Ferrum Technology Services Blog

In order to protect your organization’s important digital assets you need to build something that you spend most of the time trying to avoid in every other facet of your business, building redundancy. Redundancy is seen as wasteful in most situations, but with your data being so important to your business, ensuring that you have duplicate copies of it is essential. 

If you were to lose your business’ data, would you be able to continue operations? Usually not. This is why you need to take precautions before you inevitably suffer from an unpredictable situation that puts your data at risk. Unfortunately, the average small business might not think they are at risk, a notion we are trying to dispel. If your organization is considering backup and disaster recovery, we want to help you better understand data redundancy.

If you’re at all familiar with us, you’re probably aware of how highly we rank data backup. If your business creates or stores any data (which we guarantee it does) you need to have a backup to protect it, as simple as that. Let’s take a few moments to review how a BDR (Backup and Disaster Recovery) can benefit your business and its long-term continuity.

We tell every business owner we come into contact with the same thing: If you haven’t done so yet, you‘ll want to establish a data backup strategy. Some businesses are really small, some operate in industries where the cost of backing up data is seemingly prohibitive to the success of the business. To the people that operate those businesses, we repeat: If you haven’t done so yet, you‘ll want to establish a data backup strategy. Let’s examine why. 

Backup strategies vary. Some companies choose theirs for its value. Some back up everything. Some ignore it all together. While we definitely don’t advise the latter, we do understand that it is a financial investment for what is essentially insurance. What’s more effective is building a backup plan that fits the type of data you create and store. 

How are you protecting your data from disaster? If you don’t have a backup and disaster recovery platform in place you are missing one of the most crucial parts of managing your business’ Think about it, if your organization were to suddenly lose a significant portion of its data, would it be able to continue to function effectively? 

We repeatedly talk about the need for data backup and efficient recovery practices in order to save your business from disaster. These disasters come when you least expect them and can really put a hurting on your business. Today, we’re going to take a look inside the retail sector to find why your average stores need to have resilient and up-to-date data backup in place.

While not every business needs to worry about hurricanes, the same can’t be said for other kinds of disasters out there. Tornadoes, fires, and other natural disasters could strike at any moment depending on geographical location, but if you’re prepared, you can limit the influence these events have on your organization’s future.

Whenever we get the chance, we emphasize the importance of having a business continuity plan. The bigger your business, the more important it is to have a comprehensive plan in place--and when your business loses data, it’s losing countless opportunities in the future. Your business’ future is on the line, and if you don’t take steps to protect it now, you could lose everything you’ve worked so hard to attain in the blink of an eye. Here are some of the most surprising statistics regarding data backup and disaster recovery.

Data backup is a hot topic for businesses, particularly because the stakes are never higher for small businesses and enterprises. You either protect your future by implementing a data backup system, or you don’t and put it in jeopardy. What some businesses might not know is that even certain backup strategies are outdated in a modern workplace.

Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. This is what it means to believe in Murphy’s Law, a rather bleak and somewhat nihilistic view of how the world works. Unfortunately, when it comes to your business’ important data, you have to subscribe to this mindset in order to prepare yourself for the worst-case scenario. Every business has its differences, but the end result will remain largely the same--a data backup system customized to fit your organization’s specific needs.

There is always the constant threat of data loss looming over your business. Even though the idea might be terrifying, you need to consider all of the many possible ways that crippling data loss can occur. To combat these issues head-on, you should implement a backup solution that adheres to industry best practices. We’ll help you determine what your business’ requirements are for a quality data backup solution.

How confident are you that your business could survive a worst-case scenario? Organizations should always be ready to go in case they are struck by overwhelming odds, be it a hacking attack or a natural disaster. How would your business respond to a disaster scenario? Do you have a business continuity plan put in place so that you can guarantee your organization survives to see the light of another day?

Data backup is something of a conundrum for many small businesses. The classic mindset is that they don’t think they need data backup because there’s no way they’ll be struck with a data loss disaster. Their office may not be located in a place prone to natural disasters, and the organization is so small that the assume they are off the hook when it comes to hackers. This doesn’t reduce the value that a good data backup system can offer, though.

With the return of warmer weather to much of the world, thunderstorms and lightning strikes are more common--and more problematic--than before. All it takes is a bit of rotten luck to find yourself on the receiving end of a lightning storm, and often times unprepared businesses will find themselves unable to recover from the damages. How can your organization mitigate the threat of damage caused by thunderstorms and fires associated with them? 

Over one-third of businesses don’t have any means of backing up their data. This is a major problem, especially considering how many threats there are that can derail operations. For managed IT providers like us, this is painful, as it’s unfortunate to hear about data disasters that could easily be prevented. We’ll discuss some of the biggest reasons why your business needs data backup and disaster recovery.

It’s a nightmare situation for any business owner when all of their essential data suddenly disappears. Fortunately, there are measures that you can take to turn this nightmare into an inconvenience. However, you must also be certain that these measures are adequate to keep your data safe, despite the worst of circumstances.

Remember, there is a difference between a “disaster” and a “data disaster,” although the two are often connected in a cause-and-effect kind of way. A disaster is some event that puts a business in peril, oftentimes leading to a data disaster, where some large degree of data loss is experienced.

Keep in mind, a data disaster doesn't rely on a “typical” disaster in order to take place. Hardware failure, user error, and hacking attacks can all contribute to a data disaster.

Either way, nothing about any type of disaster is easily manageable. Either can have serious repercussions for your business if you don’t have a backup solution preemptively in place. However, this backup solution should meet certain criteria:

1. Backups should be taken multiple times a day, ideally as often as every 15 minutes.
2. It must be stored in multiple offsite locations. This will help keep your backup from being destroyed by the same disaster that took your original data.
3. It must be tested on a regular basis to make sure it works. Otherwise, you may as well not have one in the first place.

Keep in mind, maintaining a backup solution is only half of the business continuity battle. Preserving your data is important, but should a true disaster endanger your business, you’ll need a comprehensive Backup and Disaster Recovery plan.

Despite what you might hear in the media, data breaches aren't the only IT-related issues that small businesses have to worry about. There are many other problems that you need to plan for, and they don’t all originate from hackers trying to steal your data. Let’s take a look at some of the common problems you might experience with your office technology.

It’s no secret that data backup is an important part of any IT strategy for small and medium-sized businesses. Backup and disaster recovery makes all the difference in keeping your business afloat in the event of a data loss incident. However, there’s still some debate over what the best approach is. According to a recent survey, it seems that many businesses find that both in-house and cloud-based backup solutions are needed in order to guarantee business continuity.

Once in a while, a server must play its part in the ultimate task - moving all of its data to another server. This includes moving all of the files and applications on one server to another unit in a process called server migration.