21
Aug
If you’re like most people, you don’t think twice about performing regular maintenance on your car. You regularly change the oil, keep air in the tires, fill up your gas tank, and take it to the dealer when it needs maintenance.Yet, if you’re like most business owners, you don’t even think about doing maintenance on your computer network unless it starts running slow, crashes, or stops working. Oddly enough, computer networks require far more maintenance than a car, not only to keep them running properly, but also to protect them from an ever growing number of spyware, virus, and hacker threats.If you want to avoid problems and the expensive repair bills that follow, here’s a short list of daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance you should perform (at a minimum) to make sure your network stays secure, reliable, and running properly.
Daily Maintenance
Back Up Your Data. One of the most devastating things that can happen to you is losing files, databases, and financial information. The method you use to back up your data will be largely determined by the amount of data you need to back up, but it should be done every day. Ideally, you want to keep an off-site copy of your data in case of fire, theft, or natural disasters.
Update Your Server and Desk Top Anti-Virus. This is critical to protecting your computer network because new threats (and their patches) crop up daily. Most anti-virus software has an automatic update feature that will install updates as they become available. However, it is important to check that your anti-virus is current and functioning every day even if the automatic update feature is turned on.
Check Your Firewall. Just like anti-virus software, you must make sure your firewall is up and running 24-7 to prevent hackers from accessing your system. We recommend checking it daily.
Weekly Maintenance
Check For Operating System Security Packs and Updates. This will protect your computer network from known vulnerabilities and security “loop holes”.
Scan and Remove Spyware. Spyware is NOT harmless. Once installed it can make your system run slow, serve up an endless stream of pop up ads, monitor your web surfing habits, steal confidential information about you, and hijack your browser.
Clear Out Old Files. This would include emptying your recycle bin, emptying your “deleted items” folder in your inbox and “sent” messages you don’t need, your temporary Internet files, and any programs you are not using.
Monthly Maintenance
Run Scandisk and the Disk Defrag Utility. Scandisk will look for and repair problems on your hard drive. After running Scandisk, run the Disk Defragmenter utility. This will reorganize your hard drive so that applications and programs load and run faster and more efficiently. This should be done on the server and on the desktop machines.
Review System, Application, and Security Logs. Look for errors, problems, or other suspicious and unexpected entries.
Check Memory and Available Disk Space. Simply check to make sure your system has adequate memory installed for the current usage. Also check available disk space. A recommended amount of free space is at least 25% of the total drive size.
Run A Test Restore Of Backed Up Data. In addition to backing up your data every day, you want to test the reliability of your back ups by attempting to restore the data. I can’t tell you how many business owners were burned because they THOUGHT they were backing up their system regularly, but later discovered their back ups were corrupt or not working when they needed it most.