Just a reminder that with summer storms around unprotected equipment can be easily damaged by lightning. But a few easy steps can help protect sensitive and expensive equipment although there is way to get 100% protection.
Surge Protection is important but can’t always protect connected equipment from a direct strike. The cheap surge protectors found in many power boards provide very little protection.
Higher quality surge protection has a wide range of pricing depending on q…uality and insurance offered for connected equipment. Always read the fine print before you buy a surge protector to know what is covered if they offer coverage.
Phone line surge protectors can cause severe issues with ADSL and Fibre To The Node based NBN services but if you use a separate router and modem it is possible to connect a surge protector to the Ethernet cable between the two devices.
If you are using outdoor wireless networking equipment for example a wireless link between buildings or fixed wireless internet it is a good idea to use an Ethernet based surge protector on the outdoor cable before it connects to your equipment. This is especially important since outdoor wireless antennas are often placed high and can act as a target for lightning.
For any equipment that must keep running at all times an uninterruptable power supply is highly recommended. They have built in surge protection and contain backup batteries that will allow equipment to keep operating even during power outages.
Over all lightning is a difficult and complex topic to deal with. All you can do is determine how much you are willing to take and take appropriate precautions.
Nothing can protect you from a direct lightning strike so the best advice I can really give is to disconnect any sensitive or valuable equipment when you hear thunder and keep regular up to date backups in case the worst happens and you loose a device as being able to recover data is not guaranteed from a lightning damaged device.