There’s a lot out there your business should be scared of. Bad weather, thieves, disgruntled employees, aggressive competitors, and rapidly spreading viruses to name a few. These are all constant threats to your business’ files. Whether you’re in an industry that relies on heavy documentation, or your tricks of the trade are highly sought after, you should be concerning yourself with keeping your business’ files safe locally. Making sure everything is locally secure on computers and inside the office can free up some time to worry about keeping your business the best it can be.
Anti-virus Software
They creep, they crawl. They find their way into your system and onto your computers. They rip, the rampage. They corrupt and delete everything. Viruses, though foul, are very good at destroying everything your company holds dear, document-wise. Invest in a sturdy Anti-Virus Software to defend your files against these bad guys, keep it updated, and keep your business running smoothly.
Keeping Multiple Copies
Keeping track of all of your documents and making sure their properly stored in a safe place can get tricky when they are all shared among a group of people, being passed around and updated individually. Save often and keep originals of all your important documents in order to track progression and archive work. Make multiple digital copies, one to be kept in a separate folder in case the other becomes corrupt, deleted or just modified in a way you don’t like. Saving physical copies in a filing cabinet is another simple way to make sure that the documents you need are safely secured in a completely different medium.
Update Frequently
It’s easy to ignore the warnings asking for updates, they really can be bothersome. If you do ignore these warnings, make sure you come back and complete the update process as soon as possible. Many good things happen when you update; you fix bugs, add new features, and even remove and repair security vulnerabilities that have been found in your software. I’m not just talking about Microsoft updates here, you should be making a conscious effort to be sure that all the programs on your computer are up to date.
Off-site Backup
On top of neat organization, strong computer virus protection and keeping everything up to date, you’re documents are still endangered. That is, of course, if you’re only using hard drives and thumb drives to save everything on. Hard drives can crash and wipeout. Thumb drives are easily lost. And both are susceptible to bad weather, power surges, and being stolen. Backing up your data to an off-site location, which will never go out and will never be stolen is how you ensure that your files are fully protected.
Consider backing all your documents in the cloud with a cloud storage backup provider, like Echopath.