backup

Here at Upward we manage over a thousand desktops daily. On top of knowing the systems that we support very well it is also safe to say that we have excellent data on how your employees are using their information technology.

It is 2016 and most if not all of the employees we work with have been exposed to IT for most of their working careers. One would think that losing files would be an ‘old school’ problem.

Sadly, this isn’t the case. There is a small, but significant percentage (about 5%) of your employees who create important files and put them in places where they’ll end up lost. This costs you money and time. If anything, it might mean your IT Service Provider has to take extra time trying to excavate data when you’d rather have them building the laptop you bought for one of your new employees.

We know, changing behavior is difficult, but please consider making data loss, a metric for your managers.

Microsoft and Apple have built in functions which make it very difficult to lose files, as long as you follow some simple rules. I would suggest that you copy these down and send them out to your employees, at least once a year.

  1. If you sit at a desk and use computer, don’t save files to your computer. Ever. Save them to a shared folder on a server or other device.
  2. If you have a laptop, don’t save files to your laptop unless you are going travel. While you are at home, download and use a VPN to store your files to a server. Need your company’s VPN? Contact Upward on how to set that up!
  3. Don’t save anything on your Desktop unless losing it will not affect your work. Not only do Desktops rarely get backed up, it slows your computer down when it boots up.
  4. If you travel, use shared files on OneDrive for Business. This terrific new tool makes it so much faster to save and retrieve files.
  5. Use OneDrive or Google Drive for personal files. These are free and if you don’t mind your data being ‘mined’ to sell you stuff, it can save you losing your photos when you drop your phone/camera in a puddle.

If you’re concerned or aware that employees in your company are either losing data or on verge of doing so, contact Upward today. We have solutions to make sure that your company never (barring a natural disaster!) loses data that costs you money.