Tech support for small office
- Thread starter getbent
- Start date
Most of the small businesses in the lower county, mainly use after hours tech support from some of the local IT people from off of base. I know I do some moonlighting after hours IT support for a local family business in Leonardtown. It seems fine for them. Otherwise there is TSB in Hollywood that also provides this type of service.
In a "perfect" environment, you should be backing up all of your business financial documentation/databases and all other electronic documents locally and also to an external storage facility (cloud storage).
Redundancy the is key to being safe...
Hope this helps....
In a "perfect" environment, you should be backing up all of your business financial documentation/databases and all other electronic documents locally and also to an external storage facility (cloud storage).
Redundancy the is key to being safe...
Hope this helps....
somdfunguy
not impressed
no to putting others PII in the cloud. once it is in the cloud you no longer own it.
I do for various small operations so I would look to a reliable one man shop so to speak.
Biggest issue I see is that small businesses do not keep their windows patches and applications up to date, as well as antivirus. I tell them just because you can have the computer on the internet do you really need it? Many attacks go after small business because they are easy targets to gain PII and CC data.
I do for various small operations so I would look to a reliable one man shop so to speak.
Biggest issue I see is that small businesses do not keep their windows patches and applications up to date, as well as antivirus. I tell them just because you can have the computer on the internet do you really need it? Many attacks go after small business because they are easy targets to gain PII and CC data.
getbent
Thats how them b*tch's R
The business has about 10-12 computers, all networked together with all having internet usage. One computer can remote in. There is back up on site but apparently if you unhook it to take it home it messes the server up. Not satisfied with current IT co. I know of another person in the same business as said office that does use a cloud service for his stuff. Wouldn't it be just as easy to hack into info if it's not on a cloud? This office does not have wireless anything BTW. Not sure if that makes a difference.
We would need someone who can come to the office during the day not after hours.
We would need someone who can come to the office during the day not after hours.
getbent
Thats how them b*tch's R
Thanks. Tried looking them up but their website appears to be down. Try again later.
somdfunguy
not impressed
all depends on your requirements. if you go cloud do you need your data to be held in the USA only or can it go offsite? do you have any requirements of who can and cannot see your data? do you have availability requirements? do you have requirements from other vendors?
like mama always said just because someone else is doing it doesn't make it right
getbent
Thats how them b*tch's R
USA definitely. Nothing would be backed up that the whole office doesn't have access to now. It's mainly if something happened we wouldn't be starting from scratch, even though I'm sure some customers with balances would be ok with that
somdfunguy
not impressed
Its not about others in the office. once you move it into the cloud anyone who works for the cloud company and the owner of the location that the cloud company has their servers in could have access to the server.
sure there are paper agreements that state otherwise but what liability are you willing to accept.
also cloud means cloud. your data could be in 10 different countries depending on who you sign on with.
sure there are paper agreements that state otherwise but what liability are you willing to accept.
also cloud means cloud. your data could be in 10 different countries depending on who you sign on with.
getbent
Thats how them b*tch's R
oh ok. I'm not at familiar with this cloud business. Can you tell? lol. I guess you have to hope for the best.
somdfunguy
not impressed
do you run other parts of your business on hope?
Amazon/Google/IBM/etc have cloud services. Companies purchase/rent "a block" and set up some kind of backup service that they sell to you. So now you have to think about the reseller company as well as the owner of the cloud. You have an agreement with the reseller but you dont have it with the cloud owner who sold to the reseller. Your data is stolen via physical access to the cloud servers. It is not the reseller's fault and Im sure that is in the contract. You dont have a contract with the cloud owner. What do you do?
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EmptyTimCup
Guest
depending on the initial size of the data store - it could take awhile to get everything backed up to the cloud
I assist a small business that backs up to a hard drive, and that is swapped out every night with another hard drive
Drive A
Drive B
If you do not need 'bare metal restore' capability, you could literately do a drag copy to an external and take it home every night, again rotating external drives
3 tb drives are less than $ 250 bucks
if you are using quick books, your should back up the data base file, Act same thing
you can search your hard drive for
*.xls,
*.xlsx [newer excel format]
*doc
*docx
[if you use Power Point]
*.ppt
*.pptx
and copy all these to something external and take the drive home
as it was stated - with the cloud, who controls your data
I assist a small business that backs up to a hard drive, and that is swapped out every night with another hard drive
Drive A
Drive B
If you do not need 'bare metal restore' capability, you could literately do a drag copy to an external and take it home every night, again rotating external drives
3 tb drives are less than $ 250 bucks
if you are using quick books, your should back up the data base file, Act same thing
you can search your hard drive for
*.xls,
*.xlsx [newer excel format]
*doc
*docx
[if you use Power Point]
*.ppt
*.pptx
and copy all these to something external and take the drive home
as it was stated - with the cloud, who controls your data
getbent
Thats how them b*tch's R
It's not my business, i was just trying to be nice and get info. Our current back up stinks, messes up the server. I don't know what the owner would do. That's why I was asking about info. What do other companies do if there info is compromised? Can you protect yourself from that? (other than whatever security measures you put in place).
somdfunguy
not impressed
they normally go out of business unless they are large enough to absorb the legal fallout.
yes you can protect yourself. patching, firewalls, smart internet usage, malware protection, strong passwords, encryption...
E
EmptyTimCup
Guest
you should look for a cloud service that encrypts the data before it leaves your site
what exactly is the issue with the backup ....... besides Symantec Backup Exec sucks balls
what exactly is the issue with the backup ....... besides Symantec Backup Exec sucks balls
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EmptyTimCup
Guest
E
EmptyTimCup
Guest
Rindiculous
New Member
It all depends upon what software you use, how you manage your images etc.
For example: Apple Time Machine (which I *love*) creates "generational" backups of your system. You start time machine, it does one huuuuge backup and then it just adds to that backup over time. You can easily roll your system back to a certain date and time; all the files (including deleted ones) will be on there. You can restore a machine to that date and time if its hard drive dies and you have to rebuild it. Time machine fills up all available drive space and then starts deleting the oldest stuff. Best way to manage this is to partition your drives or get a Synology NAS and create different users that have storage quotas associated with them. I've yet to find a 100% exact imitator on the PC side.
You could also do a weekly full backup to a NAS and then incrementals throughout the week. Let the network back itself up fully over the weekend and only catch the changes during the week. Then go in and manually delete the oldest image files if you are running out of space. Macrium Reflect is my tool of choice for this (get the pro version) - I've heard bad things about Acronis True Image lately...
Another *super cool* idea is to use "CrashPlan"; you can get the basic version for free. It is designed to be installed on a desktop PC but you can sorta hack a Synology NAS (an expensive one) and install it there.
Article that relates: Tobyland.Com: Synology & CrashPlan
What CrashPlan will do is act like a thrower and catcher for your backups. First you set up 2 PCs with CrashPlan (or 2 NASes) and then you tell them to synchronize with each other. Use one of these PCs or NASes as your primary backup server. You could conceivably run the full network backup on both devices and then take one of them home with you. The crashplan backups would then sync to each other so long as you set up port forwarding etc. and you would, in effect, have your own off-site backup. Remember that most ISPs have a 250gb per month data cap on land lines, however.
Furthermore, all that "Cloud" computing means is "someone else's computer". I.E. if I set up a computer at my house and allowed you to access files on it from somewhere else I could tell you that you are using my "Cloud" services. "Cloud" is more of a marketing term than a technical one in my opinion. It just means "Internet" really...
As for a particular business down here... I just don't know. I'd also find someone trustworthy who moonlights from the base. Those are the guys with some of the most rock-solid knowledge, not to knock the dedicated folks. If they do it on the side then chances are you'll get a good rate and someone who has good expertise.
getbent
Thats how them b*tch's R
If you mean removable from the computer, then no. They sit next to it and are plugged into the computer. I do know sometimes when its full, it does something to the server where it wont fully start up. You have to shut off the server,unplug the back up and switch to the other one.