Four Things You Can Do To Protect Your Network (And Probably Your Job)

Process and procedure are critical in any business, and not just in the IT department. If you work at home and you pull down $20K a month in sales, you don’t have an IT department, but your data and ability to work is just as important. The same goes for a company with 150 employees. I was going over some old worksheets and technical documentation and I came across a number of scenarios which are super important. The companies which learned these hard lessons were able to grow from their experiences. You should learn something from their experiences, too.

Network Access Failover

This subject is one of the primary and ongoing hotpoints in the SMB market. No small business owner wants to spend more than they have to, but how much does it cost your business when you are offline? I’m betting that, with a judicial application of math skills, you could figure out exactly what it costs you per hour to not have access to your network. Will AT&T, Cox, Time-Warner, or any carrier give you the money you lost during their outage? No. Not a chance. You need to have a failover service in place, even a simple DSL line, and make sure that you don’t just get another line from the same carrier. Think about it.

Backup Your Firewall Configuration

How often do you think about your firewall. Honestly. Unless you are the Sr. Security Analyst for a large National or Multi-National corporation, you probably don’t think about it at all. Of course, you’ll call up your IT guy when you get sick of your employees spending precious hours on FaceBook and Twitter, but that doesn’t count. What would happen, however, if that firewall failed or spontaneously reset itself to factory default (trust me when I say that its happened)? That firewall device is your single point of access for the entire network. If it was no longer able to properly route services and quarantine access, you would be up Feces Creek without a plunger. Even Network Access Failover won’t help you here. Make sure to have a complete backup of the firewall configured and save yourself significant anguish by having a hot standby waiting in the wings to take over.

Keep Your Rack Clean

Or, if you have more than one, keep them all neat and tidy. The last thing you want when you need to troubleshoot a problem is to walk straight into a nasty pit full of CAT-5E vipers in blue, yellow, red, green, and off-white. Cable tracing is already a serious pain in the ass when everything is organized, but let everything go to pot and you may never know where that line terminates. Use the tools that the industry provides, like zip ties (super cheap), velcro cable wraps (stupid cheap), cable guides, wrap tubing (also cheap at Ikea), and even side mount or rack mount power distribution units (PDUs). APC makes fantastic 42U racks. I’m just saying.

Do The Math

Somewhere in your mind you are shrinking away from the idea that just plugging stuff in to power strip after power strip is a good thing, but you may not be listening to it. Too much power draw on a weak circuit can cause problems like power outages, poor performance, reduction of hardware lifetime, and damage to costly computers. Oh, and here’s a tip… Sticking a UPS on the line won’t increase circuit capacity. If you need 220 or 440, there’s no amount of cheap equipment you can stick in the middle to eliminate that need. Check with your property management company, contract an electrician, and have it taken care of.

Get all of these things dealt with and you are well on your way to being a happier, less stressed out member of society. Take my word on this. I’ve been in the mix on these kinds of things for nearly 20 years. Woot!