BY JOE BALSAROTTI
There’s evidence of it all around us. Teens can’t make change at the drive-thru window. Drivers blindly follow GPS right into a lake (if they take the wheel at all). Cursive writing has become a lost art. Surveys show that people losing their smartphone rank that experience just one point below a terrorist attack in regard to the level of stress it would cause.
As technology does more and more for us, the adage “use it or lose it” has begun to prove itself a law of the universe. Just as the prevalence of auto-pilot use caused the FAA to increase simulator time for pilots due to falling reaction times, we see what used to be common knowledge has become foreign to the younger generations – or lost to those who don’t make use of the skills they once had.
Maybe map reading, making change or flying planes aren’t required for your business, but the same causes and effects are probably starting to creep into your business processes. After all, we purchase and use technology in our companies to increase productivity and lower costs. However, blind trust in the technology – with staff now unable to verify or recreate the results without the ‘black box’ – should be of concern to any business owner or manager.
All technology eventually fails. We back up, surge-protect, virus-protect, firewall and scan. We sync data and for mission-critical systems, we include redundant elements and have spares at the ready.
Is your company ready for when the systems “which can’t go down” do go down? Does your business have a documented plan in place to start from scratch in case of a major disaster? Where are the license keys, contracts and warranty information for your equipment, software and services? Is your answer, “On the computer?” If so, you now see the problem.
The old POTS (plain old telephone service) was unbelievably resilient. New VoIP (voice over internet protocol) phones are anything but. You can’t just grab a $10 extension phone at Radio Shack like you used to, plug it into the wiring closet and at least get a line out. Now the internet line needs to be up, the switches, routers, firewalls and VoIP servers need to be in place, powered and configured to achieve that same basic dial tone. That’s the price for the cost savings and flexibility of VoIP, and there’s no choice as phone companies slowly turn off those POTS services.
Fire, flood, earthquake, alien invasion or zombie apocalypse – all could render all your technology infrastructure useless. You say, “It’s all safely in the cloud” and that’s fine, assuming you can get to that cloud. What many forget is that if you can’t get to your account information, license keys, contracts and the like, you can’t gain access. With encryption being the norm for backups nowadays (for good reason, as I’ve discussed in previous columns) that also means if you lose the key, the data is rendered useless and unrecoverable.
What’s a business owner or manager to do? Follow the words of President Ronald Reagan, “Trust, but verify.”
~Take the steps to back up locally and offsite in the cloud.
~ Put redundant elements in place where critical.
~ Regularly maintain and update not only the hardware, but the software also.
~ Make sure there are hard copies of your contracts, licenses, keys and other critical information locked up in a fire safe both on-site and off-site.
~ Have a contact list for emergencies and a calling order to wrangle the staff together.
~ Drill your staff to make sure they can keep basic business functions running without the cool technology.
~ Check your insurance coverage to verify you have cyber coverage as well as contents coverage.
~ Speak to your IT provider about what services it can offer in event of an emergency.
The United States Small Business Administration found that more than 90 percent of companies fail within two years of being struck by a disaster. Unfortunately, it’s these basic non-technology pieces of the technology puzzle which elude so many business owners and become the death knell after a disaster strikes.
Use these tips and apply common sense business practices to make sure your business doesn’t become a statistic.
Joe Balsarotti is President of Software To Go and is a 40-year veteran of the computer industry, reaching back to the days of the Apple II. Keep up with tech by following him at Facebook.com/SoftwareToGo or on Twitter @softtogo.