Disaster Recovery: Most Common Causes of Data Loss

disaster recovery most common causes of data loss

An important aspect of disaster recovery planning is understanding what causes data loss. At this point, most business owners understand the risks and costs of data loss. On the other hand, not everyone is so sure as to what causes it in the first place.

We understand this and included a section in our backup solutions PDF that covers data loss causes. Here’s what we wrote:

The most common causes of data loss are due to:

  • Viruses
  • Software failures
  • File corruption
  • Hard drive crashes
  • Laptop loss / theft
  • Natural disasters
  • Power outages
  • User errors

If you’re going to plan for disaster recovery and what happens when you lose data, you also have to know why instances of data loss occur. Knowing what causes data loss will help you prevent it from ever happening. And while restoring data is good, preventing data loss is even better.

Consider what your business does daily to prevent the causes listed above. For example, write down exactly what your business does to prevent viruses. Do you have a firewall? Do you block certain websites that are susceptible to viruses? Have you educated employees about the risk of viruses?

This will give you insight as to how protected your data really is. If you find that there are many holes in your data protection plan, don’t worry. There are a few things you can do to protect your data immediately.

The best thing that we can recommend is to speak with a managed IT service provider. We can audit your data security and let you know if you need more protection. The worst case scenario is that you need to add extra security, and we can help with our flexible services. At the same time, you’re not locked into any deal or contact. There’s no pressure and you can choose what you think is right for your business.

To talk more about this or anything else, please contact us. Thanks.

Start Your Disaster Recovery with an Emergency Services Request

start your disaster recovery with an emergency services request

Disaster recovery emergency services request Sometimes businesses don’t understand the need for disaster recovery until they’re actually in that situation. Some call this learning the hard way while others call it poor business planning. Either way, businesses that don’t invest in disaster recovery are headed down a rocky road.

We understand that some businesses get caught up and unfortunately find themselves in this situation. While we certainly don’t condone this behavior, there’s no sense in punishing a business for not having a business continuity plan. The only thing we can do is help that business restore its operations and then help them form a disaster recovery plan after the fact.

And that’s why we accept free emergency services requests. Some companies are just blindsided by technology failure and need immediate assistance. If your company finds itself in an emergency, you can fill out this form and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. We’ll provide services that fix problems such as:

  • Internet Outage
  • Network Down
  • Server Failure
  • Email Down

The idea is to stop the bleeding as soon as possible and help your business restore its operations. At this time, businesses don’t need lectures as to why they need to plan for this scenario. Every minute of business downtime costs companies money. They just need to restore their operations as soon as possible.

But while we can provide assistance in the aforementioned scenarios, businesses will still hurt from not having a disaster recovery plan. Restoring Internet access or fixing a server failure are important components of disaster recovery, but they won’t solve everything. Businesses need complete plans that covers everything from what their employees should do to how they will restore communication with clients.

If you would like more information about IT support or require assistance in an emergency related to technology, contact us.

Technology Business Plan: The Importance of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

technology business plan the importance of business continuity and disaster recovery

With outsourced IT, disaster recovery can be both comprehensively planned for and successfully implemented when you need it most. The first step to successful disaster aversion and recovery is having a continuity plan in place before disaster strikes.

Keeping communication lines open and accessible both during and after a disaster can mean the difference between a catastrophic loss and a healthy recovery. In your continuity plan, there should be specific instructions on how to regain or maintain communications even if your key staff members cannot reach your facility.

Mobile solutions such as hosted VoIP can remedy communication problems after a disaster. Allowing staff to communicate using the same platforms, application, and features they use everyday.

In addition to re-establishing communications, your continuity plan should include both local and remote data server information back up. On-site or local back up can come in handy, especially when your servers fail or during a security breach.

This type of back up system can be accessed on site and get your business moving again almost immediately.

Remote data back up systems store your information securely at a different location. Remote back up is most important when your facility is either inaccessible or compromised. This type of back up can allow authorized users to access and download vital business data from any location, thus allowing business to continue even after a catastrophic event.

If you are interested in putting together your technology business plan, and learning more about our disaster recovery solutions, please contact us here at AE Technology Group.

Our technology business plan and disaster recovery consultants can help you devise a continuity plan that can keep your business up and running 24/7/365.

A Disaster Recovery Plan – Does your company have one? Is it up to date?

a disaster recovery plan does your company have one is it up to date

According to the Department of Homeland Security, “forty percent of businesses affected by a natural or human-caused disaster never reopen” 

Does your company have an up-to-date Disaster Recovery Plan and do your employees know what to do in the event of an attack or natural disaster? Do you lay awake some nights wondering if your plan will work and whether or not you would be able to recover all the vital information you need to run you business?

At AE Technology Group we define a Disaster Recovery Plan “as the process, policies and procedures … for recovery or continuation of technology infrastructure which are vital to an organization after a natural or human-induced disaster.”

Would your business survive? What would you do if your computer systems were offline for even a day or two? Here are a few minimum steps you will want to take so you and your employees are ready for a disaster:

  • Run hourly, daily and weekly automatic onsite and offsite data backups. There are many cloud based backup options and available and we will gladly recommend the best one for your company
  • Train employees on what to do and where to go in the event of a disaster
  • Have an equipment replacement plan and a backup location in place so you can recover quickly
  • Create a customer notification plan
  • Test your plan! Run different scenarios against the plan to make sure things will work as you expect.

We are AE Technology Group and we invite you to contact us.  We are not experts at the business continuity portion of your plan but we can certainly help you plan for what to do with your IT infrastructure.

The Location of a Disaster Recovery Service Provider’s Data Centers

the location of a disaster recovery service provider data centers
Disaster Recovery

While there are several important aspects of disaster recovery and backup solutions, a service provider can really only be as good as its data centers. Other aspects, such as support, availability, and integrity are all essential for a good disaster recovery service provider, but if its data center is insecure, then it ultimately has no backbone.

Businesses choose disaster recovery and backup solutions because they understand the risks of data loss and business downtime. First and foremost, businesses think of their geographic location and the type of natural disasters that can happen there. Events such as floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes are all good reasons to outsource your data backup.

But what good would this be if your disaster recovery service provider had a poorly located data center? They would essentially be at as much risk of your business in terms of power outages and other disturbances.

A recent LinkedIn article explains why it’s important to consider the geographic location of data centers when choosing a disaster recovery service provider:

“It’s important to consider whether a DRaaS provider has a secure data center that’s located somewhere without any geographic hazards (e.g., on an earthquake fault line or in a tornado-prone area). Also, consider whether the data center employs redundant networks, communication links, and power supplies, and whether it has adequate fire suppression mechanisms.”

Of course, it’s important to consider this factor before committing to a service provider. But if you discover that your service provider’s data center is in an unsafe area, it should immediately throw up a red flag – again, stressing how important it is to inquire of the location of a disaster recovery service provider, no matter how credited they are.

At AE Technology Group, we boast a guaranteed 99.9% uptime, most of all because of our geographically distributed data centers. We utilize Tier 4 data centers in different areas so that your business’ data is as secure a possible.

If you would like more information about disaster recovery and backup solutions, contact us.