Have you ever lost an hour of work on your computer?
Now imagine if you lost days or weeks of work – or imagine losing your client database, financial records, and all of the work files your company has ever produced or compiled.
Imagine what would happen if your network went down for days and you couldn’t access e-mail or the information on your PC. How devastating would that be?
Often times businesses don’t think something like this can happen to them. Not properly backing up your data is just like driving without a seat belt. You may not truly believe in it’s protective power until it is need.
Here are some strategies to make sure you don’t lose data in the first place
- Make sure you are backing up your system regularly (at least daily), to both a local and offsite storage system.
- Ensure that all of your systems have up-to-date antivirus software and are on a program for automatic updates of all virus definitions, and frequently check for success.
- Ensure all of your systems are on a program for automated update of (nearly) all software security patches, and frequently check for successful completion.
- Set up a firewall, that is regularly monitored, updated, and tested by an IT professional.
Have a written policy that clearly explains the appropriate use of business technology and where employees should save their data. Check adherence to this regularly. - Design your network permissions so that employees only have access to the data they absolutely must have access to in order to do their jobs, and nothing more.
- Get rid of your tape backup system immediately!
- Put together a backup and disaster recovery/business continuity plan that will quickly get your business operational in the event of a major hardware failure or natural disaster.
- Keep spare hardware for your most critical systems on hand for fast replacement and system recovery
- Test systems regularly! Perform a complete data restore to make sure your backups are working properly.
Leave a comment