Every New Orleans business owner knows that having a disaster preparedness plan is crucial. Whether it’s a natural disaster such as a hurricane, a hardware failure, or even an attack from a hacker, any of these could permanently disable your business if you aren’t prepared. How robust is your plan?
Data Security and Having a Disaster Preparedness Plan
First of all, a data disaster is more common than you might think. Currently, 58% of small and mid-sized businesses are not prepared for data loss. Even worse, 60% of businesses that lose their data will shut down within six months. Something that could have been prevented could potentially wreck your business. It would be silly to have human error, or a simple mishap put your company out of business.
You may have security protocols in place and your employees are well-versed on avoiding things like malware. And those are good actions. However, you’re still not fully protected. Human error is a large culprit in data loss. It could be unintentionally deleting items or accidentally overwriting data, but these “oops” can hit hard. Human error can result in other kinds of hardware damage like liquid damage from spills or even accidental reformatting. All of these things are possible and have happened to many businesses. Sometimes recovery is possible from the software platform you were using. Maybe your computer has your back and caught these things. It’s still a time consuming and money wasting error to fix. And that is if you are lucky to recover some of what you lost. Having a disaster preparedness plan means even when mistakes happen, your business can bounce right back.
Viruses and malware can be a significant cause to software or hardware damage depending on what kind of bug found its way in. Usually, this can be avoided with proper employee training as well as an awesome firewall that will help filter malicious attacks. Yet another prey in the night is social engineering – the art of conning people. Hackers have been known to get into server rooms and other data-centric areas of the business. Employees may not even notice their mistake until it’s too late. I guess the “HVAC guy” turned out being a hacker in disguise. And with employees continuing to work remotely at least some of the time, it’s impossible to know how secure their devices are.
Other Causes of Technology Failures
Sometimes software corruption can come from unknown viruses lurking around your computer. However, most of the time it is due to improper usage. This could include not shutting down the computer properly or leaving unsaved documents open. Sometimes even a power outage can trigger corruption, and that’s certainly a big concern for us during hurricane season. Once the software processes are interrupted and damaged, it’s virtually impossible to recover data stored in the software.
Did you know that 140,000 hard drives crash every week? With that kind of number, it’s just a matter of time until it happens to you. That is not a comfortable position to be in if you know you don’t have a solid disaster preparedness plan. Unfortunately, hard drive corruption is usually due to mechanical issues. Things like age and dust build up can (and will) cause technology to fail. We’ve all used the old laptop we still have that’s been on its deathbed for months, freezing frequently, taking for-ever to load a webpage, and of course, acting as a heater for your lap or desk. All of these things are signs leading to a crash. You may not care if it’s an old hand-me-down laptop, but you will care when it’s your pricey equipment with all of your product data and client information stored on it.
Protect your business and keep it running smoothly and successfully. Disaster Preparedness plans are available for all kinds of businesses, of all sizes. Protect your important data and enjoy the peace of mind that comes along with it. You’ve worked too hard to get your business where it is. We’ve linked our Weathering the Storm: A Business Leader’s Guide to Disaster Preparedness here. This should get you started. If you’d like our expertise, contact us because we can help!
