Here’s the reality: Businesses that lose their data in this way have a greater chance of going under than surviving.
Picture this: your office is on fire, your people are all safe, but now what? What important preparation do you wish you had done?
This is a phone call no business owner or manager ever wants to receive. A call from the police, late at night, that there’s been a fire at your premises. Luckily, it was empty at the time, and no one is hurt. That’s a huge relief.
But, you barely sleep. And at first light, you go in to examine the damage so that you can issue instructions to your staff.
You learn the fire wasn’t too big, and the fire service arrived quickly. But your premises have been utterly devastated. The fire itself destroyed a room. Smoke has damaged the rest of the building. And it’s flooded, too, as a result of the firefighting efforts. It’s a good thing you are well covered on insurance.
As you’re surveying the damage, you see your server, located near where the fire was. It’s bent and twisted – clearly, that’s going to need to be replaced. Good thing you have a backup. No, wait, the backup…
You feel your skin go cold as you remember a conversation you had with members of your team a few weeks ago. They’d noticed the automated backup had stopped working. In fact, it hadn’t worked for some time. You agreed a new backup needed to be put in place at some point. Until then, you asked your colleague to make a manual backup a couple of times a week onto an external hard disc drive. That seemed an appropriate thing to do.
Where did he keep that disc? Your eyes flick to his desk, black, charred and dripping with water. The contents of his drawers are on the floor, including the battered remains of the drive. With startling clarity, you suddenly realize this has become a catastrophe of epic proportions.
Here’s the reality: Businesses that lose their data in this way have a greater chance of going under than surviving. If you think that sentence alone is scary, here are some specific statistics:
50% of businesses that lose data because of a disaster go bankrupt;
93% of businesses that lose their data for 10 days or more go bust within a year;
And 70% of businesses that suffer a severe fire go bankrupt within five years. (30% of them do it after just one year.)
Before you start to hyperventilate, let’s go back to the real world. Your office is not on fire and your data – and your favorite coffee mug – are safe.
But, with all that in mind, what are the overdue jobs that you keep putting off? If the worst happened, what would you be kicking yourself about? What would you wish you’d have done this week?
Here are a few actions to think about.
Have a reliable, robust and verified data backup
Regardless of the size of your business, having a proper data backup that keeps your data safe all the time is a basic requirement these days. And it’s not just the prospect of your office burning down that makes your backup a good idea. There are so many other reasons that you might need to access it.
They can be as simple as spilling a cup of coffee over your laptop and accidentally destroying it. Or dropping your laptop. Or leaving it on a train.
Other reasons are scarier. Let’s take ransomware as an example. You’ve heard of this, right? It’s a terrifying type of malware that holds all of your data hostage until you pay a huge ransom to get it back. If you pay the fine, you’re still not guaranteed to have your files returned. If you don’t pay, your files are deleted forever.
The criminals behind ransomware do a lot of advance work to make it very hard for IT partners to stop and fix attacks once they’ve been launched. It’s crucial – and often neglected – to regularly check that the backup is working. There have been a number of times that we’ve had a first-time phone call from a panicked business owner, who needed his or her backup restored, only to find out that it stopped working months ago. Oops.
There are two aspects to this. There’s making sure the backup is happening. And then, there’s verifying the data to check it is backing up correctly. There are loads of different ways that you can back up your data and many levels of protection. There’s no excuse not to do it. If you’re not sure where to start, speak to a great IT service provider who can get the ball rolling.
Protect your devices
Short of locking them in a fire-proof box overnight, you’re not going to be able to protect your devices from being damaged in a fire. However, there are certain steps you can take to keep them a little safer.
Our devices can be expensive. Especially when you have lots of them within a business – it soon adds up. So, one of the first things you can do is to make sure they’re all insured. Check if they’re included in your business insurance or whether they need to have their own insurance. Make sure you’re covered for damage from disaster, but also for theft and accidental damage, too.
Next, make sure that you’ve thought through what should happen when a device is lost or stolen. Say someone in the business left a laptop in the airport or they had one stolen from their bag at a coffee shop. You now know you’re insured, but what about the data on that device? How can you make sure that’s protected?
I’m hoping you’ve got your data backed up, but you still want to make sure that the information doesn’t end up in the wrong hands. Create a procedure called “What should happen if…”
Ensure that everyone in the business knows who to notify should a device be lost or stolen so that a key person can take responsibility for remotely wiping the data.
It’s also really, really important to make sure that:
All data on all devices is encrypted.
All devices and software are password protected.
Multi-factor authentication is used where possible (where you get a code on another device to prove it’s really you).
Know what devices you actually have
If your office did burn down, would you honestly know what devices and equipment you’ve lost? If the answer to that is no, then I can assure you that you’re not alone.
When a business starts to grow, it’s easy to lose track of what exactly you have.
Creating an inventory (and keeping a backed-up copy of it) will help you keep track of everything. It’s also pretty handy to keep an inventory now that so many more of us are working from home. It’s easier to lose track when you don’t see devices every day! Likewise, if someone leaves the company, you’ll know what they need to return to you upon their exit.
Go completely paperless
If this isn’t something you’ve already done, start to make the right steps toward it now. Not only is going paperless better for the environment, but it has so many other benefits for your business, too. Make your business life a whole lot easier and make a digital copy of everything. Store it securely online and BACK IT UP!
There are probably many more things you can think of that you’d prefer to get done now just in case disaster does strike. When it comes to keeping your business safe, please don’t put off the things that you really should do today. Remember those stats we gave you earlier. The businesses that survive are the ones that are prepared. QCBN
By Theo Soumilas
For additional information or to schedule an appointment to assist your business, call 928-719-7724 or visit northernazit.com.
Theo Soumilas is the owner of Northern Arizona IT servicing the Quad Cities, Phoenix and Northern Arizona.
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