Computers don’t celebrate Christmas!  Which is just as well, because their owners don’t expect them to take a holiday, in fact, they expect them to work perfectly at all times.

Here are a few of the things we’ll be tackling over the festive season:

Away in a manger

While you’re raising a glass of Buck’s Fizz, we’ll be running upgrades on company technology to ensure it’s fit and healthy and in great shape for 2026.  The holiday period is a great time to get your systems updated, while nobody needs access to your data.

Ding dong merrily on high

When your computer stops chiming for alerts and notifications, you’ve got problems!  We’ve set up personal back-ups for several people.  This means that your Christmas pictures and videos won’t be lost forever if your hard drive gives up the ghost.  And any school holiday projects survive safely to be presented next term.

Equipment failures are more common than you might think, we have two personal hard drives that have failed recently already this week, which means that their owners will have to wait for the data to be retrieved.  It’s the difference between being back up and running in about 40 minutes – or waiting ‘forever’.  And that external hard drive won’t survive fire or flood.  Bear in mind that it can cost £600+ to recover your data – that’s not a bill you want to pay on top of all the other costs of the festive season.

Angels from the realms of glory

They won’t help you if you don’t have some kind of cloud storage!  If one device fails you can access your data from your phone, a tablet or another computer.  Instead of losing your data forever.

If you have the MS Office 365, you’ll have access to OneDrive, but there are plenty of other options, depending on the type of IT equipment you’re running, or you could subscribe to one of the cloud storage options, such as Dropbox.  A few pounds a month is better than a big bill when it all goes pear-shaped.

Good King Wenceslas

If you’re planning to work remotely during the festive break, make sure you’ve got the right kind of security.  While it’s unlikely you’ll have to trek across a snowy landscape, you don’t want to decide to grab an hour on that project, only to find you haven’t got access to the data you want and have to go into the office (if that’s even possible while everyone is on holiday).

Plan ahead and make sure that all remote access is on equipment with the right security (virus and malware protection and all the current updates) and your data is protected by specific remote access being granted only to people who will need it.  If you’re operating on the MS Entra platform this option is built in, if you’re not sure – give us a call and let’s ensure your security is sound.

… and a partridge in a pear tree

Some festive red flags to look out for:

• Never click on a text message telling you to follow a link in order to get your parcel or pay a parking fine. At Christmas EVERYONE is expecting parcels, but this kind of text message is a scam – all you’ll do is open the door to hackers and scammers.
• The same applies to emails. Be very careful what you click on – always double-double check if there’s even a tiny sliver of doubt.
• And, on a practical level, if a cuddly new pet arrives in the family – make sure that any wires are well out of its reach!

We wish you a Merry Christmas

And a Happy New Year.  If you really want 2026 to be brilliant for your business, start thinking about what would improve your working set up – what’s on your wish list?