If your data is important to your business and you cannot afford to have your operations halted for days – even weeks – due to data loss or corruption, then you need to read this as it will outline the most commonly and costly mistakes that most small business owners make with their data backups.
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?Or, what if a major storm, flood, or fire destroyed your office and all of your files? Or if a virus wiped out your server...do you have an emergency recovery plan in place that you feel confident in? How quickly do you think you could recover, if at all?
If you do not have good answers to the above questions or a rock-solid disaster recovery plan in place, you are quite literally playing Russian roulette with your business. With the number of threats constantly growing, it’s not a matter of if you will have a problem, but rather a matter of when.
“But I Already Back Up My Data,” You Say…
If you are like most business owners, you've been smart enough to set up a tape backup. But know this:
The average failure rate for a tape backup is 100% - ALL tape backups fail at some point in time.
Incredible, isn't it? Most people don't realize that ALL tape drives fail. But what's really dangerous is that most companies don't realize it happened until it's too late. That's why history is riddled with stories of companies losing millions of dollars worth of data. In almost every case, these businesses had some type of backup system in place, but were sickened to find out it wasn't working when they needed it most. While you should maintain a local backup of your data, a tape backup will NOT offer you protection if?
1.Your tape drive malfunctions rendering it useless and making it impossible to restore your data. IMPORTANT: It is very common for a tape drive to malfunction without giving any warning signs.
2.Your office (and everything in it) gets destroyed by a fire, flood, hurricane, tornado, or other natural disaster.
3.The physical tapes you are backing your data up to become corrupted due to heat or mishandling.
4.A virus spoils the data stored on the tape drive. Some of the more aggressive viruses not only corrupt the data, but they don?t allow anyone to access the data on the drive.
5.Someone in your office accidentally formats the tape, erasing everything on it.
6.Theft-a disgruntled employee intentionally erases everything, or a thief breaks in and steals ALL of your equipments. 7.A faulty sprinkler system "waters" all of your electronic equipment.
Bottom line: You do NOT want to find out your backup was not working when you need it most.
As a prospective new client, I’d like to extend a “get to know us” offer of a Free Data Security Audit. I don’t normally give away free services at Pinnacle Access because if I did, I’d go out of business. I thought this would be a great way to introduce our services to a few new clients.
At no charge, a backup specialist will come on site and…
Audit your current data protection including backup and restore procedures, tape rotations and maintenance schedule to see if there is anything jeopardizing your data’s security.
Review procedures for storage and transportation of data. Many people don’t realize they damage their disks (and thereby corrupt their data) by improperly caring for their storage devices.
Check your network backup to make sure they are accurately backing up all of the critical files and information you would NEVER want to lose.
Present a simple and easy to understand chart that will detail the makeup of your data, including the age and type of files you are backing up. Why should you care? Because many companies inadvertently use valuable computer storage to back up their employees’ personal MP3 files and movies.
Discuss current data protection needs and explain in plain English where your risks are. We know everyone has a different level of risk tolerance, and we want to make sure all the risks you’re taking with your data are by choice not because of miscommunication or accident.
Depending on what we discover, we’ll either give you a clean bill of health or reveal gaps in your data backup that could prove disastrous. If it’s appropriate, we’ll provide you with an action plan for further securing your data with on site and off site backup.
Naturally, I don’t expect everyone to become a client, but I do expect a small percentage to hire me to protect their most valuable asset--corporate data--and possibly even become loyal clients.
You are Under No Obligation to Do or Buy Anything When You Say "Yes" to a Free Data Security Analysis
Scary But True Facts About Data Loss
The average failure rate of disk and tape drives is 100% - ALL DRIVES WILL EVENTUALLY FAIL.
Only 34% of companies test their tape backups and, of those who do, 77% have found failures.
60% of companies that lose their data will go out of business within 6 months of the disaster.
Over ½ of critical corporate data resides on unprotected PC desktops and laptops.
Key causes for data loss are:
78% Hardware or system malfunction
11% Human error
7% Software corruption or program malfunction
2% Computer viruses
1% Natural disasters
1% Other
Only 25% of users frequently back up their files, yet 85% of those same users say they are very concerned about losing important digital data.
More than 22% said backing up their PCs was on their to-do list, but they seldom do it.
30% of companies report that they still do not have a disaster recovery program in place, and 2 out of 3 feel their data backup and disaster recovery plans have significant vulnerabilities.
1 in 25 notebooks are stolen, broken or destroyed each year.
Today’s hard drives store 500 times the data stored on the drives of a decade ago. This increased capacity amplifies the impact of data loss, making mechanical precision more critical.
You have a 30% chance of having a corrupted file within a one-year time frame.
Source: VaultLogix
I also want to be very clear that there are no expectations on our part for you to do or buy anything when you take us up on our offer.
As a matter of fact, I will give you my personal guarantee that you won’t have to buy anything.
“Yes! Sign me up for a Free Data Security Analysis so I can know for sure that my data will be there when I need it most!”
Please reserve one of your FREE Data Security Analyses in my name. I understand that I am under no obligation to do or to buy anything by requesting this free service.