Updating your business software is one of your best protections against IT Security breaches and cyber-attacks, but actually going through and running the updates is a task that often gets overlooked. Either they take too long, they pop up at inconvenient times, or you simply don’t know when an update is available.
As a Small Business Owner that relies on technology, do you have a plan in place to ensure all your tech is up-to-date, or are you hoping that your tech will be kept up-to-date miraculously?
Time Sensitive Emergency Updates
Past experience have has shown that most businesses only update their software when the repair technicians come around to fix a major outage. The repair tech gets called on-site on a break-fix job, and would typically run the update just before they leave. Another secret that break-fix technicians might not want you to realize = running and applying updates can sometimes be the resolution of the problem they have been called in to fix!
What’s more concerning is the time gap between the repair tech leaving upon the completion of this job till his return on the next call. The machine, software, and applications will be running with ever-widening security gaps and vulnerabilities before the techs back. These band-aids solutions are detrimental to the well-being of any business operation. It might be a great little earn for these repair techs, but really, its no great for uptime, productivity nor security of a business owner.
Finding Time For Routine Maintenance
To keep your business up and running securely, you need someone who is constantly kept informed of these updates. They will need to have the necessary tech skillsets so that they know when and how to apply these patches and which patches or updates might be in conflict. If you have an in-house IT specialist or administrator, please ensure that they have an updated plan available and any fall-back procedures should things go wrong.
If you don’t have a qualified in-house IT specialist or administrator, outsourcing or subscribing to Managed IT Services would be the perfect solution. For a fixed monthly fee, you will get trained professionals to oversee your technology, applying patches and updates appropriately and keeping your technology secure. Outsourcing or subscribing to Managed IT Services could also be a method of augmenting your in-house IT specialist or team such they need not be overloaded with these non-strategic, routine tasks.
If you are interested to find out more about our Managed IT Services or how we can augment your in-house IT specialist or team, please feel free to contact us by using the web form below.
What Else Needs To Be Checked?
Beyond running security updates and patches, it is also important to keep your business moving forward, embracing improvements in technology. Here are a few areas that might be part of Managed IT Services:
Hardware health: Sudden component failures bring out lost productivity, lost opportunities, unknown delays and most importantly, lost income. Hardware don’t last forever. As such, it is important to monitor hardware health and to consider taking appropriate preventive actions before they fail. Hardware health monitoring is also an integral part of our Managed IT Services where we access and advise before things fail.
Operating system expiry: Running familiar operating systems and applications might be convenient and suitable for users but when software developers cease support for older versions, this can leave the application vulnerable to security breaches. As much as users might not like to change, running outdated operating systems and software are root causes of data breaches. Our managed services technicians will be on-hand to advise clients of any upcoming changes, leaving you with plenty of time to plan and budget for the required upgrades.
Legacy programs: Updates to your software have the potential to disrupt older programs, either resulting in errors, slow performance or even downtime. With technology advancing, we often find additional requirements with an update, such as extra processing power, memory or graphics. Our technicians always make sure to check for compatibility as a whole before running an update.
Staying on top of your maintenance, patching, updating and upgrading needs of your technology can be a huge challenge for Small Business. Our Managed IT Services program has been designed specifically to help Small Businesses address this need. Call us at +65 67488776 for more details today!
ManagedIT.SG is an IT Support, IT Solutioning and Managed IT Service Provider specializing in serving Small Businesses in Singapore. Call us at +65 6748 8776 and let us manage your Small Business IT today!