What would you do if your company lost all it’s email?
Could you cope if a computer problem meant you lost your financial data?
If your phone was stolen, how would you retrieve all your valuable contact information?
A small business lives and dies by its data – protecting it should be as important as getting paid. As data capacities increase on all our computing devices, data backup becomes more important.
A well planned data protection regime should be like an insurance policy – we hope we never have to use it, but we need to make sure that it covers us properly if we do!
So, how should we protect our data?
Mobile devices (phones, tablets)
- Make regular backups of the data via iTunes or Google (backup apps are available in the Play Store).
- Switch on device tracking so that if a device is lost, there is a better chance of retrieving it (consider ‘remote wipe’ options if your device contains sensitive information).
- Use a passcode for protection should the device be lost or stolen.
- Consider encrypting your device (although this can cause performance issues on older or slower devices).
Office Computers
What should be protected?
- Variable data such as email, financial, payroll and admin info.
- Programs (such as Microsoft Office, Sage Accounts or Adobe Creative Cloud, for example).
- Operating System (such as Windows or Mac OSX).
What are we protecting our data from?
- Hardware failure (e.g. hard disk, power supply, motherboard)
- Theft
- Loss (e.g. laptop).
- Fire, flood etc.
- User error (accidental deletion).
- Viruses
How can we protect our data?
BACKUPS, which have to be:
- Automatic
- Regular
- Easy to use
- Easy to restore from
- Tested
- Provide notification of any backup failures.
- There should be an off-site copy (ideally on a different type of media from the primary backup). This means the data can be restored to different hardware should the original equipment become unavailable.
- Consider the type of backup – Imaging, where the whole disk is backed up, can restore all data, (including programs and the operating system), or file and folder based backup.
Consider other measures to lessen the need for data recovery should the worst happen:
- RAID for disks (where data is duplicated on at least two physical disks, protecting against a disk failure, automatically).
- UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). Protects against power loss so that computers can be closed down correctly without potential data corruption should there be a power cut.
- A reglarly updated anti-virus program.
Consider data encryption for sensitive data (e.g. Bitlocker for Windows based PCs).
Finally, consider centralised storage for your data. This can be in the form of a server, NAS (Network attached Storage), or can be cloud based. These have the advantage of storing all the data in a single place, meaning that only the centralised storage needs to be backed up, and not all the PCs in the network.
Data protection has never been more important than it is today – businesses depend on their data, so a well implemented backup plan can mean the differnce between success and failure – it pays to get it right!
Please contact us for any assistance with your data protection needs, at: Start 2 Finish Technology.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge Neb. Having an expert in the group is an asset. It’s never too late or too early to act on your good advice.