Meet Audrey, she is a baking and pastry shop owner in Manila. Her family owns 7 branches spread across the metropolis. Recently, a disgruntled IT employee deleted all the files of the company. All their sales data, inventory files and other essential company information got lost in an instant.
She is slowly rebuilding her files, manually reconciling her records and rebuilding years worth of data for her bakeshop. This could have been avoided if she tapped reliable manage IT solutions providers that can back-up all her data to the cloud.
Thousands of small to medium sized business owners are unaware of these kinds of risks. Most of them are occupied with running their business and rely on unreliable people and processes for their information. In this article, we will discuss how to prevent this.
Why this Information Matter
* Prevent Costly Mistakes- the experience of Audrey is very costly. Imagine the time lost building their files and information system. Since the tax remittance is highly dependent on their sales data, they weren’t able to meet the deadline for filing. They had to pay penalties for this.
* Protection for your Trade Secrets- your shared file system is crucial since it contains trade secrets. Whether these are recipes, supplier database or marketing strategies, these documents need to be well-hidden and archived properly. If these are lost and leaked, it could spell disaster for your business.
* Peace of Mind- we all know that business relies heavily on information. Making sure this information is restricted and could be easily recovered helps owners make their mind as is. If a disaster happens, you will be assured that the info can be recovered.
Tips on Securing your Company Data
* Hire a Managed Solutions Provider– if you are running a business that is growing, consider hiring a vendor to manage it for you. Running IT is not your core competency, have it run with seasoned professionals. These vendors have the expertise in this field. They also know who to hire and how to train the right people to do the job.
* Use NDA with your Provider– when you outsource this to a provider make sure you have an iron-clad non-disclosure agreement. This is one of the best ways to ensure your provider takes care of your data. They will be held accountable if their employees leak or steal your data.
* Back-up to Cloud– cloud is excellent systems to back-up all your data. IT providers prefer this approach and store the files in Azure networks (Microsoft) or Amazon Cloud. Cloud computers offer resiliency against downtime. Your IT provider can create scripts to archive your files on a periodical basis. If a disaster happens, they can instantly recover the files within a day or even hours.
Another advantage of the cloud is you can store the data in different secure locations. You can store it in Singapore or US. If location is down, you can have another site up from another region. This ensures business continuity.
* Don’t Rely on USB or Hard Drive Backup- many business owners are tempted on just storing their files on hard disks and USB drives. These drives are not reliable as you think. Solid State Drives (SSDs) and mechanical hard drives can break down from time to time. It is very hard to recover from a corrupted hard drive by the way.
