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Following proper procedures pays off
By Sandy Oates
It’s been quite some time since my last column; hard to believe how fast time goes by.
Last time I talked about the value of proper backups and system recovery. Following proper procedures paid off greatly for a client last week. Even though they were running one of the leading commercial, paid versions of security software they got struck with a much dreaded ransomware attack.
We had a proper current backup in place as well as a drive image available and their system was back up and running in a matter of a few hours from the time they placed the call. The drive image saved the many hours it would have taken to reload the operating system as well as their required business software and the backup saved them from paying to get their files back, if in fact they would ever get them back.
In a lot of cases the files and money are just gone because the culprits never do restore them. Can your business survive a complete data loss? Anyway, rant over.
The next thing to think about is whether or not to upgrade to Windows 10 or not.
The deadline for the free upgrade of July 29 will be soon upon us. If you’re using Windows 7, mainstream support ended on January 13, 2015 and extended support (security updates) will continue until January 14, 2020.
Windows 7 was great product, however, if you ever need to do a fresh reinstall it can be a very time consuming endeavor due to needing a few years of updates downloaded and installed. Windows 7 SP1 was the last full update available and any updates from April 9, 2013 on will need to be reinstalled. We’re talking many hours to make that happen.
I’ve included a couple of safe web links to better describe what’s happening with ransomware and the difficulty with Windows 7 reinstalls. If you system is running slow or becoming unreliable, I can fix that too. If you have questions please call or drop me an email. Thanks for your time.
– Sandy Oates is owner of Columbia Technical Services, based in Cranbrook.
