Insurance for Your Documents
As more business information is stored on computers, it is extremely important that this data is being backed up. We continue to hear stories from non-profits, businesses and individuals about how they lost everything due to a hard drive crash. More often, we suffer from accidentally deleting a file or writing over it. Like the insurance policies we have on our cars, businesses and homes, it is comforting to know there is a way to recover from information loss. You need to protect the data in your computer from physical issues like dropping, lightning, flooding, or excessive heat. Even expensive solutions like RAID (two or more hard drives configured to provide more than one copy of data), on-site tape backup, and surge suppressors won’t protect you from the damage of a fire or natural disasters. There are solutions to securely archive your documents and data online. A number of companies now provide ways to archive important data online automatically.
Like most applications there are consumer and professional versions of these backup solutions. The consumer versions work well as a simple means to backup devices like laptops and home computers. The professional versions provide managed backup all computers, laptops, and servers in your office from a central control panel. Recovering a file is often as easy is going into an archive drive on your computer and pulling out an old version of a file. Many services even allow you to remotely access your documents so you can restore them to another computer and view them anywhere in the world.
The main downside to these online backup services is you need to have a broadband connection to the Internet. Depending on your upload speed and the number of documents you have stored it could take hours or even a day to backup everything. My suggestion is to install a backup solution as one of the first steps of setting up a new PC. It is just as important as anti-virus and firewall utilities. You also benefit from a quick initial backup before your computer gets filled with documents.
The major providers of this service are: Carobonite, Mozy, iBackup, and eVault. Immersion Technology Inc. recommends is Mozy since it provides a free service for home use (2GB of space), supports both PC and Mac computers, and the professional version allows you to manage backup for your entire office from a single web interface. If you are interested in getting help setting up any of these services give us a call at 866-439-4951 or email support@immersionit.com.
Zach Bullock said,
October 1, 2007 @ 11:00 am
I understand the security benefits of having your data backed-up offsite. Are there any security risks associated with the process? Also, can the backup process be automated to search for new/updated files in specific folders?
Jason Wood said,
October 2, 2007 @ 1:01 pm
There are security risks involved with the backup process specifically and data storage in general. No matter what your backup process is there is a risk of that data being stolen and security needs to be a consideration. In my ITBASE strategy for company technology (S stands for Security), so it is part of the equation to having a solid technical environment to grow and maintain a business. I realize that offsite backup isn’t for everyone and some people just may not be comfortable with it. There are many other choices for backup and I would work with anyone who is unsure or worried to find the backup solution that makes the most sense for them.
To answer your second question. Yes, backup software allows you to use rulesets to discover important data to backup regardless of where you decide to place it. You can enable default rulesets or have a computer professional write additional rules as they apply to your business.
Zach Bullock said,
October 4, 2007 @ 6:20 pm
Sounds like a sweet service