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Have you ever considered the possible consequences of what a fire or other disaster could do to your IT infrastructure? As a responsible business owner, you likely have a plan to ensure the safety of your employees and your valuables. Unfortunately, most of us forget how important it is to ensure you have a set plan to keep your data is safe as well. 

 

Here are some specific stats that underscore the importance of ensuring your data is safe: 

• 50% of businesses that lose data due to disaster go bankrupt. 
• 93% of businesses that lose their data for 10 days or more go bankrupt within a year. 
• 70% of businesses that suffer a severe fire go bankrupt within 5 years (30% of them do after just 1 year). 

 

Before you start to panic, let’s go back to the real world. Your office is not on fire and your data – plus your favourite coffee mug – is safe. Phew! But with all that in mind, what are the overdue preventative measures that you keep putting off that – if the worst happened – you’d be kicking yourself for not completing? If you aren’t sure where to start, here are a few to consider. 

 

Have a reliable, robust and verified data backup. 

Regardless of the size of your business, having a proper data backup that always keeps your data safe, is a basic requirement these days. There are actually many reasons that you might need to access your backed up data at some point. If you’ve ever spilled a cup of coffee over your laptop, dropped or misplaced it between the train and office, or even worse have run into ransomware – you’ll need a back up.  

 

Ransomware is 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. Although it takes a great deal of work to make your network safe and secured again, you can feel relieved that you might not have lost all of your data – if you have a protected backup. It’s especially important – and often neglected – to regularly check that the backup is working.  

 

Tips: First, you want to make sure the backup is happening and second, you’ll need to verify the data to ensure it’s backing up correctly. *Go ahead and back up everything – if losing any data will have the slightest impact on your business, back it up! 

 

If you’re not sure where to start, contact our team and we can get the ball rolling to help determine the best type of service your business needs. 

 

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. First things first, check to see if your devices are insured. They could be included in your business insurance or insured separately.  

 

Tip: Make sure you’re covered for damage from disaster, theft, and accidental damage. 

 

Next, make sure you have a protocol when a device is lost or stolen. You want to ensure that your lost information doesn’t end up in the wrong hands. Educate everyone in your business so that they know who to notify should a device be lost or stolen, so they can wipe your data remotely. 

 

Know what devices you have. 

If your office did burn down, would you know what devices and equipment you’ve lost? 

 

When a business starts to grow, it’s easy to lose track of what exactly you’ve got, so ask yourself: 

• Who uses which device? 
• Who uses more than one device? 
• What happened to those laptops when they were replaced with higher spec models? 

Creating an inventory (and keeping a backed-up copy of it) will help you to keep track of everything. If someone leaves the company, you’ll know what they need to return to you before they exit. 

 

Go completely paperless. 

If you haven’t transitioned to going paperless, you can start taking steps towards it now! Going paperless is great for the environment and gives you an added sense of security, knowing your data is backed up and accessible at any time. 

 

Tip: Take precautions now to prepare for any uncertainties in the future. Strongly consider making a digital copy of everything and don’t risk losing valuable information that can set your organizations behind. Store it securely, and BACK IT UP! 

 

If planning for disaster recovery seems like too much work or you need help to get started, give us a call today. 

 

Syncsys Technology Solutions Inc. 

www.syncsys.ca 

780-SYNC-SYS (796-2797)