This has been a crazy winter so far. We have seen several snow storms, some causing trees to come down, knocking down power lines, causing power outages all over the area. How can you protect your equipment? First, if any severe storm, whether its a thunder storm, winter weather advisory, or even a hurricane is soon to hit your area, you should prepare yourself first by making sure you have flashlights, water, food, batteries etc. Once you have what you need for your own safety, next unplug any important equipment in your home and/or office. Removing the power plug from the wall will eliminate the possibility of a serious electrical surge from damaging your equipment. Many people think by just turning off their equipment will be good enough to prevent a catastrophe. A strong enough surge can damage any equipment that is plugged into an outlet, even if that equipment is turned off. It is also important to protect your important files (pictures, documents, etc.). One of the easiest and most cost effective ways to protect your files is through an offsite backup. These types of backup systems are easy to set up and will cost your under $100 per year for a basic plan. Your files will be safely stored on a secure and encrypted server (cloud) and you can retrieve those files at any time. We set up many of our customers with offsite backup systems. After Hurricane Sandy, we were able to restore several customers’ files that were lost from the devastation by restoring their data from the offsite backups. Another important piece of equipment to have is a battery backup with AVR (Automatic Voltage Regulation). This will maintain a steady voltage to your equipment in case there is a spike in the power (brownouts etc.). A battery backup system will also properly shut down your computer in case of a power outage.
