Servers – Casserly Consulting

Tip of the Week: Use Admin Accounts to Control Your Network

There are various types of user accounts that your employees and administrators can use to access their workstations, but one of the biggest points of contention to consider when planning out data access is the use of administrator accounts. Specifically, you want to avoid handing out administrator account access to users like it’s Halloween candy.

What’s the Big Deal?
You would think that assigning administrator accounts would prevent users from making poor choices with your data. The main difference between the two is that administrator accounts have many more privileges compared to the traditional account used by the average user. In fact, a traditional account is much safer to use unless you actually need administrator access to perform a certain task. Ordinarily, a normal user account can’t install software or mess around with important files in the system, but this isn’t necessarily the case for an administrator account.

Admin accounts are essentially the most powerful account on your computer. They have the permissions to perform just about any role on your PC. It’s the same role that your IT department uses to make any significant changes to your devices during updates and general maintenance. Every computer needs to have at least one admin account found on it, but if access from untrained users is allowed, they could make changes to important files needed for the computer to run properly.

Why You Should Limit Admin Account Use
While it might make sense to have admin permissions if you’re the only one who uses your computer, this is simply not the case on a managed network. There are security problems associated with using an admin account as your primary device account. What happens if your account gets compromised by some sort of malware? It’s simple; the malware will install on your admin account and be able to make any changes it wants to any of the important files only accessible by your admin account. While more permissions as the device owner might sound ideal, it only makes it easier for threats to leave a lasting effect on a device.

Standard accounts have more limited permissions, meaning that if they are compromised in any fashion, they will be more limited in the amount of damage they can cause. It’s for this reason that it’s best to limit administrator accounts as often as possible, as there is no guarantee you will never fall victim to such attacks.

To minimize the chance of your business’ endpoints falling prey to attacks, you should implement proactive measures against the countless possibilities out there–including a compromised admin account. To learn more about how your business can protect itself, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

Does Your Server Room Need Air Conditioning?

You don’t need us to tell you that servers, workstations, and many other network components create a lot of heat from constant use. Servers in particular produce an incredible amount of heat, so much that they need to be kept in a climate-controlled room to ensure they don’t overheat and cause hardware failure. How can you make sure that your business’ servers are in an adequate environment to preserve your organization’s future?

It all starts by examining the current environment in which you store your hardware. Are you storing your servers in a closet (or other small room) with only fans to cool them? Is there poor air circulation? What about humidity? All of these variables need to be addressed before too much damage is done to your server.

Prolonged exposure to heat can cause permanent damage to your server units, decreasing their value over time and lowering the quality of service you get from them. However, not just any air conditioning system will do to protect this critical hardware. The best kind of air conditioning for a server room includes a comprehensive approach to climate control. This includes sensors that can measure room humidity and temperature. Ideally, you want sensors that can be monitored remotely so that you can always keep an eye on the environment. This allows you to properly manage the environment your organization’s critical hardware is in.

While you want to monitor humidity and make sure that it doesn’t exceed a certain threshold, you should also be wary of the room becoming too dry. Storing active electronics in a dry room is certainly not an ideal situation, as this can create unwanted static electricity that can cause damage to devices.

Air flow is also extremely important, as you want to make sure that your servers are actually being hit by the cool air so that they can be adequately cooled down. For example, you don’t want to have your air conditioning on at its highest setting in your server room because it might be wasteful in the long run, whereas air blowing directly on your server cabinets can accomplish largely the same goal with less investment into your energy costs. To this end, air conditioning units can be installed in the floor or ceiling, directly above or below the cabinets, so as to get the most out of your investment.

Of course, no amount of air conditioning can prepare you for the worst-case scenario–the inevitable failure of your business’ server units and loss of its data. In cases like this, you should always be prepared for the worst. A comprehensive data backup system needs to be implemented in order to guarantee that the worst doesn’t wipe your organization off the map entirely. To this end, COMPANYNAME can help. We’ll identify how you can optimize your server infrastructure and data backup system so that an unexpected disaster doesn’t prematurely end your business. To learn more, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.