Data Loss and your business (Part 1 of 2)

Running your business without a backup is a like driving without a seatbelt. There’s a chance that nothing will happen… but the odds are stacked against you, and if something does happen you had better hope you aren’t on the interstate. Now comes the horrible crash statistics for those risk takers:

• Companies that experience major outage for more than 10 days will never recover, and 50% of those will be out of business within 5 years.
• 70% of small business that experience data loss will close within a year.
• Even though 85% of computer users think they need to have their data backed up only 25% of them actually do.

That’s a pretty sad statistic considering the numbers above. It’s an easy problem to solve and one I can’t say enough… backup and verify. Backups are needed for two different categories of disaster. Natural disaster (hurricanes, lightning, fire, etc…) is the first and the one that we have no control over, yet pretty easy to solve. Human error or mechanical failures (accidental deletion, server crash, hard drive failure, etc…) are most common and the one we have complete control over.

To solve these issues you have 3 choices that are affordable for small business owners. As cool as it would be to have a tape library, SAN (not a NAS), or nested RAID array these usually aren’t very cost effective…but they are cool. Any solutions should at least eliminate the mechanical failure right off the bat. This is why I won’t recommend backing up to another hard drive as a viable solution. Hard drives fail, and will always fail, it’s just a matter of time till they do.

1) Tape Backup
2) Online Backup
3) Flash Drive Backup

Tape backup is arguably the most reliable (mostly because of human error), and should be used for large amounts of data that online solutions aren’t made for…yet. When I say large amounts of data I mean 100GB of data or more with a high rate of change. Flash drives don’t work well because drives this large are too expensive, and the online solutions need a special appliance to only backup the delta’s (changes). That much data with a high rate of change will require too much bandwidth and time to backup or restore.

Tapes are slow to backup, slow to restore, and are prone to human error (I forgot to switch the tape). They do offer one thing that a lot of people like, and that’s security. They like the idea of the data being on their server then being backed up to a tape that they take home, or anywhere out of the office. This physical thing gives them a comfort level that if they have to get out of dodge tomorrow all there life’s work is safe with them.

The initial cost for the drive, at least a week’s worth of tapes (preferably - two weeks + two month end + year end), and software can average around $2,500 per server. It also requires a yearly investment in new tapes, and at around $100 per tape this can be expensive. To understand why you need to replace tapes yearly think about your old cassette recorder (I won’t warrant that with a link). If you recorded music on the same tape every week for a full year you wouldn’t have the same quality music as you did at the beginning. The same goes for backup tapes, they are recording each time you use them and over time the quality of the data on the tapes degrade which results in corrupt unusable data. This can be easily mitigated by doing monthly test restores of your data to ensure integrity.

A lot of people think tapes are archaic, and will soon go the way of cassettes. While this may be true they are a great backup solution for large amounts of data, and will always be a great way to archive older data.

Advance Planning Can Prepare You for Anything

Please remain calm…
Advance Planning Can Prepare You for Anything (well, almost anything)

By Phyllis K. Ershowsky, APR, MBA, Principal
PKE Marketing & PR Solutions, LLC
Adjunct Professor in Public Relations, Florida Gulf Coast University

Your common sense tells you that your business may be faced with a crisis situation at some point, but human nature often prevents you from doing anything about it. The fact is, even though dreadful catastrophe doesn’t happen every day, events that can be defined as crises happen all the time. You should be prepared because yes, it can happen to you. You’ve worked hard to build your business reputation and you will want to do everything you can to protect it.

Just within the last few months I have encountered several local firms that have experienced unexpected situations that attracted immediate media attention: one suffered a high-profile lawsuit from a disgruntled employee; another had an unfortunate on-the-job accident; and a third has been questioned about the safety of components they use in the manufacturing process.  When the media calls, “No Comment,” is not an acceptable answer – so what should you do to protect your business?

In “Strategic Planning and Public Relations,” author Ronald D. Smith provides six Strategic Principles for Crisis Management.  When I create a crisis management plan for my clients, I always incorporate these guidelines:

Principle of Exist as well as with colleagues.  Keep everyone informed – these are the people that support you and will help you in your rebuilding activities following the crisis.

Principle of Media-as-Ally
Crises invite scrutiny because they have potential impact on a large number of people. So treat the news media as allies that will help you communicate with key publics. A good pre-existing program of media relations can make this type of communication go more smoothly.

Principle of Reputational Priorities
Following the safety of you and your employees, your top priority is your reputation.  This will help you focus on doing what’s best for your customers, employees and other key publics.

Principle of Quick Response
Be accessible to your publics as quickly as possible. A standard guideline is the one-hour rule – within an hour of learning about a crisis, the organization should be prepared to have its first message available to its publics, particularly the media.

Principle of Full Disclosure
Silence is not acceptable. Without admitting fault or speculating about facts still unknown, the organization should present as much information as possible about the particular event.

Principle of One Voice
A single, trained spokesperson should represent the organization. If this is not possible, the two or three people appointed should be aware of what the others are saying and all should work together from the same facts.

This is the basic framework for the beginnings of a full crisis management plan – we don’t want to expect the worst, but good preparation will enable all of us to move forward in a positive, optimistic manner.  And while we cannot prepare for everything, in most cases a good plan will enable you to manage a crisis calmly, quickly and efficiently