The family IT person

Personal introspection mode on.

Let's face it, you were always the family nerd, geek, what have you. For instance, your family and friends bought stereos – you built yours. Your family and friends sent their film to the drug store to get developed – you developed your own. Your family and friends had one or two aquariums – you had fifteen and were selling fish back to the pet shop! Your family and friends listened to AM and FM, you were listening to AM, FM, shortwave, public safety bands, etc. Your family and friends had one computer – you had ten on a network. Gradually, it became obvious that you were different from your family and friends. And as in my case, you may have endured years of ridicule, attempts at breaking you out of the mold, etc, etc.

As things go, things change with time. Again, like me your inner nerd, geek, what have you may have lead to a career in information technology. And as things go, the very same family and friends that gave you a hard time back in the day – are now coming to you for help with their technology. When the table turning time came for me – I initially did not want to embrace the role that had been forced upon me. In some ways it was a bit of bitterness about the way I was treated as a kid and now selfishness that I had to get rid of. I had to learn to accept how my family and friends felt about me – and embrace the fact that I was now the go to guy when it came to technology.

Personal introspection mode off.

So you're now the professional IT guy/gal that has family which are now coming to you for help with their computers. What do you do? Take things by the horns of the bull and embrace your role. In any case, it will be virtually impossible for you to avoid embracing your role in the family. Even if you flat out tell them not to ask questions – they will do it anyway!

The first thing to do is to make things easy on yourself. A good way of doing this is through policy and planning. Yes, those two terms that you have to adhere to at work – can be applied in a family IT role.

Policy One:

You come first. That is your needs and priorities are above those of your family when it comes to IT support. This means that you cannot do things such as jeopardizing your real job – family can't call you all hours of the night and so forth. Bottom line, set up ground rules by which you and your family will operate and adhere to them. Depending upon your situation, you may want to set up some kind of barter arrangement with your family. For instance, you'll take care of your brother's IT needs if he'll take care of your car maintenance needs. In any case make the arrangements equitable to you and your family.

Policy Two:

Your family must listen to you and follow through on the policies and procedures that you line out. Make it absolutely clear that you will have none of the Aunt Sally said or I know you said not to click on it but I did stuff. Just as your real job has a computer use policy, set one up for your family in writing. It can be as simple as you want or as elaborate as you want – but make sure you set one up before the going gets going!

Policy Three:

You must keep your word. This means adhering to what you agreed to with your family. This also means adhering to the polices and procedures that you set up. If you agreed to back up the family's data every Saturday, no excuses, make it happen!

Policy Four:

Get other technically inclined family members involved – if possible. For instance, if your little brother Timmy is good with a PlayStation – he may be good at ensuring the backups happened on the home server you set up.

You may want to have training sessions with your family to make them aware of some of the dangers of the Internet, for instance. As well bringing your families technical level up to speed will go a long way in averting problems down the road.

Policy Five:

Standardize. That is set a ground rule as to what operating systems, backup programs, firewalls, anti-virus programs, etc are going to be used. Depending on your situation, standardization may even extend itself into hardware such as laptops and network gear. In any case, standardization will help you in terms of having familiarity with the software/equipment that the family is using. Familiarity, in turn will make things easy on you when it comes to resolving issues.

Policy Six:

Security. You family's data is just as important as a major corporation's data. Just as there are miscreants looking to compromise a corporation's systems – there are those looking to compromise your families computers. A good security policy will go a long way in terms of protecting your family's data as well as keeping your aggravation levels to a minimum.

Another way to look at this – and to get your family to understand – is to take the prospective of a computer being another entry point into your home. We do everything we can to secure our homes physically by having good locks, alarm systems, lighting, etc. We often times fail when it comes to securing our home electronically. That innocent computer can suddenly become a avenue for a electronic home invasion that is just as devastating as a physical home invasion. Whereas the police may be able to catch the crooks that kicked in your physical door – they would be hard pressed to catch the ones that kicked in your electronic door. I should know, because I had my electronic door kicked in twice! I was fortunate that in both incidents, the computer involved did not have sensitive data on it. After the second time, I set up a good computer security policy for myself and I haven't suffered a major attack since. I'm not saying that it can't happen again – but the principle that applies to a physical door also applies to a digital door. If a criminal finds that a door is going to give them a hard time – they'll likely move on to the next residence.

Policy Seven:

Make sure you set up a disaster recovery plan (DRP) – because disaster will happen! I can't tell you how many places I've worked for or seen that did not have a DRP in place. And I can't tell you how many times these places got bitten in the you know where when the inevitable disaster happened. After a few personal disasters I set up my own DRP. Although at the time, I felt I was going a little overboard with things, I soon realized the benefits of a DRP. Not only was I able to recover things much more quickly after a disaster, I was also able to keep data loss to a minimum. Again, this can be as simple as you want it or as elaborate as you want it. The thing that you must remember, is that it may take hours (if not days) to completely recover from a hard drive failure! So you need to take this into account when designing a DRP that suites your family – and makes things easy on you!

Policy Eight:

Don't lock your family out. Make sure that they can access everything they need to – if for instance, you meet an untimely demise! This goes back to Policy Seven – and should be a part of your family's DRP. I know of many instances where one person in the family died or got very ill, leaving the rest of the family completely in the dark when it came to accessing the data on the family computer.

Plan One:

Get organized. This means setting up a game plan as to how you are going to go about managing the family's IT needs. You may want to set up a check list, a chart or a spread sheet to help you in the process of organization.

Plan Two:

Determine which operating systems the family will use. For some it may be OS-X, for others, it may be Windows and for still others it may be Linux. If you're like me it will be a combo of all three. In my case, I had to ensure that all three operating systems could inter-operate with one another. Fortunately, the three major operating systems in use today can talk to one another with relative ease.

Plan Three:

Set up security for your family's systems. Make sure that firewalls and anti-virus software are in place as well as functioning properly. Ensure that security patches/updates are installed on operating systems – no matter what flavor is in use. Make sure that each system that your family uses is protected by a strong password – and change the passwords every so often. Build a security tool kit suite that includes utilities to remove spybots, rootkits, and other types of malware. Do regular security sweeps on your family's systems.

Once the systems are secured, consider the data that each system contains. For instance, you may want to store passwords to on-line services (such as banking, bill pay, etc) in a password secured database. Applications that work with sensitive data (such as financial) should be password protected as well.

Plan Four:

Set up a good backup and restore procedure. All three operating systems (OS-X, Windows, Linux) have backup/restore capabilities. There is also very good free as well as paid backup software that can augment or replace completely the capabilities that came with the OSes. If your families computers are connect via a network to a central home server – employ the backup capabilities on the server.

You may want to consider storing backups of pictures, sensitive data, and so forth in a secure location such as a safe deposit box or a fireproof safe in your home.

Plan Five:

Set up a good disaster recovery kit to augment your DRP. A good disaster recovery kit includes of course OS install discs, recovery discs (that came with your PC/laptop), software install discs and discs that contain any patches (OS and software) that can't be obtained from the Internet. The kit should also contain detailed instructions from you as to how your family can access vital data in an emergency.

Plan Six:

Build a tool kit (physical and software) for those repair jobs that you may have to do. You can purchase PC tool kits that have a set of screwdrivers, pliers, tweasers, etc for not that much money. Also include things such as dust off and a small flashlight.

Your software tool kit should include tools to clean up systems, partition hard drives and do overall system monitoring/tweaking.

Remember, these policies and plans are meant as a tweak-able guideline to help you with your role as the IT person in your family. As with any family recipe, these policies and plans can be tweaked to your's and your family's liking. They can be as simple as you want them to be or as complex as you want them to be – it's up to you and your family.