Backup & Recovery - McKinney, TX

Protect What Matters

Your important business data is on your hard drive and your entire system crashes... that could very well lead to your business crashing!

Data loss immediately impacts the natural flow of a business as data, and the resulting information, are the supporting pillars to all successful businesses. Data loss can be critically detrimental to the business flow and in some cases it may destroy business value or the business itself.

It is a known axiom that any downtime is damaging to a business, and it is also known that data and time share a symbiotic relationship: any loss of time means a loss in data gathered and processed, and a loss of data means a loss of time that could have been used applying the information to increase profit.

In today’s fast paced non-stop economy any business that stops even for a moment is left behind... Be Proactive, Be Protected!

What is data loss?

Data loss refers to the unforeseen loss of data or information. An occurrence of data loss can be called a Data Loss Event and there are several possible root causes. Data loss must be distinguished from data unavailability, such as may arise from a network outage. Although the two have substantially similar effects, data unavailability is temporary while data loss is permanent.

What is the cost of data loss?

The cost of a Data Loss Event is directly related to the value of the data and the length of time that it is needed, but unavailable. Consider:

• The cost of continuing without the data.
• The cost of recreating the data.
• The cost of notifying users in the event of a compromise

It is estimated that 2 out of every 500 businesses incur critical data loss from which it is impossible to recover, in fact, 70% of companies that sustain such corruption of their data repository for a period 10 days or more filed for bankruptcy within one year of the incident, and most that manage to survive the outage never fully recover.

What can cause data loss?

There are many contributors to data loss however the most astonishing and surprising is due to Human Error which accounts for 32% of all incidents. Human error can come in the form of accidental deletion and destruction of data, erroneous disk formatting, administration errors, mishandling of computers, and even trauma cause by computers being dropped or having fallen.

Hardware or System Malfunctions account for 44% of data loss incidents which are generally caused by electrical failures, system crashed and hardware error/damage.

Software corruption causes 14% of cases and usually this is due to diagnostic utilities and repair tools removing critical system file and corrupting file systems. When systems are particularly complex and of considerable size some configuration tasks performed by computer applications may be unable to suitably setup resulting in loss of data. Some cases of failed backup attempts have been known to also irrevocably damage data.

Computer Viruses and malicious user are responsible for 7% of cases while the remaining 3% is caused by natural disasters.

What can be done to prevent data loss?

There are many preemptive measures that can be adopted in order to safeguard one’s business data from sure destruction.

As obvious as this may sound you should always schedule routine backups, the more often the better, if not daily then weekly. Even though this may seem like common sense only it’s surprising to learn that 99% of all business do not do a daily backup. The reason for this is mainly due to the fact that most businesses view their computer configurations as the Utopian computer environment, assuming everything is working to perfection.

It is fundamental to ensure the ideal working environment for a business’ computer systems. The environment should ideally be a temperature controlled, dry, low activity area to decrease the probability of hardware failure.

Periodically performing system health checks to determine whether the computers systems are stable, robust  and running efficiently, leaving little margin for failure or system downtime, is a necessary step. These health checks are not solely limited to hardware inspection, but also ensuring the software environment is clean, free of viruses and malware, provisioned of recovery disks and scheduled for routine backups.  Also, it is very important that backups be located in safe and off-site locations.

Finally, it is crucial that sensitive data be accessible only to authorized personnel by implantation of access rights and passwords. Also it is important to promote responsibility and awareness amongst the people working in a particular environment, this will ensure a more considerate and attentive approach when dealing with all aspects of business data.

Alarmingly 60% of backups are incomplete, 50% of restores fail, only 25% of tapes stored off-site and end user compliance with backups is only 8%, so call Stonebridge IT Specialists to receive a sound and robust Backup and Recovery Solution Program to fit your needs.

What types of data damage are there?

Data damage can be of two distinct types:

Physical Damage describes all kinds of damage that occurs when the physical storage device is damaged, and in these cases data loss is almost a certainty. This specifically is identified in cases where CDs are damaged due to abrasions on the surface, or in cases where hard drives sustain mechanical failures or tapes are be broken. Physical damage in most cases can be critical as it cannot be repaired by typical users.

Logical Damage represents the vast majority of scenarios of data loss and it occurs when a file system is corrupted in a so called “inconsistent state”. This inconsistent can be cause by a variety of factors, such as:

• system crash or unexpected halt;
• installation of new software or hardware;
• driver installation;
• power surge that fails to leave the file system consistent.

Logical damage can have many effects on the user’s computer’s performance such as abnormal or unusual behavior, loss of data and system crashes.

Schedule an Appointment