My mom works at a small real estate company as an office manager. It is pretty small to where its mostly just her and her boss in the office, with only two other agents who don’t come into the office. It would be comparable to a boutique law firm in the size of the physical office.
Last week, my mom started having problems with her computer where the printer wasn’t working, web pages were slow, and certain apps wouldn’t open. She has all the files for the company on her computer and they are not backed up in any way.
Her boss took her computer to a computer repair place where they said it was full of viruses and they couldn’t download anything on it. It was easier and cheaper to get a new computer than to try and replace the old one. This was on Friday, and they wouldn’t be able to get a new one with all the information transferred to the new one until midday Monday.
Since this is a smaller real estate company that is kind of slow at the moment, this wasn’t a huge inconvenience. My mom knew the passwords for the email accounts and MLS, so she could log in on another computer in the meantime. But, what if there was a contract due the next day or they were in the middle of closing a deal? Or what if she didn’t know the logins and they were all in the computer? Business would be at a standstill until they had access to the computer again.
This made me think about how for most law firms, a half a week being without a computer, files, logins, or even a printer could cause major problems. There are deadlines for filing and a lot of communication that goes on over email. If no files were able to be accessed, lawyers would just be like sitting ducks until things were fixed.
This shows how important it is to have antivirus programs installed on computers in a business and in personal life. My mom doesn’t know how a virus made its way into the computer, but it did.
This also highlights the importance of storing your documents on a cloud-based storage or external hard drive so if something happens to your computer, you aren’t starting from scratch. You can go to another computer and pick up where you left off.
Overall, this situation made me think about how businesses now are almost all digital. You can’t list a property without a computer, so much communication is done over email, and passwords are not written down anywhere. For law firms it is essential for e-filing, communication, case management, and nearly everything else. And if the digital parts of your business are not secured, unpredictable things like this could happen and create major issues.
Yes, this is a good argument for storing important files in the cloud. It is also a good argument for cloud-based software where all you need is a web browser to log in and do your work. It doesn't matter what computer you use when everything is cloud-based.
ReplyDeleteThis is also a good argument for expanded use of cloud-based operating systems like ChromeOS. It runs not only on laptops (aka Chromebooks), but also on small and reasonably priced desktop computers (aka Chromeboxes). ChromeOS devices don't get viruses and can be "power washed" if they are not running right and everything is restored on the next reboot.
While ChromeOS devices don't run Windows or MacOS, they do run the very capable web versions of the Microsoft Office suite of applications including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.