Everybody deserves a break once in a while – no exceptions! After working hard day after day it is important and necessary. During the holidays or any time you or members of your team take some deserved time off, good cheer or relaxation can go out the window in a moment if your business suffers downtime or an IT disaster of any sort.
From our experience, and taking into consideration potential incidents and scenarios, we put together a checklist that we strongly urge you to use as a guide to help avoid those business catastrophes that can do far more damage than just spoiling your long weekend.
Basic Tips For Getting Your IT Ready Ahead Of Breaks And Holidays
- Check your components. Is the software and firmware for your firewall and your servers up-to-date? Do you have all the latest patches and updates?
- Update and run all security software across your entire network of servers and machines. Ensure that your evaluations come up clear of concerning warnings or blocks.
- Run a full backup and ensure that the copy created is off-site.
- Test your backup system to make sure that your systems are working to meet your recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO). Did you run a trial restore and make sure that everything is recovered as expected?
- Make sure that all your ongoing services are paid for and there will be no expirations nearing while you or other team members are not available. This problem is one that is all too common. If DNS records, software subscriptions, internet service connections, or other service contracts are reaching their expiration or renewal point, it can be very risky to wait on those. It’s extremely difficult to find appropriate details and contacts to sort these things out when other offices are also potentially empty or quieter on holidays and other times especially.
- Set up all call, service, and messaging forwarding to your after-hours or emergency points.
This is a very basic list and really only addresses the bare bones points to hit when preparing to comfortably allow yourself the time away. This is a huge advantage of an always-on 24x7x365 outsourced technology services company that can have your back all throughout these and other times, constantly keeping up with all the above-mentioned due diligence items proactively in the case of us and our customers!
Get in touch to learn more about how we can take away the stress and worry of leaving IT unattended.
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