Category Archives: Data Storage and Recovery

Is It Time for a Server Upgrade?

| November 19, 2020

While many of us may not physically see our servers as often as we see our personal terminals, we interact with them directly or indirectly daily. Within your office network, the server is the heartbeat of the entire system. Since we rely on them without directly interacting with them we tend to forget that they’re there. However, just like with any other type of computer, servers can expire and need replacing from time to time. Have you checked your servers lately? It may be time to upgrade them. Section 179 Deductions For those who read our blog last week, you’ll recall that our topic was Section 179 tax deductions. As a quick recap, this is a section of the tax code that not only allowsRead Full Article

Beyond a Basic Disaster Recovery Plan

| August 18, 2020

You’ve invested in a disaster recovery plan and now sleep more soundly at night, but the hardware itself is really only part of the solution. You want to ensure your technology provider does preventative maintenance, periodic testing, multi-location storage, and staff training. Having these things in place will help avoid downtime if the worst happens. Preventative Maintenance In addition to the hardware itself, a solid disaster recovery solution also has its own backup including generators, backup batteries, cooling systems, fire detection, suppression systems, and redundant cloud storage. You can’t necessarily head to your provider’s office to see for yourself, but you can read the fine print on your contracts as well as have meaningful conversations with potential providers. Periodic Testing Consistently ensuring everything is runningRead Full Article

A Backup Disaster Recovery Plan

| August 13, 2020

No New Orleans business owner needs to be told that having a disaster recovery plan is crucial, even before the pandemic made it glaringly so. A Backup Disaster Recovery plan is one of those things that all businesses need to have in case of disaster. Whether it’s a natural disaster such as a hurricane, a hardware failure, or even an attack from a hacker, any of these could permanently disable your business if you aren’t prepared or have a proper backup plan. First of all, a data disaster is more common than you might think. Currently, 58% of small and mid-sized businesses are not prepared for data loss. Even worse, 60% of these businesses that lose their data will shut down within six months. SomethingRead Full Article

The Importance of Business Continuity

| June 23, 2020

The world is battling a crippling crisis today. The global economy is in peril and businesses have taken radical measures to mitigate the adverse impacts of economic decline. Companies have had to leverage the technology at their disposal to allow their employees to work remotely in order to attempt to achieve business continuity. Although technology has made remote work feasible, the unexpected magnitude of the situation has caught most small and midsize businesses off guard. One of the challenges most companies face right now is ensuring business continuity with minimal loss of productivity of their remote workforce. While this unprecedented crisis has certainly transformed the way businesses around the world operate, it has also provided companies with an opportunity to reinforce their IT infrastructure toRead Full Article

Four Tips for Getting Back to Work during this In-Between

| May 27, 2020

We’ve reached an in-between status of this quarantine as many are eager to get back to work. Businesses are starting to open back up (with restrictions), but a lot of employees are finding themselves in an awkward spot between working in the office and remaining at home. Doctors are utilizing video and teleconference appointments but are holding office hours to see patients and perform “elective” surgeries. Companies are requesting that their employees work from home, if possible, but they’re relaxing requirements for coming back into the office. Other organizations are welcoming people back from teleworker status to full in-office expectations. With “in-between” operations, we’ve helped our clients through a few technology hiccups and wanted to help you avoid them too. Here are the top fiveRead Full Article

Technology Tips for Local Businesses Part 2

| March 11, 2020

In our last blog, we discussed two of the five important technology issues that every business owner should consider (hardware/software and cybersecurity). In this post, we cover the other three, namely, IT training, Data Backup and Recovery, and BYOD (bring your own device) checklists. IT Training Checklist Everyone in your office needs some training on the technology that is in place. An IT training checklist serves as a good process document for any new staff or for any staff working on new hardware or software. Following the IT training checklist can help cut down the learning curve. And it ensures the hardware/software is leveraged in the best possible way, thus making your staff more efficient. Here’s what your IT training checklist can offer. What rulesRead Full Article

Coronavirus and Your Business

| March 4, 2020

The Center for Disease Control has provided some very good guidance for business owners in the face of the threat of the coronavirus (or, more specifically, COVID-19). It includes helpful suggestions regarding hygiene, sick leave, and other practical advice. The CDC also urges business owners to allow employees to telecommute, if possible. Explore whether you can establish policies and practices, such as flexible worksites (e.g., telecommuting) and flexible work hours (e.g., staggered shifts), to increase the physical distance among employees and between employees and others if state and local health authorities recommend the use of social distancing strategies. For employees who are able to telework, supervisors should encourage employees to telework instead of coming into the workplace until symptoms are completely resolved. Ensure that youRead Full Article

Migration to Windows 10

| November 23, 2019

You’re prepared, at least mentally, to begin your migration to Windows 10 because you’ve read What Does Windows 7 End of Life Mean to My Business?  and Getting Ahead of Windows 7 End of Life. Is your hardware ready, though? How you handle your IT (on your own, as needed support, or with a fully managed agreement) will change how you will have to deal with your transition.  The following items should help you decide how to prepare your hardware for the Windows 10 migration. Do It Yourself If you own all of your own equipment and deal with IT issues in-house, then you will want to get started on migrating your devices now. The good news is that Windows 10 is highly compatible withRead Full Article

What does Windows 7 End of Life Mean for My Business?

| October 31, 2019

You’ve all heard the panic. Windows is cutting off support for its widely popular version 7 software. January 14, 2020 will officially mark Windows 7 End of Life. Many companies have used Windows 7 since it launched in 2009 and are still actively using it today. So, what’s the big deal? Can you just stick with Windows 7 or will your computer self-destruct? The good news is that your computers will work just fine after the End of Life (EOL) date. However, just because your computer will function doesn’t mean it’s wise to hold onto outdated software. The largest concern for Windows 7 users is security. Since updates and support will no longer be available, your device will be extremely vulnerable to cyber threats. InRead Full Article

Data Security and Government Regulations

| July 11, 2019

  Any business that stores customer payment information must comply with a number of state and federal regulations. The legal, healthcare, and financial sectors have a number of laws tailored specifically for them (such as HIPAA or CISPA). If you run almost any kind of professional practice or agency you probably have very specific data security requirements. Running afoul of these regulations puts you at risk for legal action and probably means that you have bad security in place. As a professional, your focus needs to be on your clients and running your firm. Regulatory requirements to ensure data security can be complex and include rigorous testing requirements. Ensuring compliance with the regulations can be a serious distraction for you and take you into territoryRead Full Article

IT Disaster Recovery: Human Error

| January 10, 2019

Human error accounts for the highest percentage of  IT disruptions and emergencies requiring disaster recovery. That’s right, “Hurricane Human,” should be your top concern when considering the proper disaster recovery plan for your business. Did you know that your employees often unwittingly ‘help’ cybercriminals gain access to your system? Often, employees play a part in compromising the security of your IT infrastructure, even without them realizing it. For example- When your employees use their own devices for work purposes such as to access emails, to connect to work servers, or to work on office files. In the event their device gets infected by a malware or hacked, the virus or the hacker gets access to your data as well. Your employees may put your networkRead Full Article

IT Managed Service for SMBs

| October 4, 2018

 Understanding Managed IT Services and How They Benefit SMBs   No doubt you’ve heard, or you’ve at least read about, the benefits of managed services as it relates to maintaining your technology. Managed services refer to clearly defined outsourced IT services delivered to you at predictable costs. You know the exact IT services you’ll be getting and what you’ll pay for them. There is no surprise sky-high bill for services rendered.    How Managed Service Providers Work   Managed service providers (MSPs) use remote monitoring and management tools to keep an eye on the performance and overall health of the IT infrastructure that powers your business operations. Your MSP should provide 24/7 remote monitoring, which will alert them to any issue with your servers, devices, hardwareRead Full Article

Managed IT Services for Your Business

| September 27, 2018

We understand that business owners aren’t always sure that managed IT services are right for their business. So, they rely on calling their “computer guy” only when things go wrong. We’ve provided some questions to consider so that you can better understand why managed IT services provide a much more stable and secure computer network for businesses of all sizes. Plainly put, you can save money and still get top level IT services from a managed services provider such as Rent-A-Nerd, Inc.    Is my business large enough to even consider managed services?   The truth is, any company, regardless of its size or the number of people employed, will run more efficiently if its technology is monitored, maintained, and managed properly. These are facets ofRead Full Article

Breaking News: Downtime Kills Small Businesses

| September 20, 2018

Downtime is bad news for any business whether big or small. A recent two-hour New York Times’ downtime occurrence sent Twitter ablaze and their stock price plummeting. Google going down for one to five hours resulted in lost revenue up to $500,000 and decreased overall web traffic by 40%. While the hourly cost of downtime for a small-to-medium sized business won’t be nearly as large as that astronomical Google figure, downtime is often more detrimental to smaller companies. Smaller enterprises are more susceptible to downtime and are neither large nor profitable enough to sustain its short and long-term effects. Downtime Leads to Unhappy/Unproductive Employees   Even the happiest of employees become dissatisfied when they can’t perform basic day-to-day job functions or properly service customers or clients. While someRead Full Article

Business Continuity: What Every Business Owner Should Know

| September 13, 2018

Technology is full of difficult jargon. To further complicate things, certain terms are often used in a different context between one publication or service provider and the next. An example of this is the usage of backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity. These terms are commonly used interchangeably, often resulting in confusion. In an effort to alleviate some of this confusion, let’s describe each physical process. You will see an overlay among all three, although they are each different processes. Backup  In IT lingo, the most basic description of backup is the process by which your data, as in files or programs, is copied from its original location to another. The purpose of this is to ensure that the original files or programs are retrievableRead Full Article

Business Continuity for SMBs

| September 6, 2018

 8 Cold Hard Truths for SMBs Not Worried About Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity   The foundation of any successful business continuity solution is the ability to retrieve data from any point in time from anywhere. When the topic of data recovery and business continuity comes up, many decision makers at smaller businesses and organizations think that they cannot afford to put enterprise-level protections into place.   Further, so many people think bad things only happen to other people. Just because we hear about a fatal car accident on the morning news, doesn’t mean we fixate on that news when we ourselves get into a car and drive to work. So no matter how many times the owner or executive of a small to midsize businessRead Full Article

Data Loss Tech Tips

| August 16, 2018

Small business owners are often worried about data loss. Rightly so, because data loss has the potential to wipe out a business. We have identified the most common forms of data loss so you can see how they fit into your business and assess the risks related to each of these pitfalls.   1. Human Error – Human error – by way of unintentional data deletion, modification, and overwrites – has become much more prevalent in recent years. Much of this is the result of improperly managed virtualization technology. While virtualization and cloud computing have enabled improved business continuity planning for many businesses and organizations, humans must still instruct this technology how to perform. The complexity of these systems often presents a learning curve that canRead Full Article

The Benefits of an IT Managed Service Provider

| August 9, 2018

Managed Service Providers (MSPs)  are often recommended as a cost effective IT solution for small and mid-sized businesses. For a minimal monthly fee, MSPs provide a reasonably priced solution to the complex technology pains needs of businesses. Here’s a look at the various benefits an MSP can offer your business: Freed-Up Resources and a Renewed Emphasis on Core Business – Both business owners and internal IT staff would much rather focus on revenue enhancing tasks like product development or the creation of cutting-edge applications/services. This is one reason routine monitoring and maintenance tasks are often neglected by an internal IT person or team, which always proves to be detrimental much later. Often perceived as a “threat” to an internal IT person or staff, MSPs can insteadRead Full Article

Business Continuity Versus Traditional Backup

| August 2, 2018

Do you know the difference between business continuity and traditional forms of data backup? How important is it to you that your business does not lose valuable downtime and is able to be back up and running as soon as possible? If this is vital to you, then you should have a very solid business continuity plan in place. In the meantime, here are some tips to help you improve your backup plan as you phase to a more solid business continuity plan. Think Quicker Recovery Time, Not Quicker Backup – While incremental backups are much faster than executing a full backup, they also prolong recovery time. In the event of data loss, a full restore will require loading the most recent full backup and then eachRead Full Article

The Benefits of a Managed Service Provider

| July 19, 2018

The benefits of partnering with a managed service provider (MSP), such as Rent-A-Nerd, Inc., are significant. The bottom line is that it is a cost-effective way to ensure that all of your business’s IT needs are met and kept up-to-date. Experienced MSPs have access to the newest tools that reduce costs by automating many routine in-house labor intensive processes. Break-fix is labor intensive (and a very outdated model), and labor is one of the most expensive operating costs within your IT infrastructure. The new innovative tools that can be provided by MSPs generate real productivity increases and mitigate the risk of network failure, downtime, and data loss from human error and disasters.   MSPs deliver a trusted foundation for your team and your clients. SomeRead Full Article

Cybersecurity: Is your Business Safe from Virtual Threats?

| July 12, 2018

Did you know that 50% of small business owners think their businesses are too small to be targeted by the thieves of the virtual world? Thus, they do not believe that cybersecurity is a business concern. Contrary to popular belief, 72% of hacker attacks happen to smaller firms – firms with fewer than 100 employees! So how prepared is your SMB? Here’s a checklist to help you find out how vulnerable you are to these attacks.   1. Do you have Antivirus protection? An antivirus software program can help protect you from threats that originate from emails such as malware and virus attacks. However, the most striking fact is that 61% of small businesses don’t install any antivirus software. If you are one of them,Read Full Article

Five Things You Should Do Right Now to Preserve Your Network and Systems

| June 7, 2018

What are you doing to protect one of your most valuable assets — your computer network and its systems? Here are five things you should start doing right now: 1. Back Up Files Every Day – As catastrophic as data loss is, the number of businesses that still are not backing up their computer network is unbelievable. According to the Symantec Small to Medium Size Businesses (SMB) data, only 23% of small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are backing up their data on a daily basis and fewer than 50% are backing up data weekly. Any number of events can result in data loss, so the importance of frequently backing up your computer network cannot be overstated. 2. Ensure Backup Procedures Are Checked Regularly – Many times businessRead Full Article

Data Loss Can Cause Your Law Firm to Shut Down

| May 31, 2018

Small and medium sized businesses (MSPs), including law firms, rely more than ever on IT systems to efficiently run their business, support customers, and optimize productivity. These systems house sensitive digital data ranging from employee and customer information, to internal emails, documents, financial records, sales orders, and transaction histories. This is in addition to applications and programs critical to daily business functions and customer service. Preventing data loss is therefore an incredibly important function that your tech firm must be able to provide. While corporate-level data losses and insider theft, when they happen to Fortune 500 companies, are well publicized, many smaller businesses have also become casualties of data loss and theft. Following a significant data loss, it is estimated that a small-to-medium sized businessRead Full Article

Can You Really Afford Not to Have a Backup Plan?

| May 24, 2018

 According to Symantec SMB, 50% of SMBs (small and medium businesses) admit to having no backup and disaster recovery plan in place. 41% of those surveyed confessed that they had never even given much thought to implementing a disaster recovery or business continuity plan. If you are one of them, then you really need to think about whether you can afford the status quo. Answering these questions will help you decide if you can really not afford to have a backup plan: 1. How often is employee productivity and customer accessibility or service stalled each day from a downed network or system?   2. How much downtime can your business truly afford and what kind of backup or recovery solutions are in effect when systemsRead Full Article

Computer Network Management and Maintenance

| April 26, 2018

Rent-A-Nerd, Inc.’s co-owners, Charlotte and Darrin Piotrowski, published an article, “Don’t Wait Until It’s Broken,” in the September 2015 issue of Biz New Orleans (and also included in email blast and the Biz New Orleans online issue). In it, they discussed the many reasons why every business should have a computer network management and maintenance contract with a local IT firm, rather than simply calling their computer repair company every time something breaks or isn’t working properly. Here’s the link to the full article. Below is the top ten list of reasons, taken from the article, for contracting with Rent-A-Nerd, Inc. for your business’s computer network management and maintenance. Top 10 benefits of network/computer management and maintenance: 1 – You can truly think of your IT serviceRead Full Article

Prepare Your Business in Case of Disaster

| March 6, 2018

You probably have a plan for your home in the case of a disaster, but what about your business? According to the Insurance Information Institute, as many as 40% of businesses fail after a disaster. There are a number of things that you can do in order to prepare your business in case of disaster (man-made or natural). And, since we are in the midst of hurricane season, now is as good a time as any to do so! You should begin by assessing what types of disasters are most likely to occur to your specific business. This can include fire, flooding, a hurricane, and even criminal activity, depending upon your location, type of business, and other factors. You should select point people who are trained toRead Full Article

Two-Factor Authentication: Security for Your Valuable Data

| March 10, 2015

Two-factor authentication is an extra step that one takes when logging in to various sites and programs. It happens after the username and password have been entered. I know what you’re thinking, passwords are difficult enough. However, many times. in order to make it convenient to remember, we use the same password for nearly all websites (which I would never recommend) or we make simple passwords that are easily guessed, i.e. password, password 123. What two-factor authentication does is add an extra layer of security on top of those passwords, no matter how simple or complex they are, in order to further protect your information online. A quick and easy way to describe two-factor authentication is to think of when you call your bank’s customerRead Full Article

The Right Business Email Address

| March 3, 2015

No matter if your business is fewer than ten employees or more than a 1,000, email is key in your communications with clients, vendors, staff, and other businesses. Often I find that a business’s emails are hosted by its Internet Service Provider or ISP, such as ATT, Cox, Comcast, etc. Without a better understanding of the benefits of a custom domain-hosted email, clients can potentially get lost. Therefore, it is so important that you have the right business email address. Business cards are exchanged on daily basis. A very basic card may include name, address, phone number, and email. An email address such as johndoe@cox.net or @att.com projects a different level of professionalism than a card reading johndoe@XYZcompany.com. Do you want your email to say, “We areRead Full Article

Top Ten Tech Tips

| December 3, 2014

Here are my top ten tech tips (for today!): 1)      When in doubt, REBOOT.   Rebooting, not only computers, but a number of electronic devices, fixes numerous issues. For example: Windows is “running slowly” possibly means that a program may be misbehaving and hogging vital system resources; rebooting the computer can often times resolve that issue.  Another common example is when your “Internet is down;” rebooting your networking equipment (modem and router) can sometimes resolve this issue.  Unplugging your modem/router from power and plugging it back in is a common solution for a number of networking issues. 2)      If you don’t know the sender of an email DO NOT CLICK THE LINKS OR DOWNLOAD ANY ATTACHMENTS!   Bogus emails are one of the number one waysRead Full Article

Computer Repair Versus Network and Computer Maintenance

| June 4, 2014

The average small business spends 6.4% of its revenue on technology.  That may not surprise you, but did you know 80% of the cost comes after the initial purchase?  Clearly, acquiring new technology isn’t nearly as expensive as keeping it performing well.  Shouldn’t your IT systems be an investment for business growth, rather than a drag on profitability? Traditionally, business owners would call a computer repair technician only when there were problems; in other words, a computer–or the entire network of computers–breaks, a technician fixes it until something within the network breaks again.  We now know that it is much less expensive, for many reasons, to simply maintain computer networks on an ongoing basis.  The old way is often called the “break/fix” method, whereas modernRead Full Article