Is Your Data Safe?

Studies by the University of Texas and the Small Business Administration, show that of those companies who lose their data in a disaster, 50% never reopen and 90% close within two years.

To home users, the loss would no doubt be a major inconvenience and could be very time consuming to correct. For the business owner, loss of data could be a major disaster. The risk to companies is enormous. For many companies, the customer database, financial information and email have become its most valuable assets.

According to SANS Institute (a computer security and research firm), 82% of companies do not have effective data protection, even though loss of critical data is one of the highest vulnerabilities facing business today.

Ken Norvell, Managing Partner at CMIT Solutions of Pleasanton, a leading small business IT services company, relates a recent situation in which a company contacted them. "His server went down and he wanted us to restore the data from his backup tapes. When we opened them, though, we found that they hadn’t been working for three months. He had lost all of his Quickbooks files for that period. With an automated backup, we would have immediately known if there were any issues and gotten it corrected."

It's likely that many businesses will lose data at some point, and most of us have fallen victim to at least one of these:

• Accidental (or intentional) deletion
• File damage or corruption, unintentional file changes (i.e.: bad data entry)
• Virus infection
• Hardware failure
• Theft of hardware

It's less likely, but possible that a fire or flood from a broken pipe could happen too.

The ultimate goal of the data protection plan should be to limit the impact of a disaster (no matter how small) through effective backup and recovery. Some businesses make regular backups but leave the copy sitting on top of or near the computer. In the case of fire or theft, the backup can be lost right along with the computer. If a backup is taken home with an employee, that person may not be readily available to retrieve it.

For home users, it is important to identify critical files and data, and make use of an appropriate device, such as a CD-RW to make regularly scheduled backups. Some internet service providers (ISPs) even provide an inexpensive fee-based backup service.

Business owners can work with an IT services company, like CMIT, to develop a plan that works best for them. By combining the right toolset with the level of protection they need for their business, it can mean the difference between a bit of a nuisance to recover versus a major disaster and days lost trying to recreate lost data.

Norvell said, "Many small businesses have been moving towards internet-based backup services 'in the cloud'. Online backup eliminates the regular task of backing up. Once the backup is configured, they no longer need to depend on employees or themselves to remember to manually perform nightly data backups."

Once the automatic backup service is set up, it is essentially a hands-free offsite data backup solution that even the most computer-challenged can use for system recovery or file restore.

Costs for internet backup services start at less than $25 per month but vary depending on the amount of data storage needs. In most cases the cost of tapes or CDs and employee time will exceed the actual cost of the backup service, especially when (not if!) the files need to be recovered.

The time savings and the reliability of the services make this a good approach for many small businesses. If you have questions about what solution is right for your business, contact Ken Norvell at CMIT at 925-462-8862.