After fifteen years of watching businesses treat their computers like magical boxes that should just work forever, we’ve developed a profound appreciation for preventable disasters. The same companies that wouldn’t dream of skipping oil changes somehow expect their servers to run indefinitely on hope and stale coffee fumes. While the best IT managed service companies stay busy fixing these predictable problems, your business doesn’t have to contribute to their revenue stream quite so generously.
The pattern repeats itself with depressing regularity. Someone calls in a panic because their system crashed during the most important presentation of the year, or their entire customer database vanished just before quarterly reports. These emergencies share a common thread—they were entirely avoidable with some basic planning and maintenance.
Here’s how to avoid becoming another cautionary tale we share at industry conferences.
1. Backup Everything Like Your Business Depends on It
Data loss doesn’t discriminate between small startups and Fortune 500 companies. Hard drives can and do fail, usually at the most inconvenient moment possible. We’ve seen grown executives weep over lost spreadsheets that represented months of work. On the other end of our work spectrum, we’ve seen music producers go into full meltdown when their laptops refuse to co-operate or the hard drive with all their music on it fails in the icy 3am festival air.
Whether your office is in a highrise, on a grassy dance floor at Boom Festival, or in your parents’ garage, the 3-2-1 rule is going to be your best friend—keep three copies of important data, store them on two different types of media, and keep one copy offsite. Cloud storage makes this easier than ever, though somehow people still rely on that single external drive sitting next to their computer like a ticking time bomb.
Bonus tip: Test your backups regularly. A backup system that doesn’t work is worse than no backup at all because it provides false confidence. We once discovered a client’s automated backup had been failing silently for eight months. They found out the hard way during a server crash.
Automated backups remove human error from the equation. Set them up once and let the computers handle the tedious work they’re actually good at.
2. Update Software Before It Becomes Archaeologically Significant
Running outdated software is like leaving your front door unlocked in a neighborhood full of pickpockets. Security patches exist for good reasons, usually because someone discovered a vulnerability that hackers are already exploiting in the wild.
We understand that updates get in the way of things. However, the risk of keeping unpatched systems far outweighs the inconvenience of occasional compatibility issues.
To make them as seamless as possible, schedule updates during low-traffic periods and test them on non-critical systems first. Most software allows you to delay updates by a few days, giving other people time to discover any major problems before they hit your network.
Keep an inventory of all software and operating systems across your organization. You can’t protect what you don’t know exists, and that forgotten server in the supply closet might be running Windows XP.
3. Train Your Team to Recognize Digital Trickery
Phishing emails have evolved far beyond the obvious Nigerian prince scams. Modern attacks use sophisticated social engineering techniques that fool even technically savvy users. We’ve watched entire companies get compromised because someone clicked a link in what appeared to be a legitimate email from their bank.
Regular security training keeps these threats fresh in everyone’s minds. Make it practical rather than theoretical—show actual examples of phishing attempts that made it past your email filters. People learn better when they can see real threats rather than generic warnings about hypothetical dangers.
Create a culture where reporting suspicious emails is encouraged rather than mocked. The person who forwards a questionable message to IT might save your company from a ransomware attack. Shame-based security policies just encourage people to hide their mistakes until they become disasters.
Bonus tip: Implement two-factor authentication wherever possible. Yes, it adds an extra step to logging in, but that small inconvenience prevents most account compromises.
4. Plan for Disaster Before Disaster Plans for You
Business continuity planning sounds boring until your office floods, and you realize nobody thought about how to access customer data from home. We’ve helped companies rebuild from various disasters, and the ones with documented recovery plans always fare better than those winging it.
Document your critical systems and processes. Include contact information for vendors, passwords for essential accounts, and step-by-step recovery procedures. Store this documentation somewhere accessible even when your primary systems are down.
Identify your single points of failure. If losing one server, internet connection, or key employee would cripple operations, you need redundancy. These vulnerabilities often hide in plain sight until something breaks.
Test your disaster recovery procedures annually. Running through scenarios reveals gaps in your planning before you need the plans for real emergencies.
5. Monitor Systems Before They Monitor Themselves Into Failure
Proactive monitoring catches problems while they’re still manageable. Servers don’t usually crash without warning—they send distress signals that attentive monitoring can detect and address before complete failure occurs.
Set up alerts for critical metrics like disk space, memory usage, and network connectivity. Configure thresholds that warn you before issues become critical. A server running at 95% disk capacity needs attention, but one at 100% needs emergency intervention.
Monitor user accounts for unusual activity. Login attempts from unexpected locations or during odd hours might indicate compromised credentials. Catching these early prevents attackers from establishing persistent access to your systems.
Review monitoring data regularly rather than just responding to alerts. Trends in system performance often reveal developing issues that haven’t triggered alarms yet.
Technology dramas will happen regardless of preparation, but these strategies dramatically reduce their frequency and impact. The businesses that thrive are those that treat IT infrastructure as a foundation requiring ongoing maintenance, rather than a magic box that should just work. Your future self will thank you for the preparation, and we’ll have more time to work on interesting projects instead of explaining why the server that hasn’t been updated since 2019 suddenly stopped working.
