CRES Small Business Checklist

The small business checklist is designed for the small business executive in charge of information systems to make sure your company has the minimum requirements satisfied to ensure the maximum amount of up-time possible.

DATA REDUNDANCY
Data redundancy can be broken down into two sections: 1) Working Data and 2 ) Backup Data.

1) Working Data

To ensure that your email, word documents, excel spreadsheets, accounting data, and special business application data files are available as much as possible, itis important to keep them all in a central location and that location have some type of redundancy. This is the benefit of a network. Most common are mirrored or redundant arrays of inexpensive hard drives. This will ensure that if you experience a hard disk failure (most frequent), you will not lose up-time due to the other hard drive(s) picking up and taking over for the failed drive until you replace it.

2) Backup Data

As important as working data redundancy, Backup copies of data can prove to be business savers in times of emergency. Backup copies are used when data is accidentally deleted, hard drives crash, and disasters take over. It can even be used for archiving data for storage or later use.

There are different ways to backup data, depending upon size and type. Most commonly, data is backed up onto tapes and kept offsite in case of disaster.

Security
When most people think of security they think of the internet, and although there are a great many hackers out there ready to hack your network, don't forget about the local physical security in your office(s).

To make sure you are secure, you need to assess internet intruder protection, physicalserver protection, local client computer protection, and network file protection.

Internet Intruders:

To make sure internet intruders cannot break into your network, you should use a firewall. Depending upon the size and capacity of your network you can either get a sophisticated firewall, a simple firewall software package, or even see if your ISP can provide one for you.

Physical Protection (Server):

Your server(s) should be protected from the elements, as well as people. Make sure it is in a cool area with little static and little possibility of electro-interference and moisture. Keep it in a locked room away from unauthorized administrators and tied down where earthquakes and other disasters won't bother it if there is a problem.

Physical Protection (Client):

Your client machines should always be logged off or locked if you are not using them to keep others from accessing and editing your files and email.

Network file protection:

When users share and store files in a networked environment, it is important to make sure that they are not accessible to the wrong people. Therefore, password and user authentication should be employed.

General Protection:

On average, about 10 new computer viruses are introduced every day, and energy black outs are more probable than ever. As IT managers, we need to take the time to make sure our networks are not vulnerable to such possibilities of downtime.

Anti-Virus:

These days viruses can be very expensive if you are unfortunately infected by one. Not only can they make you lose data, make you have to rebuild your operating system, and send viruses to colleagues and clients, but they are also expensive if you have to pay consultants to try to recover data, clean your network, and rebuild your computers. We recommend that you have an anti virus software on your network that will automatically download new virus protection daily, and monitor all open files on the network.

UPS:( Uninterruptible Power Supply)

It is important to have a ups connected to your servers to keep them running if youhave a power outage and have the properly shut-down. Their primary functions are line conditioning and proper shutdown.