Unless you are a dyed-in-the-wool car enthusiast, chances are you have seen the low oil light (a.k.a., the idiot light) pop up on your dashboard at one time or another. There’s a simple reason for that. Most people like having the freedom to drive anywhere they want, but they don’t especially enjoy taking the time to perform the routine maintenance that’s necessary for a happy motoring experience. Or it never occurs to them that they need to – until the oil light comes on.

Small businesses often take the same approach with their PCs. They like having all the computing power a PC offers. They like having access to a world of knowledge and information through the Internet. They like the ability to maintain customer, prospect, and vendor relationships through e-mail. But they find tasks such as defragmenting hard drives, installing Windows updates, and updating anti-virus and anti-spyware signatures rather tedious. So, often they let them slip for a day or two, which turns into a week, a month, or even more.

The problem is with a PC the “idiot light” isn’t a gentle reminder that a preventative action needs to be taken before it becomes a problem. It’s a computer bogged down by spyware or in immanent danger of losing data or shutting down completely due to a virus or Trojan that slipped through the weakened defenses. And the cost to correct the problem isn’t a $1.99 bottle of motor oil. Often it’s whatever the local PC repair specialists will charge to save off data, wipe the hard drive clean, and reinstall the operating system, software, and data. Or it may be the cost of purchasing a replacement unit. Plus, there is the money lost while the unit is out of commission and the time it takes to configure that new PC to the organization’s standards.

Just as most car owners don’t want to spend their days fixing and maintaining their vehicles, most small business owners don’t want to become IT experts. They just want to use their computers to help them keep the business running smoothly.

The good news is that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are now beginning to offer managed services that take many of those maintenance tasks off the hands of small businesses. These services will install and maintain anti-virus and anti-spyware software, install and manage Windows updates, and even perform routine tasks such as disk defragmentation and clean-up – all without the users having to do a thing.

In many ways, the ISPs will do for a small business what the IT department in a large enterprise does. Users in large enterprises never have to worry about updating virus signatures or determining whether to install a Windows patch, for example. The IT department does it automatically as a daily part of the service they provide.

The Difference a Day Can Make

While missing a day or even a week’s worth of updates may not seem like a big deal, in reality it is. According to most experts, on average 25 new viruses or threats are released each day, 365 days a year. That creates as many as 25 ways your computers can be attacked from the outside. Let it go a week while a user is on vacation and you’re looking at 175 ways a virus can get onto one of your PCs – and more importantly into your network.

The same can happen with a Microsoft Windows critical update. They mark it “critical” for a reason – usually a serious security hole has been found that could lead to your confidential business information being accessed or uploaded by anyone who knows how to exploit the hole. It’s the kind of thing that can’t wait. But it may if you’re, say, busy working to finish a proposal to a prospect that is due by the close of business that day.

Having a service that manages all of that for you assures not only that updates are completed but that they are completed immediately as they become available. It’s like the old days of the true automotive service stations, when an attendant would check your oil whenever you pulled in. You found out then if you needed oil, long before the oil light went on.

Automating v. Outsourcing
At this point you may be asking, “Couldn’t I just set up my security applications and Windows to update automatically?” The easy answer is “yes.” The right answer is only if you’re prepared to spend the time researching and testing those updates yourself.

The reason is that some updates, although they are well-intentioned, can actually disrupt the operation of your PCs. There have been cases where an update actually caused certain applications to stop functioning correctly, resulting in the update having to be uninstalled. When things like that happen you again go from driver of the PC to a mechanic.

Large enterprises generally have a technical expert inspect and approve any update before rolling it out organization-wide. It’s a precautionary step that can save a great deal of time in the long run. With a managed service through your ISP you receive the same benefits.

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