Data Protection and Recovery
Although less profound than complete data loss, even short term interruptions to a business operation can have a major impact.
When data is not protected...
Could you be back in business in twenty-four hours following a data
loss disaster? Small businesses can be even more vulnerable to data
loss disasters as they have less access to IT and financial resources.
With perhaps fewer customers and less ability to withstand a short revenue
interruption, survival may be even more threatened.
Causes of data loss include:
- hardware or system failure
- human error
- software program malfunction
- computer virus
- site disaster
- insure the net worth of your company
Data is the most vital asset in your business and accounts for much of
the net worth of your company. Data protection is a means of insuring
that data on the network is safe. A data protection plan starts with
these three questions:
1. Recovery Time - how quickly must you retrieve data to insure
business continuity?
2. Recovery Point - how recent does the recovered data have to be?
3. Data Capacity - how much data has to be restored?
Improve your ability to survive & recover
Although implementing a data protection strategy does not remove the
risks, it does improve your ability to survive and recover if a data loss
disaster occurs. With data growth estimated at approximately
80% per year among companies large and small, it is also a
good idea to re-evaluate your plan every few years.
Areas that affect your Data Protection needs:
- increased computer usage
- as your IT system continues to grow, your data storage requirements will continue to grow
- expansion of Internet and e-business
- business availability switching to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- remote access
- personal computing devices
- legislation requirements
Data Protection systems need to be extremely flexible and molded to meet a diverse range of business requirements.
How Much Data Can You Afford to Lose?
According to a study compiled by David M Smith Ph.D, labor economist, 6% of all computers will suffer a data loss episode in any given year.
According to his study, of the estimated 72 million computers in 1998, approximately 4.6 million experienced a loss of data. The total cost of data loss for these US businesses was approximately $11.8 billion.
Costs associated with loss of data include:
- Lost customer & supplier database.
- Cost of restoring data.
- Lost productivity due to unavailable
systems.
- Lost revenue due to unavailable
data.
- Lost customers to your competition.
Data Protection Delivers
Data protection solutions will:
- simplify & improve data management
- maximize uptime
- improve customer service while limiting down time
- add security
- add scalability
Data Protection is a means of insuring that data on the network is safe. The first step is to create a Data Protection Plan or Strategy. Effective planning decreases the amount of time necessary to manage data backups and restoration of databases.
Eliminate Business Interruption - Be Proactive
Bennett Office Technologies offers customized one-on-one consultation covering all aspects of data protection including backup and recovery.
Steps included in the consultation are:
- Categorize backup & restoration goals
- Identify data needing to be protected
- Evaluate current backup hardware & software
- Assess current backup schedule
- Discuss off-site backup storage options
- Recommend data restoration procedures.
- Perform test recovery procedure to insure data integrity
- Recommend necessary changes
- Document backup system processes
Bennett Office Technologies recommends evaluating your backup strategies once every year.
Bennett is trained & certified IT technicians will work with your current IS staff or take the place of a non-existing IS department. |
