Image courtesy of pexels.com

We all have data, some of us have a lot of data, some of us have way too much data. No matter who you are, that data, be it family pictures, videos, personal information, contact information, patient health information, banking information or literally everything else, is stored somewhere. The fact that it’s stored somewhere, unfortunately means that it’s vulnerable to be lost or stolen.

DATA LOSS AND YOU

If your information is important to you it needs to be protected, if it’s important to someone else like a client or customer, it needs to be backed up and backed up correctly. Oops! You just accidentally deleted that folder you needed? Oh no! Even worse, you have overwritten that important document and it’s gone! Well, luckily, you’re about to meet your first line of defense. Your system administrator can setup volume shadow services through Windows that can ‘instantly’ restore a file, a folder or even a whole drive. This data is typically stored locally on your machine, so there’s not much fuss to getting it back, it’s a feature within Windows Server that your IT administrator can make use of and can be a hassle saver. While that sure is convenient, it’s far from comprehensive, let’s talk more about the big-league solutions.

SERIOUS BACKUP SOLUTIONS

In the I.T. world, great measures must be taken to ensure that you have the ability to have your data ready to be recalled quickly and efficiently. Your data should be being synchronized with a server somewhere in your office in real-time. If you have a computer that goes offline, or has a major hardware failure, is that data gone? What if the hard drive has crashed and needs to be replaced? That’s what that big blinking server rack in the closet is for right? What if the servers disk experiences a head crash? (a frighteningly common occurrence) Well if your infrastructure has been setup correctly there should be a second failsafe onsite that all your data is synchronized with, and in just a few short moments it can be recovered via failover by you or your network administrator.

Okay, so now you’re all set, right? Well, not quite. Many businesses have sadly suffered irreversible data loss due to disaster. What if your building floods from a hurricane, gets struck by lightning or has a fire in the server room? Scary stuff. But, what if your network has been breached and suddenly some person or persons from far across the world have locked you out of all of your precious data, they’ve used crypto malware to lock you out of everything your business needs to make money, and are holding your livelihood ransom, which of course includes your onsite synchronized backup. Well, if you’re following the standard protocol (which I will get into below) that data is ‘still’ safe. Offsite backup through the cloud has you covered. It may take a bit of effort on your I.T. guys part (remember them come the holidays) but soon enough everything that was lost or stolen can be restored as it was, and those pesky hackers will be left without a leg to stand on.

ITS NOT JUST OBVIOUS BEST PRACTICES, IT’S THE LAW

By following what’s called the 3-2-1 rule of data backup, you not only make sure you’re not left regretfully data-less, but you will be following many compliancy laws such as HIPAA for example. Compliancy laws like HIPAA require that your data be secured through backups and the best practice is 3 total copies of your data, 2 backup copies stored on different storage medias and at least 1 of them located offsite. In order to be compliant this data must be encrypted, not only at rest on your servers or anywhere it’s stored, but also in transit between devices.

CALLING FOR BACKUP WITH BACKUPS

There is clearly a lot that you not only ‘should’ be doing to protect your data, but if you are required to adhere to certain compliancy laws and standards, you ‘have’ to prevent data loss by law. While this stuff can get very complicated, very quickly, this is just the kind of thing a seasoned IT company or MSP like EZETech can handle for you with ease, helping you maintain compliancy and prevent a potential hard stop to your day to day operations.