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Backing Up Business Data -- It's Crucial
There's no particular peculiar
virtue in religiously backing up business data. It's just that the
consequences of not doing so are potentially catastrophic.
Many businesses feel secure that their data are reasonably safe. They
have good anti-virus software or a firewall that will stop viruses
getting into their intranet.
But there are other ways to lose information. Fire, for example, or
flood, earthquake or hurricane. To protect against these risks, it's
necessary to not only back up data but to store the data offsite.
Anti-virus software offers no protection against outright vandalism.
It's not unknown for disgruntled employees to carry out subtle or
not-so-subtle sabotage. And data can be deleted accidentally. Files,
folders and even whole databases can be mistakenly emptied out with the
trash.
Theft is another problem. Laptops are easily stolen and with them can be
lost many megabytes of precious information. Power surges pose another
threat. Lightning bolts or just engineering problems can fry a whole
network, unless it is surge-protected.
Finally, as a computer hard drive gets older, there is an increasing
risk that one day it will simply crash.
Some of these risks may seem small. But the size of the risk needs to be
balanced against the size of the consequences. Imagine, for example,
that all a company's tax records went missing. What level of sympathy
would the tax authorities be likely to show? Even if a single mailing
list went missing, what is the potential lost income as sales and
marketing opportunities are not taken?
Of course, when important data are lost and they cannot be retrieved,
they are often recreated. But recreating data may take longer than
creating them in the first place. It's one thing to note down
information after a phone call, for example. It's another to have to
remember that phone call a fortnight later and backtrack over all the
issues and details.
Some businesses back up on a daily basis. Others may back up weekly. It
really depends on how much information an organization can afford to
lose and how time they can afford to spend redoing work.
Backing up does not need to be laborious. Software can do it
automatically, storing files in another part of your office Intranet.
It's possible to backup through the Internet if you have a broadband
connection. Backups can run overnight. The cost of backing up this way
is likely to be less than a firm will pay in insurance. And backup is a
kind of insurance as data loss has been known to close down businesses.
Small businesses with only a few computers can back up onto a CD-ROM. A
single CD-ROM can store 600 MB and can be added to incrementally. This
only takes a few minutes.
The general rule is that most computer users do not start backing up
until something bad happens. It may be only something minor. Perhaps
someone has spent an afternoon working on a document and forgotten to
save, and the power goes off unexpectedly. Then, amongst the general
fuming and recriminations, the importance of backing up data becomes
obvious.
Useful websites include:
sbinfocanada.about.com/cs/software
www.zdnet.co.uk
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