The Most Common IT Challenges for UK Small Businesses

Small businesses in the UK face various IT challenges, some of which are a lot more common than others. To deal with any kind of IT related issues, you first need to know what to look for.

• Limited Budgets for IT Infrastructure

Ideally all companies, even the small ones, should have enough money to budget for a decent IT system. But this is not an ideal world, and often having the right kind of IT infrastructure from the get go is just not feasible for small businesses juggling limited IT budgets.

• Cybersecurity Concerns

Small businesses are the most at risk of a cyber-attack, mostly because of the challenge listed above. Many hackers and scammers know that small businesses don’t have the best defence and so they go out of their way to target them.

• Lack of IT Expertise

Very few small businesses have a dedicated IT staff. This can end up resulting in the company not having the correct type of IT management, which can in turn result in various challenges such as opening the company up to certain unwanted risks.

• Data Backup and Recovery

Data loss happens when businesses aren’t secure or when their IT is improperly managed. It also happens when the company neglects its backup systems, which often get forgotten when there are other tasks demanding attention. Not having a business continuity plan in place can have dire consequences.

• Scalability and Future-Proofing

Finally, there is the lack of scalability and future proofing. Small businesses are often so busy trying to get through the daily work load and to stay afloat, that any thoughts of IT scalability and future-proofing goes out of the window. Adapting to future changes can be hard if there is no plan in place, especially when budget constraints and a lack of knowledge are standing in the way.

Actionable Solutions

The various IT challenges might sound a bit like a mountain to overcome, but with these easy solutions they don’t have to be. Here is what you as a small business owner can do to overcome these challenges.

• Prioritise IT Investments

You don’t need the biggest budget, you just need to be dedicated to putting aside some money to put towards your IT investments. You can also look at affordable solutions such as using Cloud based services.

• Implement Robust Cybersecurity Measures

Again, you don’t have to bankrupt yourself with expensive security programmes, just become obsessive about using strong passwords and encryption, and use tough firewalls. You can also train employees on the best cybersecurity practices.

• Outsource IT Support

Reputable IT companies know what they are doing and they often have an affordable service created just for small companies. Shop around for an external IT service provider and find out about what they can offer you.

• Establish Regular Data Backups

As for your business continuity needs, setting up an automated data backup system that stores data frequently is an effective way to protect your work and your customer information. Having both an off-site and a Cloud-based solution is a must.

• Choose Scalable IT Solutions

And lastly, when you are setting up your IT infrastructure, you should opt for the kind that will be able to grow with your business. The system should be flexible and adaptable, and it should be able to effectively meet your needs.

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As a small business owner, you don’t have to navigate your IT setup on your own. Instead, you can give us a call. At 24/7 IT Services, we have a list of IT solutions, including IT infrastructure, VoIP and IT security, which will work perfectly for your company.

The post How Small Businesses in the UK can Overcome IT Challenges appeared first on 247 IT Services.

When it comes to Microsoft Office 365, there is still a lot of misconceptions about who is responsible for the data backup. And what Microsoft provides and what they are responsible for is completely different to what users assume, and for this reason data is often easily, and unexpectedly lost.

Why you should back-up your data?

Microsoft does not provide its Office 365 clients with the sort of data backup they think they are getting. In reality, Microsoft at best offers clients a partial backup which the clients then assume is a full backup.

The only way to guarantee that your data is correctly backed up would be to getting into the habit of manually doing it yourself. But the fact that Microsoft is not doing a good job of backing up is not the only reason why you should be doing it yourself. There are a couple of other important reasons as well:

1. It leads to less downtime

Although Microsoft is a mega software company, it is not immune to sudden power outages, disconnections and software failures, right when you are in the middle of doing something. In fact in 2020, a major outage left much of Microsoft’s European clients without access. The big problem when using anything on the Cloud is that when something like this happens, it results in software being inaccessible and depending on how bad the outage is, any data you were working on could be lost.

Because of this reason, Microsoft actually has a clause in its service level agreement encouraging the regular backup of data on a third party app.

• Backup tools are not that great

Microsoft 365 does come with its own built in backup system but it is quite limited. For instance, you will be able to recover some of the data that you have lost or deleted but if the data has been gone for a while, it can’t be recovered. The recovery process can also be rather complicated, in that it is not a one-click and everything comes back kind of solution.

And finally, with the built in backup, data is not secure. Instead, since it is being backed up to the Cloud, the backup itself is vulnerable to data loss.

• Permanent deletion is permanent

With Office 365, any hard delete is permanent. There is absolutely no backup for this deletion process and so if you were to accidently opt for a hard delete, there would be no way to recover your data.

Usually, this wouldn’t be a massive problem, because unless you are really not paying attention, it is a hard mistake to make. The real problem is that when an item has been soft deleted, and has been left in the bin for more than 30 days, it will be permanently removed.

• Account deletion also results in the full deletion of data

Data is connected to the user’s account, so if the account has been deleted for whatever reason, the data will disappear.

This is also true for accounts that are being migrated and for accounts with an outdated license. To avoid losing data from an account that is lost for whatever reason, it is important to always have that additional backup in place.

• Microsoft 365 can’t protect your data from other threats

Even if Microsoft 365 had the best data protection solutions, it can’t protect you from other threats like hackers and viruses that can affect your computer, and corrupt or delete your data. While Microsoft 365 tries to give its users some protection, you need to make sure that you have additional security measures in place, and that you regularly backup your data.

The post Microsoft 365 Data Should be Backed-Up. This is why. appeared first on 247 IT Services.