your ISP is having an outage?

Is the technology in your organization getting in the way of the results you would like to achieve? 

Contact the experts at Expetec Technology Services today to help make your technology work for you.

Published with permission from TechRepublic.com. Source.

Business Continuity Plans (BCP), plans on how to provide a stable service, or recover after adverse actions, have become top of mind with many managers. Businesses have adopted such plans, or are in the process of implementing one, but owners may have missed some crucial elements that could result in an ineffective plan.

Here are six key non-IT functions and processes that need to be in place to ensure your company is ready to effectively execute your BCP.

Easy to use plans Many continuity plans have been developed mainly for the IT department, as such, they can be a little complicated to understand and follow if employees don’t have a technical background. You should aim to have a plan that’s easy to follow and can be understood by all employees.

Communicate plans Remember that your plan encompasses all facets of your organization. It’s crucial that every employee knows their role and the relevant actions to take when the plan is executed. To do this, you need to ensure that all employees have access to a copy of the plan and any changes or updates are clearly communicated.

Test plans Beyond communication, it’s important to conduct regular tests, with every quarter being sufficient. The tests should be as real as possible and span all departments within the organization. This will ensure that employees are aware of how they, and the systems, will react under duress. It’ll be beneficial to your business if the first time the employees execute the plan isn’t during an emergency.

Short term and long term plans Your BCP should consist of both long term and short term elements that can be easily adapted to meet changing business environments and the emergence of new threats. You should aim for an even mix of short and long term solutions that cover as wide a variety of situations as possible.

Ensure buy-in from all levels If you’re in the process of instituting a BCP you should ensure that the whole organization is onboard with the plan. If an employee is unsure about the validity of a part of the plan, take the time to find out why and ask for suggestions. An uninformed or uncooperative employee could be the difference between survival and failure in a disaster situation.

Update and Review After every test, staff turnover and technological update, you should review the plans and make changes if necessary. Essentially, if anything in the company changes, review and update the plan. Remember: just because you have an effective plan this month, doesn’t mean it’ll be so in the future.

Continuity plans are only as strong as the weakest link. In an emergency, the last thing you want is an employee following the wrong process or be unsure of what they should be doing. If this happens, you could see an exponential growth in recovery time and costs. We’re ready to tell you more, so please contact us if you would like to talk continuity planning.

With the increasing severity of natural disasters in recent years, many larger companies have started to develop and implement a continuity plan to ensure that they can still conduct business, no matter what happens. Businesses in the process of developing a plan will eventually need to decide if they want to use software or templates?

The decision between templates and software can be a tough one to make, as whichever one you choose, you’ll be using and relying on for a long time. To help you we’ve covered some pros and cons on both choices:

Using Software If you choose to go with a software program, you will be walked through the whole process allowing you to develop a useable plan. Another benefit of using software is that you’ll be able to develop reports if needs be.

The drawbacks of using software include cost, inflexibility and learning time. For the most part, business continuity planning software is not cheap, and at times can be inflexible due to limits within the program. If you have a niche need, the software may not cover it. In addition, as with mastering any program, the learning curve can be quite steep.

In general, using software would be advantageous for companies that have a bigger budget for the development of a continuity plan. Software is also a good bet if you don’t have staff who are experts in continuity planning, or if you operate in an industry where a continuity plan is necessary, e.g., companies working with healthcare insurance, or manufacturing companies that have introduced ISO 9000.

Using Templates If you feel that your company is not ready for software you can use templates to help you develop your plan. These solutions are mostly written plans that you adapt to meet your business needs. They’re useful if you’re just starting to do continuity planning, as they provide a normally solid foundation, and are generally a lot cheaper than software.

A limitation to using templates is that they can be a little too basic at times, and may not meet your needs. Granted, most plans will follow a basic structure and your developer will need to adapt some steps for your relevant region and industry.

As each industry is different, it’s hard to make a recommendation on what type of planning style companies should take. We recommend you take your time, do your due diligence and weigh out what’s best for your business. No matter which method you choose to go ahead with, ensure that it’s easy to implement, and that you’ll be able to teach your staff how to run the plan.

If you feel really lost or are not sure what to do, talking to professional consultants could go a long way in helping you develop a plan. If you’d like to learn more about business continuity planning please contact us - we are happy to help.

Disaster: it could be as small as deleting a critical file or as big as the natural disasters that have been striking with more intensity in the past few years. Any way you look at it, disaster will strike eventually, in some form, leaving you with a problem to solve. It’s important to have a plan for when something happens. Do you?

Most companies have at least basic protection from emergencies and disasters in place. The most common forms of protection are insurance, server and computer backup, and basic preparations as required by law. While these protective measures are considered adequate for most companies, there is still a chance a disaster will strike, leaving your company in the lurch.

In the recent months and years an increasing number of occurrences, such as the earthquake in Japan and flooding in Thailand, have caused widespread disruption to businesses. To counter this, two business initiatives have risen to the forefront: Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity Planning (BCP). In fact, these two terms have become common buzzwords, a quick internet search returns over 53 million hits on business continuity alone. The problem is that many professionals are unclear on what each really is. It’s important to be clear on each topic and the basic steps to take to be prepared for any disaster.

What is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)? BCP, first seen during the Y2K scare of the late 90s, is a plan that covers the way an organization prepares for and maintains all critical business functions. BC planning is comprised of activities that ensure maintenance, stability, and recoverability of service before, during, and after a disaster. The plan is typically set up on a day-to-day basis, and covers the whole organization.

It’s important to have a BCP for your organization because if something happens and you can’t deliver to your customers, they will go to another company.

What is Disaster Recovery? Disaster Recovery is considered a part of the overall continuity plan that focuses on the technical side of the business, including components such as data backup and recovery. Think of BCP as an umbrella and DR is under the umbrella — if you don’t have a disaster recovery plan, the overall umbrella is more or less useless.

What Should be in Your DR and BCP Plans? These plans both share a number of similarities, generally following the same steps involving the same elements. Both plans should include:

1. An operational plan for a number of disasters that could happen in your geographical area. The plans should cover occurrences as small as computer hardware errors and as large as massive natural disasters.
2. A succession plan for you or your top management.
3. Training for substitute employees on important tasks.
4. Cross training of your employees on the basics of different roles so they will be able to take over if need be.
5. A communication plan focused on different crises, including ways of communicating if networks are down.
6. Off-site meeting places for staff and managers.
7. A focus on safety. Foster partnerships and communication with local and emergency response services: Fire, Police, National Guard, Search and Rescue. Ideally, all employees should at least know basic first aid. If you have employees who are volunteer members of local Emergency Response Services, ask them to be responsible for teams.
8. Daily plans to backup your Enterprise systems, along with training and testing of recovery of systems.
9. Training and testing of all employees to practice recovery activities in situations as realistic as possible.

It’s important that you conduct regular tests of your systems and processes, and make changes as needed. Be aware that your business is always changing and so should your Business Continuity and Disaster Recover Plans.

With a carefully prepared and practiced plan, your business should be ready to face a variety of disasters with minimal downtime. If you would like to know more about Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery please contact us.

A cursory look at history will tell you that misfortune and disaster often happens when you least expect it. And since history repeats itself, it's only prudent to assume that the same can happen to your data.

A natural disaster, sudden hardware breakdown, human error – these are just some of the things that can compromise important company information. So the question is: are you prepared if this should happen to you?

The high cost of downtime Did you know that for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), the average cost of downtime is about $12,500? And that's beside all the headaches you're bound to get from a steady loss of clients (as your downtime continues) as well as from the hefty fines and lawsuits that you will probably have to face.

All this is why, with most (if not all) businesses nowadays that depend on electronic data to support their day-to-day operations and transactions, an effective disaster recovery plan is a necessity.

For many, especially SMBs, outsourcing data recovery is the more efficient and cost-effective way to address disaster recovery. Of course, since we are talking about sensitive and important company data, it is also important to assess several factors that will affect your choice of vendor, such as the time it takes them to put you back online, and the regularity and frequency of backups.

Recovery in the cloud While there are still some organizations that rely on traditional disaster recovery methods, there is a growing demand for cloud-based disaster recovery, since it's less complicated to manage (especially for the organization itself) and much more affordable.

Cloud-based disaster recovery enables you to be free from a dependence on hardware, and also usually increases the frequency of backups to an offsite server, making data recovered in case of any incident very recent and much easier to work with. Cloud-based recovery has many more advantages, but the bottom line is that it allows you to be back to normal in a matter of hours, and sometimes even less than an hour – minimizing any negative impact on operations and productivity.

Don't make the mistake of being unprepared when disaster strikes – and it will, sooner or later, to a degree you can never predict. So it's best to make sure you take measures to ensure that your data will always be kept safe, secure, and recent. Contact us for a comprehensive and custom plan that will meet your specific needs.