By now I hope everyone knows to back up their computers. Importantly, I think everyone understands why. If you aren’t backing up, there is at least a nagging feeling that you should be. However, the idea of backing up should extend to everything that is important. 1. If you have any device that has non-standard settings, back it up. 2. Do you have a procedure within your company that is not standard? Back that up. How?
1. Chances are good that the firewall that protects your corporate network has some fairly specific settings. Make sure you save these settings and/or back up the firmware. If you are in charge of the firewall, you’ll be glad you did. If it ever fails or loses config somehow, good luck retrieving all the settings without internet access…which you won’t have until it is at least partially reconfigured. But if you have a nice backup of the settings, boom, apply it ad be on your way. The same is true of phone systems, security systems, and the like.
2. Procedures can be backed up, too. How? Through documentation. Knowledge of job funcions shouldn’t sit solely inside any one person’s head. Share and document every important thing about various jobs and procedures. Do you have a list of your top vendors? How about of your top customers? How about of your company officers? Probably…but are those lists backed up? I’ll be writing more next week about the “football” concept, a very offline way of backing up this type of info.