RenovoData Weekly Articles

Hurricane season is here.  As the Department of Homeland Security prepares a status report around disaster recovery preparedness in the wake of a natural catastrophe such as a hurricane, backing up data is an urgent mission for all companies – especially small to medium-sized businesses.  In addition to advanced online backup, a remote backup company provides data storage, data protection and disaster recovery solutions.

In times of a catastrophic event, like hurricanes Rita and Katrina, the primary areas of concern will naturally revolve around personal safety, while data critical to business operations are secondary - at best.  Business owners and employees flee with their loved ones, while critical business records and data backup media such as tapes are left behind.  This reason alone calls for a need of a disaster recovery plan that includes automated offsite data backup and protection.

Offsite backup is essential as hurricane season emerges – especially in hurricane-prone states such as Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina and Texas.  A remote backup company that uses agentless technology is advantageous over conventional backup technologies.  With an agentless architecture, backup and restoration activities will flawlessly be performed once the backup software is installed on the host machine at an office location.  The data is virtually transmitted to an offsite data vault where restorations can take place at the file level, or can be used to perform a bare metal restore to a different machine or location if needed.  When researching offsite data backup providers, make sure they offer automated and unattended backup for all data files, including emails and databases held on PCs, file servers and application/database servers.

An additional benefit of using a remote backup company to secure essential business data during the hurricane season is the first-class data compression employed.  Data compression technologies, along with deduplication, reduce bandwidth and storage requirements.  Also, all data is AES-encrypted at the client site before transmission, then stored in an encrypted format at a secure offsite data vault.  Data is restored either locally or from a centralized site, as a complete volume, individual files or complete bare metal restore of the server.  Multi-site companies can use this solution to consolidate all backup and recovery processes.

A remote backup service provider is an ideal method of ensuring disaster recovery in the event of a natural cataclysmic event.  The consolidation of the backup process offered by a remote backup company offers a secure advantage over other data backup methods.  Data backups are compressed, encrypted and replicated to a central site and are stored in a secure, enterprise-class offsite data vault in encrypted form.

Today, we are inundated with news of how the unstable economy is affecting businesses all over; from the subprime mortgage crisis to a prolonged global recession.  This has placed disaster recovery spending in the cost category of a mere luxury expense, causing cash and resources to be diverted away from disaster recovery planning as organizations focuses on survival.  Some businesses may allow their disaster recovery contracts to remain idle and business continuity activities to be cancelled or postponed.  Although these actions all save money for the business initially, they do away with cautiously planned defenses, leaving the potential for vulnerabilities such as theft, fraud and equipment failure to be heightened by the recession.

Many businesses are under the misguided assumption that making less money means there is a need to spend less on disaster recovery.   However, this is actually where the emphasis on IT security spending should be placed; as businesses are less likely to bounce back in the event of a financial crisis.  Neglecting this area can have detrimental consequences for businesses of all types.  Disaster recovery should be considered an essential methodology for ensuring business continuity and survival in these tumultuous times.  A comprehensive disaster recovery plan is critical now more than ever.

This is especially important for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) where streamlining and cutting back on expenses are inherent in business operations.  However, SMB owners must take into account that without any disaster recovery plan in place, they are at risk of losing revenue that could perpetuate their demise.  Major components that should not be overlooked are data loss prevention and continuous access to mission-critical data.

Disaster recovery planning is like car insurance:  you hope you never get into an accident or have your car stolen or vandalized.  However, if you fall victim to any of these scenarios, the insurance is priceless.  Likewise, no company should go without risk planning and safeguarding their IT resources through some sort of disaster recovery plan.  It makes good business sense to plan for the worst to ensure your business maintains operations in the event of a disaster.  Storing data at a secure offsite backup and disaster recovery location that is far away from facilities where your business primary operates is the best place to begin. 

Fact:  It has been predicted that the number of people affected by data loss is expected to increase this year.  KPMG's Data Loss Barometer stated that the global figure could increase to 190 million in 2009; a 98 million increase of those affected in 2008.  Malcolm Marhsall, partner at KPMG, explained that companies are set to become more vulnerable due to budget constraints brought on by the credit crunch.   KPMG's previous Data Loss Barometer found that half of the reported incidents were caused by internal sources, while 25% were the result of computer theft.