Data Loss WILL Obliterate Your Company and Your Hard Work!
By: Mike Tibbits
That might be quite the exaggeration, but it certainly got your attention, has it not? Data Loss is no laughing matter.
Being a home user or a business enterprise doesn’t affect your chances with data loss. Everybody is equally susceptible to it, and if you’re not careful it will come for you next. Enemies like hard drive failures, theft, accidental deletions, viruses, spyware, malware and Ransomware will try to abolish your hard work. If you play it smart and heed these simple guidelines, however, you can fight back against the tyranny of data loss and the malicious rivals that will try to waste your time, money, and energy.
1. Use an offsite solution
So many people automatically feel safe just with a simple backup and believe they do not need anymore than that. The problem with this is that your computer hard drive and your USB hard drive are the same, so you can easily lose both without realizing it! So, why not initiate the backup manually, instead? That is where you’ll find offsite solutioned scheduled for you! If there’s any case of a fire, if somebody tries to steal your data, or if somebody tries to steal your data in a fire, you can readily restore your data from offsite! Let’s see you try to steal data in a fire now, bandits!
2. Verify backup frequency
Would you ever boil a pot of water, watch it only for a few seconds and then leave for a long period of time? That is the same reason why you need to regularly check and verify backups, whether it’s onsite or not! Make sure the data you want saved is selected and occasionally restore a file or two to make sure they are at their best for when you need them the most. Once a month is a good time to check up on them.
3. Retention
Everybody makes mistakes, it’s bound to happen. Retention is important when it comes to making mistakes, and it helps fix them well so you can start up again. For example, let's say you're using Quickbooks and you accidently enter a few hundred wrong transactions, followed by your bank accounts getting synced with inaccurate transaction data. Oops! Well, you're able to track the data mistake back 5 days and decide to restore that file and catch up on five days. Problem is, your retention is set to 3 days, or not at all, and now you have a ton of cleanup to do. Double oops! Most businesses will hold a 14 to 30 day retention policy to insure that if they need to go back, they're covered, so make sure you have the retention you need to fix those mistakes.
4. Encrypt your data
It’s good to keep things offsite for when data loss strikes, but sometimes you need extra protection for your especially important data. You need a vault, and encryption is the best one you can get. Always insure sensitive data is always stored and transmitted with encryption. For local home backups, simple AES256 password encryption is usually ok. Businesses with an offsite solution should insure the data is being transmitted through an SSL encrypted tunnel and your data is stored encrypted on disk. That’ll make sure that nothing gets lost, even if your provider makes a mistake!
5. Raid Solutions
When you need offsite, you get RAID! RAID stands for "Redundant Array of Independent Disks". Why have one hard drive when you can have a bunch of them working as one? RAID will ensure your data is intact, even if one of them fails. More local and home USB drives are offering this. Although RAID might cost you an arm and a leg, it’ll be worth the efficiency that you get for that price!
Find a provider and option that works best for you! For more information or assistance on backup solutions, contact BackItHere! at www.backithere.com and give them a follow on Twitter @BackItHere. They offer everything for basic home user to enterprise business solutions.