Data recovery and security measures are crucial for businesses of all sizes and all industries. This is even true of an individual building and managing a business from the comfort of their own home. Business data can include – but is not limited to – client payment details, employee files, bank account information, tax information, and everything in between.
Not only is company data hard to replace, it can be devastating to lose if it falls into the hands of someone with bad intentions.
But, Why is Data Recovery So Important?
It is common to assume data security is more important than data recovery. In fact, there are some business owners who have a data security system in place but have never thought to contact a data recovery company to back-up and recover data.
The importance of a security system is easy to understand because you imagine a hacker hacking into your system and stealing credit card or bank account information. Take a step back and imagine having all your company data on a hard drive in a computer in your office. One day your business floods or catches fire. Suddenly, the hard drive with all of your business data on it is destroyed and you don’t have a backup. Unfortunately, some business owners don’t realize the importance of data recovery until they experience the loss of valuable data first-hand.
Business Data is Business Value
Some business owners – especially smaller business owners – question whether or not they have any valuable data worth protecting. Do you really need to figure out how to protect your company data? Your business data is the value of your business. In fact, consider the following pieces of data and how valuable you think they are:
· Product/brand details such as plans, designs, patents, sketches, and source codes
· Financial information including the company’s financial records
· Customer details such as contact and payment information
Data is the foundation of your business. If you lose the data or it gets taken away from you, you could be forced to start over. You could even find yourself in a sticky legal situation where you are held liable for compromising the information of your customers. Ask yourself one question – what would your business really be without its database of information?
Compliance Standards
In addition to complying with your own standards and the standards of your customers, there are compliance requirements defined by third parties. HIPAA is an example of this if your business is in the medical industry. HIPAA is a protection act that prevents you from sharing medical information without permission of the individual. Other third parties with compliance standards include PCI (credit card processing) and FISMA (for contractors and government agencies). Not having security and recovery measures in place to protect this type of data is enough to destroy your business.
Be Aware of Key Threats
To protect your business data, it helps to be aware of what you are protecting it from. Unfortunately, data breaches, hackers, and natural disasters are not the only threats to business data. Ransomware is the name of a newer threat that’s becoming more and more of a problem. Just as the name suggests, this is a security threat that holds data hostage until a ransom is paid to get the data back. Basically, it is a type of malware hackers use to make money because they also understand how valuable business data is.
Securing the data of your business starts with developing a plan and assessing potential risks. Next up is taking measures to regularly back-up the data to make recovering it possible. Lastly, install anti-virus programs and security programs to keep the data safe from hackers and malware.