Safeguarding Your Most Important Asset

Happy customers. A motivated and productive staff. Black ink on the bottom line. That’s the dream of most small businesses, and it typically takes years to realize it. Yet, when a small business fails to adequately protect one of its most critical assets – its information – that dream can turn into a nightmare in a hurry.

Whether it’s caused by natural disasters, thieves, viruses or human error, data loss is often the death knell for a small business. In fact, many businesses that experience data loss go out of business.

Even those small businesses that manage to keep their doors open after a critical data loss event face a tremendously uphill climb to recover from downtime that can rob their productivity and cut deep into their profit margins.

To determine how damaging downtime can be, most small businesses can follow a simple formula:

Risk in dollars = (disaster probability) X (daily downtime cost in lost productivity) X (length of downtime)

For example, consider a small business where 1) the probability of a hurricane strike is 20 percent, 2) it would cost the company roughly $100,000 for each day the business is down and 3) the business expects to be down for about a week. Using the formula, this company faces a total risk of $140,000 (0.2 x $100,000 x 7 = $140,000).

For most small businesses, $140,000 would be a tough hit – yet they could protect themselves from such a huge financial blow for only a small fraction of that amount. In fact, the data protection solutions available today for small businesses -- ranging from rugged portable hard drives, Internet storage, additional servers and RAIDS to backup tapes and removable disks – are more affordable than ever before. And considering the peace-of-mind they can provide to small businesses, their value is priceless.

To assume that your business will avoid all the potential scenarios in which data could be lost could be a disastrous mistake. The bad news is that threats to your data can – and are – taking multiple and increasing forms. The good news is that there are ways to protect your business that don’t require major investments of your time and money.

Best ways to help prevent data loss – without a server

A rugged portable hard drive offers a small business one way to backup data and transport it offsite. The hard drive is surrounded by a solid rubberized exterior to protect the important files saved on it from being lost if the drive is dropped while transporting it offsite. Small enough to fit into a briefcase or purse, the rugged hard drive can be taken home, quelling owners’ fears about theft of notebooks or desktops that stay in the office overnight. And, with more capacity than other external data backup and storage alternatives (such as a CD, DVD, or USB key), a rugged drive can be a cost-effective and easy-to-manage option.

The Web-savvy business may prefer to rely on Internet storage options offered by service providers; Dell customers, for example, can receive 10 GB of online storage space accessible from anywhere in the world for 1 year with the purchase of some computer systems. The key benefit of online storage is that it allows companies to store their data offsite without having to physically move it themselves to a safe location. But before signing up with an Internet storage provider, consider potential risks. Because data is vulnerable to theft when it’s in transmission, it’s critical for the data to be safely encrypted – scrambled in such a way that it’s worthless to any unauthorized person trying to access it. Internet storage can also create network issues that affect your productivity because when large files are stored online, loading and retrieving data can slow down the entire network. As most providers charge monthly or annual fees, you may want to conduct a cost-benefits comparison of online storage against other storage options, such as removable disk or tape drives.

Best ways to help prevent data loss – with a server

With a wealth of servers now available to them, small businesses are increasingly using them to boost their company’s productivity, centralize and protect their data, and streamline their operations. Servers have robust capacity, but like humans, notebooks, and laptops, they’re not immune from viruses, hardware failure and natural disasters. So for a bulletproof technological infrastructure, a small business should employ a secondary, off-site method of data protection.

RAID, a Redundant Array of Independent Disks, are multiple drives which together act as a single storage system. RAID not only stores pieces of data on each drive, but it can also replicate files on each drive. By spreading data out over multiple disks, RAID protects against equipment failure and speeds up performance. To take advantage of RAID, a small business must purchase multiple hard drives for their server. Although this will be more expensive than storing all of your data on one hard drive, it can ultimately save your business time and money if something does compromise the data. RAID helps ensure data is better-protected and can be recovered faster than if it were stored on a tape drive or removable disk.

Duplicating files to backup tapes or removable disk cartridges enables a business to safely store a copy of their data offsite, a key element in any disaster recovery plan. There are several things to consider when choosing between a tape or a removable disk solution. Tape can be a less expensive option if the business archives their data away often and for long periods due to the relatively low cost of the media. Tape is also designed for long-term storage with a shelf life of as much as 30 years. However, writing to and reading from tape is usually more time-consuming than most disk-storage options. Some tape formats also have lower capacity on each piece of media than a removable disk cartridge contains, so the number of media needed may become a factor, for storage, management and cost reasons. In addition, tape drives are usually more expensive than a removable disk drive and tape formats occasionally change, which would require purchasing a new drive each time you upgrade. On the other hand, a removable disk cartridge’s format remains the same over time.

Protect Your Data

Considering how much blood, sweat and tears are invested in satisfying customers, motivating their teams and trying to turn a profit, it is understandable why small businesses sometimes neglect to take the time to analyze their data protection needs.

Don’t make that mistake with your small business. If your company can’t function because of data loss, sales could be lost, customers won’t be pleased and productivity will dry up. The simple fact is: each day – each hour – of downtime represents money out of your pocket.

To truly understand the risks involved with data loss and weigh how you should plan for it, you should consider such questions as:

• How much revenue per hour or day does your business take in? Compare this against the time it would take to get your offsite copy of data and then restore to new hardware.
• How exactly would you get your data restored?
• Would you need to hire a temp to enter sales information from paper receipts?
• How much of their otherwise productive time would employees have to spend to recreate their proposals, sales records and other important documents?