Patriot Tech Services Inc. Blog

Business technology is known to be remarkably finicky, particularly if you do not have the requisite knowledge to manage and maintain it. After all, there is a reason why you hire an IT department or a managed service provider to handle this role. What happens if your technology fails, though? Do you have a plan in place? What does a plan like this even look like, anyway? Let’s dig into the details.

No one can tell when a disaster is going to hit your business or what form that disaster is going to take. The cause could be a storm, human error, or some freak occurrence that nobody could have seen coming. In order to get back up and running after one of these incidents a company needs to have a strong business continuity strategy. An essential part of this strategy is knowing how to recover data depending on the way it’s lost. Getting data back and working for your company is the only way to stave off ruin, so let’s look at data recovery strategies that can literally save your business.

Every business needs a continuity plan (BCP) so that if their business is forced to deal with problems that arise for any reason, that they have a working plan to get the business back up and operating as intended quickly. It’s one thing to have it all written down on paper, outlining how things are supposed to go, and quite another thing to have a working strategy when faced with operational interruptions. Today, we’ll go through some of the basics of business continuity to help you understand all that goes into a successful plan. 

Data has effectively become another currency - and just like any other currency, some is much more valuable than others. This is especially the case where your business’ data is concerned, and why it is so crucial that you keep it safe.

Data backup tends to carry with it the association that your business could end at any moment, and while this is an important reason to implement data backup, there are countless others to consider as well. You might find that they are just as important to your organization as saving it from a devastating data loss disaster.

It’s every business owner’s worst nightmare: one mistake, and all of their data is wiped out. This very situation happened recently to a hosting provider, and his story serves as a cautionary tale in regard to data storage best practices.

Hosting provider Marco Marsala was brought under fire after he posted on a server forum seeking advice for dealing with a catastrophic error he made while trying to erase a few files. Stating that he had utilized the “rm -rf” command with undefined variables, he had inadvertently destroyed all data on the computer. What’s worse, his backups were mounted to the computers and were wiped as well.

This is actually a similar blunder that Pixar experienced, almost deleting Toy Story 2 prior to its release.

As a result, everything Marsala had for his company was destroyed (including the websites he had created and hosted for his 1,535 customers) with no backups surviving to restore from.

Needless to say, the responses from other users on the forum were decidedly negative - a few dismissed the possibility of his company surviving the error, and others questioned his abilities as a programmer. One poster recommended Marsala seek legal counsel rather than technical advice, as he predicted that Marsala was “going out of business.”

There was a consensus on the feed that the best chance for any data recovery was to recruit the help of a data recovery firm. Fortunately for Marsala, such a data recovery company was able to recover his files and his biggest hit was financial--both from the recovery company’s fees and from the reduced income due to the loss of business he suffered.

By neglecting to follow best practices in regard to backups, Marsala essentially invited this disaster to strike. Following basic best practices would have mitigated much, if not all, of Marsala’s problem. What happened to his data is exactly the reason that all data backups should be kept offline, isolated from the original file on a separate system.

Without such measures in place your data is subject to not only human error, as was the case here, but also other dangers. Fire, electrical surges, accidental equipment damage, theft, all of these events have the potential to jeopardize data that’s critical to your business.

Are your data backups as secure as they should be? Do you even have a backup and disaster recovery solution put into place? Be certain by calling Patriot Tech Services Inc. at (877) 874-4629. Our experts can advise you on what your business needs to survive the worst disasters, and assure that you and your clients’ information are prepared for anything.

It should come as no surprise that the practice of business continuity planning is one that every business needs to undergo. This planning serves as essentially your only insurance against some form of data disaster or another. Consider your own business for a moment--could it survive a fire, a critical failure in part of your infrastructure, or theft? With a business continuity plan, there’s a chance it just might.

If you don’t consider the worst-case scenario when preparing your business’ disaster recovery strategy, you’ll inevitably suffer from it when it does happen. Taking into account all of these nuances is one of the main ways your organization can prepare for such an occasion. All of these instances need to be considered when putting together your organization’s business continuity plan. We’ll discuss some of the major parts of it, and why they are crucial.

The continuity of your business should be a major priority, especially considering how the livelihood of yourself and your employees is on the line. Believe it or not, there are some organizations out there that don’t give a second thought to the preservation of their data and critical assets. Therefore, it’s clear that you need to pay proper attention to how your organization handles problems like natural disasters, data loss, hacking attacks, and other hazardous incidents.

September 30th is Disaster Preparedness Day. This gives us a great reason to go over some of the most common disasters that can potentially affect your businesses. There are dozens of potential disasters to choose from, but since we’re an IT company, we’re going to focus on the four top disasters that can mess with your company’s IT infrastructure.