We live in a very technical world! In fact, it seems like everyone’s life, both work and social, revolves around the use of technology. Whether you love technology, or you are dragging your heels every step of the way, one fact is certain; life would pretty much come to a standstill without technology!

Since we rely on technology so much in our everyday life, knowing a thing or two about IT maintenance could go a long way in caring for, as well as protecting, the devices that we use. After all, if you care for your technology, it will go out of its way to care for you.

So how can yo get to grips with IT maintenance? Actually, it doesn’t need to be too difficult a task. Even people who don’t feel a great deal of love towards the world of technology can quickly learn how to maintain their devices. Below we are going to outline our top 4 tips to treating your technology with respect – enjoy!

Tip 1 – Keep Technology In A Protective Case When Possible

Technology can be affected by the surroundings. Anything from smoky air to weather conditions and substances like food and drinks can wreak havoc on your precious device. Get into the habit of placing your devices in protective covers or cases whenever possible.

This is especially true when you need to travel with one of your devices. Laptops especially need care when in transit, make sue you place them in a specialized bag with plenty of padding and protection.

If you tend to be rather accident prone (I speak from experience), you should consider accident protection for devices that you use on a regular basis. This will put your mind a little  more at ease when it comes to potential spillages or accidental damage.

Tip 2 – Back Up At Regular Intervals

When it comes to IT maintenance, we simply cannot stress this point enough. In this day and age no one should fail to back up their devices, yet countless people do! Remember what we mentioned at the start, how so much of our life both revolves around and is reliant on technology? That means that your devices hold a whole lot of precious, and at times irreplaceable, information. From your contacts to your important documents, as well as whole lot more if you use technology for business use, you simply do not want to lose the information that your devices hold.

Backing up doesn’t need to be a stressful, complicated or challenging affair. Many devices will even allow you to set up an automatic back up at regular intervals which you can determine. Whatever system you use to carry out your back ups, just make sure that you are doing them, it’s the abc of IT maintenance!

Tip 3 – Antivirus Software Is Your Friend

We’d all like to think that every person that shares this beautiful planet we call home is kind, sincere and honest. Unfortunately, if we believed that, we really would be with the fairies! Being online puts you, your device and your information at risk. Of course, that doesn’t mean that we should all stop using technology and resort to old-fashioned methods for everyday tasks, not at all! However, it is only reasonable that we take steps to protect ourselves.

Antivirus software is designed to give you and your personal information protection. Often, when you buy a new device it will come with a free trial of a particular antivirus software. This is all well and good, but it does pose a certain risk. The software is a trial only, that means it is a file that has an expiry date, leaving your device open to attack.

By all means make use of the trial version if you like, but make sure you know exactly when it will run out and install a more permanent solution before the expiry date. In addition to ensuring that you have an antivirus software installed, IT maintenance is also about understanding how your software works. Don’t worry, you don’t need to take a course in programming, but you do need to know how to set up the software so that it scans and updates on a daily basis.

Tip 4 – Use Strong Passwords

All of the IT maintenance you have in place so far will be of little use if you don’t have great passwords. It is both shocking and surprising to know how many passwords are hacked on a regular basis, which means when it comes to the passwords for your devices, you need to make sure that they are very strong. Be sure to use different passwords and change them regularly, alternatively you can use a password program to help you set up passwords that are difficult to hack.

In deed there is no doubt that we live in a very technical world. So many aspects of our daily life revolves around the use of technology. That’s why understanding IT maintenance and having good systems in place to protect your devices is crucial. By following the above 4 steps we cannot promise that you will never have a technical problem again, however we can say that by treating your technology with care and respect you can expect it to run into a whole lot less problems!