Ignore Viruses, Theft, and Natural Disasters

A recent survey revealed that 45% of SMB IT executives have already experienced data loss. And with an average cost of about $9,000 per incident. Also, of all the instances where data was lost, about 14 percent were critical and unrecoverable.

But the most interesting finding from this survey was the fact that the primary causes of data loss were hardware failure at 54%, followed by human error at 28 %. Software corruption came in third at 9%.

Together, these 3 causes account for 91% of all data loss incidents.

To grab attention and stir controversy, the media often focuses on the most dramatic data loss causes, such as computer viruses, theft, and natural disasters. These 3 areas are usually also the top areas of concern in the minds of IT executives.

This is very interesting, because computer viruses, theft, and natural disasters collectively made up just 7 percent of all data loss causes. In other words, the 3 most talked-about causes of data loss account for an insignificant fraction of all incidents.

Now, you might be thinking:

“Are you actually suggesting that we should stop thinking about natural disasters, theft and viruses when putting together our data protection plan?”

As an IT person, you have limited resources, limited energy and limited attention. Focusing on sensationalistic distractions can be a waste of time. It’s much more productive to focus on your biggest threats, and on maximizing the value that IT provides to the rest of the company.

In order to overcome hardware failure, human error and software corruption, certain fundamental principles must be covered under your backup process. If you’re focusing on the most important causes of data loss, other areas will often take care of themselves.

These fundamental areas of focus might include things such as:

• Maintaining redundant on-site and off-site backup copies
• Monitoring and testing your backup process to ensure consistent recovery
• Automating processes to prevent human error
• Encrypting data to prevent breaches
• Keeping your off-site copies encrypted, and in physically secure facilities
• Establishing a secondary recovery site in case of a major physical outage at the primary data center

In fact, if you cover all of the fundamental best practices in anticipation of the leading data loss causes, you will also end up protecting yourself from these sensationalistic outliers.

Focusing on best practices is a holistic way of thinking about data protection. Not only does it save time and effort, but it also protects you against every possible data loss scenario… including those you haven’t even anticipated.

The opposite is also true. If you only focus on the most extreme cases, you may lose sight of the big picture. This is when vulnerabilities may creep into the process.

But remember, the point of this video isn’t just to help you stay completely protected. We also want to discuss ways that you could get more peace of mind around your data protection.

This raises an interesting question:

What’s the most efficient way to craft a comprehensive data protection plan that covers all the bases, adapts to your changing needs, remains within budget, and gives you total peace of mind?

Let’s look at these one at a time.

• In order to cover all your bases, you need expertise and specialization. Backup and disaster recovery need to become a major part of your everyday work activities.
• In order to adapt to change, you need to constantly educate yourself about new products and industry trends. For most IT people, this means studying courses during after-hours personal time, and paying for certifications that might be obsolete in 5 years.
• In order to implement a comprehensive data protection plan, you need to make significant capital investments in hardware, software, services, and redundancy. Many of these implementation projects will fail due to unforeseen circumstances, and others will quickly become obsolete due to changes within your IT strategy. Spending money on these systems can also lock up capital that would be better-allocated to other more important IT projects.
• For total peace of mind, you need to know that your backup plan is working. This means performing frequent disaster recovery drills, and constantly re-evaluating and optimizing these processes as you accumulate experience.

So you have a choice. You can waste time, energy and money in preparing for a wide range of data loss emergencies that may never happen. Or, you can outsource this process to a full-service backup and disaster recovery specialist.

As a company that focuses exclusively on backup and disaster recovery, Storagepipe has the tools and resources to comprehensively protect every system – across your entire organization — from every possible IT disaster scenario.

Because Storagepipe has a dedicated team of full-time disaster recovery experts. These people have all the best backup and disaster recovery training, and perform major recoveries every day.

Storagepipe also invests heavily in the best state-of-the-art infrastructure and best-of-breed backup and disaster recovery solutions, and then makes these available to customers on a pay-as-you-go basis. And if your IT needs change in the future, Storagepipe can adapt its services to suit your requirements. By turning capital expenses into operational expenses, you free up budget for more strategic projects while also eliminating capital risk in the process.

So if you want to get more peace of mind for your data protection, stop focusing on semantics and low-probability problems. Pay attention to the big picture. Think about crafting a comprehensive data protection plan that covers all the bases, adapts to your changing needs, remains within budget.

Most of all, focus on the easiest and most efficient way to achieve this.

If you follow this advice, you’ll be well on your way to achieving total peace of mind for your data protection. Contact us today to learn more.