Protect Your Most Critical Asset

Here's an easy question:  does your business have a current backup of its customer database?  Do you have a copy stored offsite?  This critical business asset deserves your attention, since it can be destroyed in seconds through causes as varied as an e-mail virus, a hardware failure, a building fire, or a vindictive employee.  Yet Imation reports that 30% of small businesses do not backup their data at all, and 34% do not store critical data offsite.

Our view:  Get the most recent backup available and restore it to a temporary directory.  Verify that it is current and that it can be fully restored without errors.  If you don't have a backup, or it's more than 5 days old:  1) before you lock the doors tonight, make a backup.  2) Tomorrow, practice restoring it. 

 

Any good backup system can be set to run automatically.  You should always use this feature.  Online backup services give you the added protection of an off-site backup.  A couple to consider:  iBackup.com, Connected.com.  For about $15/month, they'll store 4 gigabytes of data.  For PC-based systems, an external hard drive (consider Maxtor and Iomega) is another option, although it won't give you the added security of an off-site copy of critical data unless you physically store the hard drive offsite.  If you have a very small database, you may be able to simply copy it to a CD nightly and take it home with you weekly.

 

(c) 2004