If you are in charge of IT policies at your office or even your work-at-home computer, this article is for you.

Every week I see computers in need of attention. Many of these desktops do not have what I consider to be the most basic of software to enable people to be productive and protect company assets. Here’s my list of software and some basic “To Do” items:

Office Suite: use Microsoft Office or OpenOffice. The latter is free, but it takes some getting used to and could be an issue if you send documents to other companies. I prefer the former.

Desktop Security (anti-virus, spam, etc): There are quite a few vendors in this category. We sell Sophos. You could use Trend, McAfee, Norton, AVG, and others. Buy the corporate editions — yes, free is nice, but you will be missing important features.

Web Browser: Internet Explorer and Firefox. I prefer Firefox.

Use password management software like Keepass. Its free and helps people use complex passwords regularly by providing a place to store all those passwords you should use like Hy7t$tgYT12[. Fun, huh?!

Configure the desktop so that all files created by the user and stored on the OS desktop, My Documents, bookmarks, and e-mail are backed up. This is probably the biggest “oops” issue I see.

Make sure the desktop is configured to automatically lock itself or logoff if no one uses it for 10 minutes. Why leave company information open to the public or unauthorized employees?

If you do it correctly, configure remote access so you can get to your files and/or help others. If its a Windows environment, you can use the Remote Desktop feature or a system like CoPilot, TightVNC, or GoToMyPC.

Finally, if you are in an environment with 5 computers or more, ask your IT service provider about “managed services”. It’s a new service for many of them and it’ll pay for itself in just a few months. More on this one later.

Good luck!