Protection and backup: how to avoid data loss?
Businesses have never had as much digital data in their hands as they do today: customer files, accounting, payroll, etc. The criticality of this information, combined with bad practices, exposes them to the risk of disruption, or even permanent stoppage, of their business. As we shall see in this article, effective protection doesn't have to be expensive or difficult. Take a closer look at automatic backup.
What causes data loss?
The figures vary depending on the source of the data, but the four major reasons carry roughly the same weight:
- ¼ of data losses stem from hardware or software failure:
Hard disk failure, power supply failure, sudden operating system shutdown, corrupted software, corrupted files and databases. - ¼ are caused by human error:
Accidental deletion of files, loss of storage media (USB key, CD...). - ¼ result from direct or indirect intentional acts:
Viruses, hacking, hard disk formatting, file deletion. - ¼ result from disasters:
Fire, flood, earthquake, tornado, etc.
Knowing this, here are the right questions to ask yourself to assess your level of protection and the risks involved:
- Does your company have a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) in case of data loss?
- Do you regularly back up your critical data, and on what media?
- What would happen if your critical data were damaged, lost or stolen?
- In the event of data loss, what efforts would you need to make to return to a normal situation?
- Are you protected against intrusion attempts?
If any of these questions reveal a weakness in your organization, take quick and simple steps to remedy it.
Best practices and low-cost solutions
Choose online software
Generally speaking, online business software offers better security standards than hosted computing. Leading publishers in their fields (messaging, collaboration, accounting, payroll, etc.) offer software availability rates of over 99.5%, systematic daily replication of your data, up-to-date, secure servers, and professional maintenance teams.
Since no data is hosted in your company, the loss of hardware has no impact on your business. SaaS software offers many other advantages.
Train your staff in proper usage
The use of mobile devices, personal hardware, USB sticks, frequent travel, etc.: all these new uses open up recurring security breaches. Here are a few tips to follow:
- Invite all employees to change their main passwords every 3 months.
- Draw up a data protection policy and communicate it throughout the company.
- Train employees in the proper use of the company's most critical software (e-mail, CRM, etc.).
- Secure document workflows. Google Apps and Office 365, for example, make it possible to share documents outside the company, then restrict rights once collaboration is complete.
- No longer store documents in a local directory that is not backed up (personal hard drive, USB key). Use the company server or an online Drive (Google Drive, DropBox).
- Close sessions at the end of the day. Firefox, for example, enables you to do this automatically when you close your browser.
Use a modern backup solution
Over the past 5 years, backup tools have become increasingly popular with small and medium-sized businesses, thanks to their lower cost and ease of installation. Business Recovery Plans (BRPs), originally designed for large corporations, are now available to all businesses.
Make sure you have the following guarantees:
- daily backup to secure data centers
- local backup on a hard disk (Oxibox NAS is fire and water resistant)
- data encryption
- incremental or delta-block backup (consumes less bandwidth)
- immediate disaster recovery in the event of data loss
- data loss insurance
In 2016, EaseUS found that 50% of hard drives die within 5 years. What's more, 75% of companies that suffer a loss of critical data cease trading within two years.
Protecting against malicious acts
To date, a virus has never caused a company to lose data in the cloud. SaaS software benefits from the best technologies in terms of data security.
For the rest of your applications and files on servers or computers, you can protect them with an anti-intrusion solution. Bitdefender is the market reference. It offers total protection for all your business IT, with the constraints of mobility and regular Internet access.
Article translated from French