Anti-Virus Protection and Backup  

It’s essential to protect your IT equipment from viruses and hackers, especially since your business operations are likely to be heavily dependent on software, email and internet access. In the event of any loss or damage, you should always have a reliable backup so no important data is ever lost for long.

Anti-Virus Protection
Anti-virus software is an important basic but it can be difficult to run as it requires regular updates and may often need to be disabled and enabled again in order to access what seem like perfectly safe sources. When your livelihood is invested in your computer, however, you can’t afford to be lax about protecting your IT equipment.

Shop around carefully for the right anti-virus deal, and use IT advice websites for information and suggestions. Some technology watchdogs have recently reported that free open source anti-virus software is just as good as commercial deals. This may prove less expensive and will provide you with greater flexibility (as you will not have to respect notice periods if you change supplier), but it may not be as frequently updated for new virus attacks.

Anti-virus software cannot protect you from bogus emails, however, so you will still need to be vigilant about your messages and, in any event, don’t open suspicious emails from sources you don’t know.

See Avoiding IdentityTheft for further information on protecting your PC.

Backup
As a matter of course you should back up your computer frequently, and you should regularly transfer backed up data to a second location, in case of fire or a burglary in your office space.

Backing up to an online source, like a large capacity email account, is an option, and can be very useful when trying to access information from a different location.

See Data Backup for more information on keeping your data safe.

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• Made Simple Group