What can you do to take the worry out of your IT? One solution is to adopt an integrated IT strategy. Instead of managing a variety of tools for data protection, remote backup, anti-virus and anti-malware yourself, have your IT Service Provider manage your infrastructure for you. Do you really have time to ensure all your systems are up to date with operating systems (O/S) patches to protect you from the latest security threats? Remember, your network is only as secure as your most vulnerable device. If you miss a patch on one device, your entire network may be out of compliance and compromised.

There are plenty of benefits from adopting an integrated approach to managing your IT assets. For starters, having a single source IT Service Provider means you have one organization to call when you have a problem. If you have service level agreement (SLA) in place, you will get a rapid resolution when you run into problems. What’s more, by using the latest remote monitoring and management technologies, your IT Service Provider will identify and resolve problems before you even realize you have them.

By proactively managing and monitoring your IT Systems, you will run into fewer problems. Even better, you can fix the cost of IT Service delivery by implementing a Managed IT Services model. Not only will you have fewer problems, but the cost of your IT Services will be predictable month after month.

By adopting an integrated IT strategy and implementing a managed service model you will have faster response time, fewer problems and predictable costs of IT Service delivery. All this means less downtime, higher availability and improved productivity for your employees. By taking the hassle out of IT, you have more time to focus on running your business. Isn’t that enough to worry about each day?

Keep Business and Personal Separate. Don’t use your business email and password combination for personal use. Last month Zappos (owned by amazon) let their users know that their systems had been hacked and that customers’ email and password combinations may have been compromised. If Amazon can loose your password, think about how many other sites can as well. It is bad enough to compromise your personal data, but imagine exposing your internal systems at work. Keep business and pleasure protected so you don’t risk your business data in case your password and email combination fall into the wrong hands.

Change Your Password Regularly. Just like changing the batteries in your smoke detector, changing your password keeps you ahead of the game. While some say it is a hassle to change your password, it may protect you from someone who obtained your credentials without authorization. Employees who have left your company will also be challenged if they try to hack your systems.

Set a strong password. I know strong passwords may be hard to remember, but they are also hard for someone to hack. Use combinations of capital and lower case letters. Include numbers if possible and also other special characters if your system allows for this. Consider using numbers to replace letters in familiar words or include special keys instead of vowels (for example @ for a or ! for L). This may help you with that hard to r3m3mb3r password. After all, you don’t write them down, do you?

Protect against malware. There are malicous software programs (“malware” for short) that can get downloaded and installed on your devices. Unlike a virus that intends to reduce systems performance or corrupt and destroy data, malware may go undetected with the intent of capturing critical information such as credit card numbers and email /password combinations.

Some malware programs are designed to “phish” for your password. While logging in, malware may transmit your password without your knowledge. Make sure you block against the latest malware in addition to keeping your anti-virus definitions and operating systems patches up to date.

This is by no way a comprehensive list or guarantee to avoid getting hacked or having your password compromised. However, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure when it comes to password protection.

Here are some tips to ensure you get back up and running quickly:

Start off by having all your ducks in a row. When things go wrong, make sure you know who to call. Don’t wait until things are broken to find an IT Service Provider or Computer Repair Company. Establish a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with a reputable IT Service Provider in advance. By having an agreed upon response time and rate schedule, you can ensure a rapid response to your problem that works by your schedule. In many cases you can pay by the hour or by the ticket. You may even be able to include unforeseen computer repairs as part of a fixed fee IT Managed Service Agreement. By having a service level agreement in place, you will save time and money when things go wrong.

Also consider having both local and off-site backups of your data. When we thing about backup we typically think about a disaster, theft or other systems failure. Any way you look at it, backup is all about recovery. A local backup can help you find lost files or recover corrupted data quickly, but sometimes your local backup may not be enough. In addition to your local backup consider having off-site data storage available as well. Remote backup may not restore as quickly due to bandwidth limitation. However, in case of a fire, earthquake, hurricane or other disaster, your remote backup will come in handy. Also, IT Managed Service Provider ITMSP may be able to restore or rebuild your files or device from a remote backup without having to go on-site. This can not only get you up and running quicker, but it also may save money by avoiding an on-site visit.

Keeping your systems in compliance is a good way to avoid problems before they happen. As they say, a once of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Establish solid IT policies and always proactively maintain your systems. Ensure that your machines always are up to date with the latest security patches, defragment your hard drives periodically and clear your temporary directories to keep systems running at optimal performance.

Make sure you are in control of your IT environment by having a trusted IT Service Advisor recommend what is right for your business

1. Windows O/S Patch – Everyday there are new patches, updates, and hotfixes available from Microsoft for your computers. Many of these patches are created to close security holes for your PC. If your PC is at risk your network is at risk. This means your data is at risk too. By making sure ALL your systems are up to date on a DAILY basis, you will help protect your data, and your systems will run better too.

2. Antivirus – Keeping your Antivirus definitions up to date is another way to protect yourself from data loss. These Antivirus updates are designed to avoid dangerous attacks and to prevent malicious programs from destroying your data. Verify your Antivirus definitions are always up to date.

3. Malware – Malware is short for malicious software. These programs not only slow your computer and disrupt your work, but they can also gather information from your machine resulting in a breach of privacy. Many malware programs are designed specifically for capturing credit card information. There are many new programs designed to detect and destroy malware. Make sure you are ahead of these types of attacks.

4. Network Scan and Audit – You can identify security risks by monitoring your network regularly. A network scan and audit can detect unauthorized devices attached to your network, open ports to the Internet, and find holes in your firewall’s security settings. Without your knowledge, your data may be exposed to a security breach from your network. Scan your network proactively, not just when “things seem to be running slow”.

5. Backup – We often think about backup in terms of a disaster recovery scenario. For example, “how quickly can I get that file or system back if I loose my data?”. In the event of a security breach your back up can also pinpoint how much data may have lost. By knowing how much data has been lost, you can assess what your overall exposure is. This is particularly important when you need to disclose lost customer data to comply with industry regulations.

In today’s world, companies large and small are targets of unintended attacks that may result in loss of critical data. Making sure your systems are in compliance is your first defense in protecting your data. If you’re not sure, ask your IT professional for an asset inventory and hardware software audit to see how you stack up.

Here is why: It is no surprise small businesses rely on information technology as much as larger businesses do today. Most have a website, some sort of PC based accounting system, email for communications, Internet access, firewall and WIFI access within their business. It is not uncommon to have more than one device per employee (eg. PC or Mac, Windows servers plus a mobile phone).

By nature, small businesses have less working capital that big businesses. As a result, they are more dependent on current cashflows to make ends meet than their larger counter parts. Business interruption from systems downtime resulting from systems failure, natural disaster, loss of power, theft and security breach can have a bigger impact on a small business than a medium to larger company because small companies may be less resilient.

With the absence of a crystal ball, it should be no surprise that the following Small Business IT Trends will become increasingly important in 2012.

Business Continuity. Business Continuity is the planning and related process a business goes through to make sure operations continue in the event of a disaster. For example; taking orders, paying suppliers and employees, keeping the factory or store open. Business Continuity includes the ability to rapidly backup and restore key systems in the case of emergency.

Having your backup disks or tapes may not be enough to rapidly restore in the event of a fire, hurricane, earthquake or other natural disaster. Being able to backup from a highly available off site source may significantly reduce your time to recover. There are many online backup options today and this trend of having both local and offsite backups readily available is expected to continue for small business IT.

Security. Because information technology is prevalent in small businesses they increasingly become targets for hackers, phishers and other forms of malware and virus intrusions. More and more companies do business via credit card so PCI compliance for small business creates additional requirements for data and network security. In 2012 more small businesses will make sure their operating systems patches and updates are up to date, along with, antivirus and malware updates. In addition more small businesses will systematically and periodically scan their networks for policy violations and intrusions.

Mobility. Phones and tablets are smarter than ever. Believe it or not, the iPad sold over 3 million units in just 80 days compared with the IPhone selling 1 million units in 90 days of availability. The low cost of these devices combined with the ease of networking, accessibility and highly functional applications makes mobile computing a big trend in small business IT. It is easy for a user to add their own applications to a tablet device. These devices are also highly susceptible to loss or theft. It is important to track these devices like any other IT asset and ensure that they can be traced, locked and wiped if lost or stolen. Remember, they may provide unauthorized access to your critical data if you do not strictly enforce policy on these devices.

Cloud. Cloud computing includes platform, infrastructure and software as a service. Small businesses now have access to a wide range of enterprise infrastructure including storage and applications. Cloud computing typically follows a subscription based “utility” model making it more affordable for companies to access enterprise infrastructure. Because they are purchased as an operating expense instead of a capital outlay the are more popular than ever in today’s tight capital markets Cloud computing insulates the small business from needing to purchase servers, software licenses and dealing with the hassles of implementing new systems. For small businesses it is no surprise that more new systems deployments will occur in the cloud than traditional premise based solutions.

With all these trends small businesses will rely more on their IT in 2012 than in years before. It is more important now then ever to establish a relationship with an IT professional who acts as trusted advisor to your business. Make sure you have this relationship in place before you need it. If you wait until you have a problem to resolve, it is too late!

Hyperbole aside, doesn’t it sometimes feel like we’re being sold a bag of beans?

The experts would have us believe that the cloud is the Be All, End All of IT architectures. It promises to deliver ubiquitous access to business tools and information with an economy of scale that will revolutionize the IT industry. According to Gartner’s 2011 CIO Survey, cloud computing services are the top priority for IT organizations this year. Gartner goes on to predict that while today only three percent of CIOs have the majority of their IT environments running in the cloud or on SaaS technologies, that number is expected to jump to 43 percent over the next four years.

But what really is the cloud? Should we trust our data to vendors who promise to secure our mission-critical information? What exactly is in the fine print in those SLAs we sign? Will the expanse of the Internet ensure that the cloud will never fail? Is our data truly safe?

The fact is that we’re all are facing a radical consumerization of IT. Users are increasingly accessing business data, applications and email on mobile devices–often their personalhardware–making it hard to track and manage business data. With cloud applications managing your sales efforts, backing up your data, tracking your time and invoicing customers, business data is quickly flowing from robust and secure on-site server infrastructure to the cloud where we are slowing losing control.

But what about data flowing the other direction? It’s easy to upload data to the cloud, but how easy is it to pull it back?

Last spring, Amazon’s east coast data center went down, creating massive failures across the Internet. Hundreds of companies from Reddit to Foursquare went down because they were unable to fail over to other infrastructures–whether those were another cloud platform or on-site infrastructure. What was the impact on their business? How many customers did it affect?

Disaster recovery isn’t the only data issue we need to consider in the cloud. At what point are we going to hear about a cybercriminal worming his way into Salesforce.com to steal customer information? Sure, Salesforce.com employs one of the most robust security apparatuses in the industry and it’s never given us a reason to doubt its sincerity, but it’s a big target.