Articles Tagged ‘business continuity’

Sure, many small business owners may have the smarts when it comes to computers and software. The problem is, they don’t often have the time to keep up with the latest technology trends while running their business. In addition, they also don’t have the time to fix all the technical problems that can arise.
Since not all small business owners are adept at maintaining best technology practices, they frequently make certain tech mistakes. One of those biggest mistakes is having insufficient technical support.

The Cost-Efficiency Problem

A lot of small businesses go without technical support. They may rely on an employee whose love for computer games makes him the office’s so-called ‘computer expert.’ Other companies may depend on an employee’s friend or relative who ‘knows a lot about computers’ to provide technology advice or assistance when critical systems fail or slow down.
Aside from acquaintances, some turn to their hardware manufacturer’s tech support line for help. However, users often end up learning that the ’solution’ for many problems involves performing a reinstallation of drivers and related software, which may result in the loss of all business data. Some people even rely simply on an electronic store’s service arm, and still others locate freelancers for technical support.

Needless to say, these support methods are not cost-efficient, nor are they effective information technology investment, troubleshooting, or administration options. Small businesses owners need to find knowledgeable, trusted technology partners who are proficient with current technologies and willing to help them learn and understand their industry’s operations requirements.

Benefits of a Strong Tech Support Team

The benefits of finding a strong technical support team cannot be overemphasized. A qualified technology expert is familiar with a small business’ needs. Thus, it can provide appropriate services, and proper solutions can be recommended and deployed. The results are often more cost-effective and more efficient, which translate to more profitable operations for the small business owner.

With the right technology partner, the issues of hardware or software problems, creating specialized software or a custom database, and backing up critical information can be solved. The latter is crucial, as companies that fail to properly secure client and customer data often may find themselves suffering from bad press, lost sales, and forfeited customer trust.
Since data backups are so critical to a company, small businesses should work with proficient IT consultants or technology partners to ensure the right data is being backed up, and that it’s being backed up as frequently as required. A good tech support team can work with small businesses to:

• Determine what data, files, and information should be backed up;
• How often to create the data sets;
• Where to locate the backups, and;
• How often to test the sets’ integrity.

Finding a Technology Partner

Finding reputable IT service firms that can efficiently and effectively manage technology needs can often be a daunting task. You may find yourself feeling overwhelmed when faced with having to hire such a support service company. There are many small IT firms out there, but how do you know which IT support team you can trust? It would be best to ask around and research online to find good candidates. Ask some peers or colleagues or ask the vendor of your specialty software for referrals.

Make sure that the IT firm has a dedicated team to support all your needs. Having a technical support team that can easily come to your business is sometimes the best option. If your tech support is close by, they can provide support through remote terminals, phone calls and emails as well as onsite support, ensuring that your business runs smoothly. For more information about technical suppport,  data backup or you just need general help with IT support contact All Covered or call 866-446-1133.

Contact All Covered

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Every day, your business faces potential disaster from many different threats. By taking a few minutes to assess the potential risk your company faces on the average day, you will be taking the first step to creating a disaster plan.

Disaster Planning 101

Every business needs a disaster plan to address what will be done in case a disaster occurs. A disaster plan is a set of steps that is customized to address the unique needs of your individual business and guard against:

• business downtime
• revenue loss
• information loss
• loss of business’s reputation
• loss of assets

Consider Your Risks

The potential disaster your business might suffer from may require different approaches to planning. For instance, if your business site is next door to a chemical processing plant, you would be concerned about fire or chemical spills and would need to protect your data, inventory and business site against damage from those specific threats. If your business is located in a hurricane zone, you would be worried about water damage to electronics and physical building damage. Or, data loss through negligence can open the door to expensive law suits as well as damage your business’s reputation.

Environmental Risks

Environmental risks are typically climatic or geologic in nature. While the potential damage from each risk may be similar, each natural disaster possesses its own set of risks that you need to address. Natural disasters include:

• hurricanes
• tornadoes
• floods
• earthquakes
• forest fires
• volcanic eruptions and mud flows

Man-Made Hazards

Man-made hazards can change depending upon the physical location of your business and include:

• power outages
• sprinkler discharge
• fuel or water supply failure
• chemical spills
• arson
• bomb threats

Malicious Harm

Malicious harm generally impacts proprietary information or client data. Examples include:

• computer hacking
• unapproved data transfer
• sharing of trade secrets
• identity theft
• financial fraud

Negligent Behavior

Negligent behavior occurs more frequently than anyone wants to acknowledge. Generally, these acts can be avoided if people are educated and take the time to think things through before they act. Negligent acts include:

• misplacement of backup tapes
• accidental exposure of client records
• poor project planning
• computer virus outbreaks

Construct a Disaster Plan

Regardless of the nature of your business’s specific threats, any of the potential risks can affect your bottom line. Depending upon your business’s needs, your disaster plan may be as simple as copying important data to an encrypted external hard drive and taking it home at night. Or, the plan can be much more complicated and require a co-location site where all pertinent data and equipment necessary to your business’s daily functions are stored. Of course, your business’s disaster planning needs will likely fall somewhere in between the two extremes. A good disaster plan can be created in five simple steps:

• Assess your business’s potential risks.
• Outline your business’s needs.
• Prioritize your threats.
• Create and implement the disaster plan to reduce your business’s risk.
• Test the disaster plan.

Ask For Help

On your own, creating a disaster plan may appear overwhelming, but when you partner with experts, the process can be much easier. Please contact All Covered to learn more about how disaster plan can help protect your business assets and revenue.

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A Disaster Can Occur Anywhere, Anytime

When the subject of natural or man-made disasters comes up, a common and very human reaction is to assume, “It won’t happen to me.”

Unfortunately for many small business owners and IT managers, this is an assumption they’ve lived to regret. Each year, according to the Business Continuity Institute, about one in every five businesses faces a major disruption – from data loss as a consequence of a power outage to a natural disaster that destroys an office.

Yes, the consequences can be devastating. And, at a time when IT systems and networks have become indispensable to nearly every small business, a major IT disruption can result in a crippling revenue loss, an array of additional expenses, a major productivity drop, delayed collections, and even a damaged reputation that weakens vital relationships with customers, suppliers, partners, creditors, and others.

The solution, most IT managers would agree, is proper planning: a disaster preparedness and recovery strategy and implementation plan that ensures that the business survives and recovers from even the most severe occurrence.  While there are many key issues to consider when developing such a plan, there are four that deserve special attention.

Performing a Business Impact Analysis

A business impact analysis is a procedure that allows you to identify both tangible and intangible effects on business processes, functions, or departments over time. Not only does it provide management with the information necessary to identify recovery priorities and develop an effective recovery strategy, but it also supplies the data that helps define an appropriate disaster recovery program budget.

For IT systems and networks in particular, a business impact analysis is invaluable in two ways. First, it identifies business-critical applications and the systems they run on. Second, it finds areas of vulnerability within the environment that can then be addressed.

Never Underestimating the Importance of Backup

It doesn’t take an earthquake, hurricane, or fire to destroy data critical to your business’ success; a single virus, water leak, or employee error can do the job. This is why a comprehensive strategy for backing up critical data is indispensable for today’s small businesses.

And the most effective strategies are the ones that squarely tackle such issues as:

• Data Prioritization: identifying and deciding which data cannot be lost under any circumstances
• Testing: checking regularly to validate the effectiveness of backup and restoration capabilities
• Off-site Storage: storing tapes off-site and taking other steps to minimize disaster before it happens

Seeing the Plan as a “Living Document”

Once a disaster preparedness and recovery plan has been researched, designed, developed, implemented, and tested there is an irresistible desire to declare the job done.  However, as your business evolves, your IT environment must also evolve; and your IT team should continue to develop new ways to improve your disaster recovery plan.

Rather than a completed work, it’s imperative to see this plan as a living document that’s constantly being reviewed, revised, and revamped. That is the only way it will remain effective if a disaster strikes.

Seeking Outside Help

There are a number of reasons why it makes sense for small businesses to turn to outside IT service firms to help them address their disaster recovery requirements. First, most small businesses don’t have the in-house staff to conduct a thorough assessment, select the right solutions or continuously upgrade them to keep pace with their business requirements. Second, an outside firm can provide an objective evaluation and recommend more effective solutions based on their extensive experience.

To help increase your chances of selecting the best possible partner, we suggest looking for an organization with:

• A strategic perspective that considers your company’s key business goals before developing a disaster preparedness plan
• A comprehensive assessment and solution development methodology
• Sufficient experience working both with small businesses and companies in your industry
• The ability to provide remote managed services
• Proven expertise not only in disaster preparedness but also in disaster recovery

Contact All Covered

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Data Loss – An Inevitable Event

Tomorrow, next week, six months, next year—it will happen.  Your organization will experience data loss from a server or from an individual’s computer.  Are you prepared for that event?  According to American Data Recovery:

• U.S. businesses lose over $12 billion per year because of data loss.
• Hardware or system failure accounts for 78% of all data loss.
• Human error accounts for 11% of all data loss.
• 60% of companies that lose their data will shut down within 6 months of the disaster.

All companies are aware that they need to backup critical data, but often they are not aware that poor configuration and maintenance or incomplete procedures and policies can lead to huge costs, both in expense and time, associated with recovering lost data.  According to a recent article by Johanna Ambrosio, in IT World.com, “…I’d wager that most medium-size and smaller businesses do not do regular backups.  All this is going to change in the next year or two. Given regulatory requirements, and the overall emphasis on security in our society as a whole, even the smallest businesses can no longer afford to ignore backup.”

Here are four key areas that all companies should think about when backing up and recovering data.

1. What Data Should be Backed Up?

The most critical information in the organization is where every company should start.  This is usually information such as accounting and finance data, email, manufacturing and production (ERP), clients and prospects (CRM), HR, project plans, or drawings, schematics and artwork.  Many companies neglect data and documents stored on desktop or laptop computers. 

Determine what data your company needs to backup by asking “If we had a fire today that wiped out everything, what information is critical to get the business back up and running, in the shortest amount of time?”

2. What Kind of Backup for Which Type of Data?

There are many options for data backup and retrieval for servers and desktop computers. Which type of backup system you select depends on the kind of data that you want to backup.

If information is static and rarely changes such as artwork or schematics, then archiving that information to CDs or DVDs may be the best backup solution. For information that changes frequently, such as email, spreadsheets or Word documents, tape backup is usually a better solution.

Tape backups allow for incremental as well as full backups.  This level of granularity allows for data retrieval from a specific date or range of dates.

Removable media such as Zip drives or online backup solutions are probably the best for laptop or desktop computers.  The key, however, is that the backup is automated and scheduled, otherwise it won’t happen.

3. Verify/Test and Restore the Backup

Testing or verifying your backup solution is perhaps the most overlooked step in the backup process.  This step is a necessary evil and many times simply not done because of the cost and time.  Here are some best practices that should be followed for any tape backup solution:

 

• Weekly – Verify by going into a restore view to see a list of all files that should be backed up; don’t simply review the backup logs.
• Quarterly – Test restoring from the most recent tape in your tape rotation, at least three types of files, such as the admin mail box, a Word file and an Excel spreadsheet.  Select different dates for each file you restore.
• Annually – Complete a full system restore to a blank hard drive or server to ensure the backup system is foolproof.

4. How do you Avoid Recovery Disasters?

If you must recover data after a disaster, here are some pitfalls to avoid:

 

• Storing tapes on-site
• Using old tapes that may have stretched and are not cleanly capturing data
• No access to a compatible tape drive, hard drive, and cables if tape drive and server are completely destroyed
• No hardware drivers, backup software, software keys or passwords readily available to begin the data restoration

Lastly, any backup plan for a business should be part of a larger disaster recovery or business continuity plan.

How All Covered Can Help

If this is an issue for your business, All Covered provides backup consulting and services for small businesses nationwide.

• Call us: For a personal consultation, call our friendly sales team at 866-446-1133
• Email us: Use our contact form and we’ll contact you within one business day.
• Our services: All Covered Backup IT Services
  Protect and Restore your Critical Desktop and Server Data
• Learn more: Business Continuity Planning
  Planning for Business Continuity and Securing your Data

Contact All Covered

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