Backups!  <Beginner>

“You can never have too much Backup!”  Many of you have heard us state this mantra. It rings true now more than ever.

We prepare for disasters such as fire, flood, earthquakes and natural disasters.  We have had clients who have experienced theft.

Traditional smash and grabs are done by people who want to steal computer hardware.  They usually do not care about your data.  Nor do they care about the interruption to your business flow.

We recommend several tiers of protection.  For your office:

• Key the lock on the inside of your door in addition to the outside.

• Cover your windows with unbreakable film

• Hire an alarm company

For your data:

• Backups to tape, hard drives, thumb drives.  We do not care which…Just Back Up!!!

• Take your backup media off-site.  Data in multiple locations is safer than all at one location.

• On-line backups.  We offer a service (GUDRS) or any of the others you can find on the Internet.

• On-line backups have become popular because they are “set it and forget it” in nature.  Unfortunately, no backup is perfect.  Our recommendation is to do some combination of local (in your office) backup in addition to on-line backup.

Interesting Statistics:

• 93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster.  50% of businesses that had no data management for this same time period filed for bankruptcy immediately.  (Source: National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC).

• A simple drive recovery can cost more than $7,500!  And complete success is not guaranteed. (Various sources)