4 Basic Technology Maintenance Practices for Small Businesses

If you are one of the many small businesses out there that does not have reliable technical support for the myriad of devices on your network, it might be difficult to imagine a world where your technology gets the maintenance it needs to thrive. Thankfully, you’re not alone. Here are some basic technology maintenance tips that anyone can implement, plus one at the end that we think small businesses, in particular, will benefit from!

Keep Things Clean and Tidy

Technology solutions like workstations and server units are complex pieces of machinery with tons of moving parts. As such, it makes sense that they will function at their best when things are kept clean. You may have noticed that dust and other particles can gather in particular spots on your computer, such as near the fans and any small grates that give the machinery room to breathe. Take a moment every so often to clean things up a bit. Just make sure that you don’t blow or wipe the dust into the machine, as dust accumulating in the case itself could lead to damaging the internal components.

Apply Patches and Security Updates

If keeping your technology clean externally is important, then that goes doubly for making sure that it is cleaned up internally as well. By this, we mean making sure that everything is spick and span with your computer’s software and operating system. Developers issue updates periodically throughout a software’s lifetime designed to keep it safe from hackers and vulnerabilities. Apply these patches as they are released and you should have minimal opportunities to suffer from a data breach (in theory, anyway--it’s never quite this simple).

Perform a Routine Network Assessment

When it comes to network health and IT maintenance, it helps to zoom out and get a bird’s eye view of your entire network infrastructure. While it certainly is beneficial to look at network health on a micro level, the macro level can also provide valuable insights. For example, if you look at the whole, you might find bottlenecks where data is getting held up, which is not necessarily something that you would find unless you were looking in the right place. A network assessment can also give you information regarding network security and efficiency.

Contact Us!

If you are not comfortable performing maintenance on your technology, don’t worry. You’re not alone in this regard. In fact, we highly encourage and recommend that you have only qualified and experienced technicians perform maintenance on your business’ technology. Remember, these devices are assets, and they must be protected with proactive maintenance whenever possible. To this end, One Up Solutions Northwest can help.

We can administer proactive maintenance designed to keep issues from evolving into major problems later on down the line. You can know with certainty that we are keeping a close watch on your technology solutions for any signs of wear and tear. To learn more, reach out to us at (503) 278-5011.