Series: What Small and Mid-Sized Business Leaders Need to Know About Their Company’s IT – Servers
What’s the saying? Ignorance is bliss? It should be Ignorance is bliss – until it isn’t.
With a significant rise in cyberattacks on smaller businesses, business leaders need to be ahead of the game regarding data security. Building a solid foundation of knowledge about your company’s IT infrastructure is a great start. As a business owner or leader, you are often expected to trust the advice, knowledge, and execution of your technical employees or IT service providers – we want you to take this series and use it to “Trust but Verify” using the questions contained in each section.
Ask yourself: Where is your company data and who owns it?
Data comes in a variety of flavors, and it’s usually in a multitude of places. In this series, we talk about some different kinds of data that your company may own or use and why business leaders need to take the time to discover some basic information about their company data.
Data example #1: E-Mail
Data example #2: Your Company Website
Data example #3: Servers
Why your servers should matter to you: Servers manage and share your company data, share your resources, and may control access to your network, email, printers, website, and more. Your servers are the gateway to your company infrastructure, and if they are compromised, all of that data and access to it are up for grabs.
Laymen’s terminology: “server” A server is the “computer” that other computers connect to retrieve things (like software applications or files). Sometimes servers have a dedicated function. For example, you may have heard someone mention your file server. Your file server holds files that certain computer users within your company can access and share.
Possible answers: When you ask, “where are the company’s servers,” you could get several answers and even a combination of responses: “The Cloud,” “Locally,” “at a Data Center”
Business Continuity Concerns: You need to know who has access to your servers, so you know who to turn to in case of a system issue. What happens if you want to move them? What happens in the event of an outage. Do you have a disaster recovery plan in place? Even a simple one? Do you have any type of redundancy?
What you must know:
- Where are your servers located?
- Are they physical or virtual?
- Who is managing your servers?
- Do you have power backups on your servers?
Having a central hub for your data and applications is critical, but it also means that any hacker who succeeds in accessing your servers has the keys to your data kingdom. So, if you have servers, you need to get the answers to the above questions, you need to be sure you have backups in place, and ideally, they should be monitored by experienced IT security professionals.
If you don’t yet have servers for your business but are considering adding them to your infrastructure, there are some things you need to think about before buying.
Ask yourself:
- What will you be using the servers for?
- Do you need/want them to be physical/on-site or are you good with cloud-based?
- What is your plan for security?
- Who will monitor and maintain them?
Your server plays such a critical role in your business. You need to be sure you give some serious thought to your needs and planning how they will be set up before implementation. And if you feel lost, don’t hesitate to reach out to a Managed IT Services Provider for help.
In case you missed it, check out our previous posts on data in your emails and on your website. Stay tuned for our next article on server backups.
Are you tired of having recurring IT issues? Do you want to have more time to focus on your “real” job instead of having to be your company IT guy? Do you have internal IT but would like to take some of the weight off of them so they can work on things that really matter to you? Managed IT Services can get you there. Call Auxiom today!
