Are You Backing Up Your Information?
Fifty percent of companies that lose their data go out of business immediately and ninety percent don’t survive more than two years.1 This is because the amount of important data stored in computers is overwhelming.
Despite technological advances in the reliability of hard disk media and data backup solutions, data loss continues to rise. Almost seven out of ten companies – 68 percent – are losing sensitive data or having it stolen from them six times a year.2 Businesses of all sizes are affected. So how does something so preventable happen so often? The leading cause for data loss is hardware or system malfunction followed closely by human error.3 Other leading causes for data loss include policy violations, internet threats, software corruption and natural disasters. These are factors that every company is exposed to and seldom can be controlled.
Have you ever tried actually restoring your data? Backups don’t always work. Current statistics suggest that backups fail to complete as often as 25% of the time.4 To make matters worse, a completed backup is no guarantee of a successful restore. Restoration failures are alarmingly high – and most backups don’t get put to the test. A major problem is media failure. Tapes, CDs/ DVDs, Flash Drives and external hard disk drives fail very often. Buying higher quality media can help lessen the risk but even then the failure rate is still high. The best solution is redundancy. Backup your information often and in more than one way.
Some users don’t understand the potential problems that not backing up data creates. Today businesses are facing a growing list of strict legal requirements; one example is the retention time of important and sensitive patient/client data. Federal and state regulations and policies dictate the length of time that data must be retained. These regulations and policies can vary from state to state and from one industry to the next. And noncompliance could expose your company to potential lawsuits and penalties.
Most individuals are aware of the need to protect their computer data. The problem is that they are not aware of the proper way to do so. The loss of data can have staggering financial, legal and productivity ramifications on businesses and individuals alike. Computek can help you protect your information. Call us for a free consultation.
2 According to new research from the IT Policy Compliance Group
3 According to a study by a world leader in data recovery Kroll Ontrack
4 According to research firm Baroudi Bloor International