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Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Is Daily Data Backup Worth it?
By James Walsh

Data and time are your most important assets. Once you lose access to data, you lose time. And time is money in business. Fact is that it takes about 30 hours to rebuild 20MB of data, and it costs about £50 000.

The Shocking Truth

You need to ask yourself the following questions: Do you back up data daily? Have you specifically delegated someone to ensure a daily backup of data? Is he or she adequately qualified to do so? Are the backup tapes stored securely off-site, and will these tapes prove reliable if and when you need to restore the data?

Research throws up some shocking statistics: 99% of businesses do not back up daily, 60% of backups are only partial, 50% of restores are unsuccessful.

The aftermath can be fatal to business.

In general, by day 6 after a major data loss, companies suffer a 25% loss in daily revenue. By the 25th day, it is 40%.

43% of businesses that undergo a critical data loss disaster and that don’t have a data recovery plan, never re-open.

To a U.K. SME, a virus attack costs an average of £843, and about 7.2 hours in downtime.

And the Data Protection Act of 1998 states: “You must safeguard your own or anyone else’s data, by appropriate precautions against loss, corruption, or authorised disclosure.”

The Only Solution – Daily Data Backup

You never know what could strike your computer. It could be a virus, electrical surge, mechanical failure, man-made error, or even flood or fire. Therefore, at least in small and medium-sized businesses, backups should run daily. So, if there is data loss, it would only be the information recorded since the last backup that is lost. In such cases, most SMEs would not find it recovery difficult.

However, when it comes to financial service organisations, even the loss of one day’s data could prove disabling. Such organisations with demanding data loads must make a greater effort to prevent data loss.

Continuous Data Protection (CDP)

This is a service that enables a continuous backup of computer data by automatically saving every change made to the data. The changes in the data are sent to a separate storage location, off-site. This means backups are up to date to the last second of changes made. And it’s incredibly fast. In a matter of minutes, a whole server can be recovered from a recent backup.

• A fresh backup is always maintained because backups are done four times a day.
• You are provided with 56 backup archives of your data since backups are kept for 2 weeks.
• For the ultimate reliability, backups are done at disk sector level, rather than the usual file level.
• In just a matter of minutes, individual files, whole websites, or servers can be restored.
• At any time, users can access their data backups, and browse and restore files.
• While in storage and during network transmission, data is continuously encrypted.

What Makes CDP Different from the Traditional Backup

While in the traditional backup system, you need to specify the point of time to which you would like to recover your data, this step is not required with Continuous Data Protection. In the case of the traditional backup, you can only restore data to the point at which the backup was done. But there are no backup schedules in the case of CDP. Data is written simultaneously to disk and to a second location (usually another computer over the network).

Another advantage of CDP, when compared to traditional backup, is that, in some instances, it will need less space on backup media. Unlike traditional backups that save file-level differences, most CDP solutions save byte or block-level differences. So, if one byte of a 100 GB file is changed, only this byte or block is backed up, not the entire file.

It seems, at least for now, that Continuous Data Protection is the ideal method of daily backup.

James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. For more information on computer crime and Computer Forensics see http://www.fieldsassociates.co.uk

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Walsh

http://EzineArticles.com/?Is-Daily-Data-Backup-Worth-it?&id=679040

Cloud Computing and Why Home Office and SME’s Stand to Gain the Most From It
By Claire Hibbert

‘Cloud computing’ is the latest technology set to change the way home offices and small business owners run their companies. There has been a lot of press recently about ‘the cloud’ from the likes of Microsoft and Google, so what is it and what impact will it have on small business? In short, ‘Cloud computing’ provides companies with the ability to store data and access software services online via the internet. Traditionally, data and software was set up and stored on stand-alone PC Desktops and connected via a network, so team workers could access shared files and information with the assurance that the data was stored and backed up. This back-up system was then managed and maintained by network specialists on a daily basis. Larger businesses were able to justify the high costs against staff capacity however, it was a different story for the small businesses where cash flow was tight and staff resource low.

This is where ‘Cloud computing’ comes into its own. The advantages to small businesses are that they no longer need to set up servers for their staff IT needs, nor employ specialist staff to run a scaled down version of an IT Department to support that need. Fortunately due to today’s technological advances everything is looked after online in ‘the cloud’ by the service provider. The great news is that if your computer gets lost or stolen all your data won’t be lost as it is backed up ‘in the cloud’ and you can access it instantly from another computer, giving you peace of mind. All the online business software provided to you is fully maintained and kept up to date for you at no added cost, unlike traditional versions. You don’t have to spend endless time loading up the software onto each individual computer, every business owners nightmare, simply click on an online link and you and your team have instant access to it instead.

‘Cloud computing’ brings extremely low cost ‘online business services’ to small businesses and because the set up and running costs are minimal finally gives them access to big business tools enabling them to compete with the big boys, without having to compromise on quality. However, be warned it is a minefield out there as new online service providers optimise the rapidly expanding market so be sure to shop around to avoid what looked like a bargain only to discover an array of hidden costs. One such company that offers true value and a unique, comprehensive online business service is http://www.icomplete.com. It connects telecoms, online business software, call management (IVR and VoIP)services together in one place so you don’t have to search out individual providers helping to save you time and effort at the fraction of the cost.

You can use http://www.icomplete.com services for as little as £ 12 per month and this gives instant access to: shared individual or group calendars, customer database (CRM), maps, task management and integrated voice messages, fax, email, voicemail in your email, sms and email reminders and documents that are assigned to your contacts. It makes co-ordination, document sharing and collaboration a whole lot easier and information can be accessed from a PC, Mac or other mobile device anywhere in the world by you and your team.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Claire_Hibbert

http://EzineArticles.com/?Cloud-Computing-and-Why-Home-Office-and-SMEs-Stand-to-Gain-the-Most-From-It&id=3819538