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Why you should back up your data today

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No one wants to have a Plan B. Most people spend so much time and energy on the original plan that they don’t consider a backup. However, your business’ sensitive information is too important not to back up in advance. Most businesses have years’ worth of sensitive data, including business, employee, client, financial and tax information, that they can’t afford to have compromised.

The good news is that if you spend a bit of time safeguarding and archiving your company’s data, you’ll spend much less time scrambling for a plan and trying recover your information if the unthinkable does occur. The solution is to schedule regular backups for your company’s important data and documents.

Organizations that still store many of their important files on paper — without a digital archive — clearly face the most risk if natural disaster strikes. However, storm damage can still wipe out digital files, especially if they are stored in the same facility. Findings from FEMA and the United States Small Business Administration indicate that the vast majority of businesses that suffer from a natural disaster fail within the first year or two following the damage. A survey of more than 500 IT professionals by cloud-based backup company Carbonite found that 40 percent of respondents believed their small business would go under permanently if they lost all its files. Worse yet, 58 percent of IT professionals believed they couldn’t handle the loss of any of important data. 

While Mother Nature is unpredictable, cyberattacks can be just as difficult to guard against. About 43 percent of cyberattacks are targeted at small businesses, according to Small Business Trends. The networks that house your company’s information could be compromised through malware. Worse yet, your business could fall prey to ransomware malware, which locks users out of a network until they pay a ransom to hackers. Ransomware attack frequency is growing at about 350 percent annually, according to Cisco. Safeguard your data before an attack occurs.

Even if businesses are lucky enough to escape natural disaster damage and cyberattacks, data files can become corrupted through user or program error. Regularly backing up data ensures that data can easily be restored in the event of data corruption, much the same way as edit history on a document can restore the file.

How often should data be backed up? A proper backup solution program should archive your information multiple times a day. Luckily, Infomax’s iGuard solutions automatically backup your data every 15 minutes, ensuring that your business can recover from almost any emergency situation. Our automatic solution works for your IT professionals. It secures your data to guard against cyberattacks. Additionally, we help your company stay compliant with legal requirements, such as HIPAA, SOX and GLBA. If your data is not breached or lost, you don’t lose yours or clients’ valuable and sensitive information.

To learn more about our backup solutions, contact us at 1-800-727-4629. 

Spring cleaning for your networks

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Spring cleaning is often associated with cleaning out the sand, salt and other built-up winter soot. However, spring cleaning shouldn’t just be for your home. Most people spend 40 hours a week at work, and even the less physical aspects of an office could use some tender loving care. Consider cleaning up your networks. It’s essential to keeping them secure and running smoothly.

Your networks are the basis on which your business runs. If they aren’t secured, you can lose valuable data to cybercriminals. Our managed IT staff can help you through this process and monitor your security in the future.

Here are a few tips to get started.

Encrypt and secure your wireless network

If you set up your Wi-Fi network years ago, you may be using easily hackable, outdated encryption. The current standard for Wi-Fi protection is Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 — or WPA2. Second, make sure your wireless network has as random of a name as possible, avoiding dictionary words. Seasoned hackers have a list of the top 1000 most common network names with a list of passwords that could likely crack your wireless network. A unique name makes that network more difficult to find. Lastly, create a lengthy password with a mix of letters, symbols and numbers. You’ve likely already been warned about passwords time and again — to much frustration. There’s a reason for that. Get creative and create a password of more than 16 characters for the most protection. Remember, most Wi-Fi devices will store this password, so the aggravation of entering a long, complicated password should be minimized.

File away your old data

Don’t let clutter clog your network and slow it down. File away anything on your network you haven’t touched in the last few months. This is also a great time to organize files into one spot and back them up on a data recovery service. Emails should also be deleted or properly archived. Few things are more overwhelming than a cluttered inbox. While deleting unnecessary correspondence, organize other emails into labeled folders.

Determine space in your bandwidth

As you clean out your network, monitor the space in your bandwidth, which is the amount of data that can be transferred from one point to the next during a given time. As a business grows, it’s possible that its bandwidth may need to as well.

Talk with employees

No matter how secure your network and password are, daily use can still compromise it to cybercriminals. Teach employees about best practices with password creation and teach them how to recognize spam emails and hyperlinks. Additionally, limit access to your company’s critical data to as few people as possible.

Filter network traffic

Give your employees a leg up by filtering the traffic that enters your network. Use pop-up blockers and email filtering services to monitor any suspicious content that could be coming into your network.

Get rid of old devices

Old, unused devices can not only slow down your network, but they can also be a vulnerable access point for cyberthreats. Unplug and properly store or dispose of those unused fax machines, printers, copiers, computers and phones.

Save Time, Space, and Money with Digital Archiving

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There’s no doubt that digital archiving saves you time, space, and money. It is effectively a death sentence for maintaining paper stacks and managing files in a physical location. With digital archiving, you don’t have to store thousands of documents in boxes in storage or sift through 10 years of files to find a specific piece of paper.

Digital archiving allows you to attain greater convenience for keeping client records and tracking business information safely. Technology has changed the game for businesses. No longer must you rely on outdated, labor-intensive business practices that take up time. Instead, companies can easily manage their records over the Internet through the cloud. This helps eliminate the costs and hassles of archiving records physically, while increasing ease of accessibility.

If your business is struggling to maintain its records, then you should consider digital archiving.  Not only will it help improve efficiency and accuracy, but you will gain the following benefits:

• Greater document security
• Cloud-based storage negates the need for copies
• Easily accessible data from any place at any time
• Enhanced compliance

With digital archiving, the days of drowning in piles of paperwork are over. This modern equivalent of recordkeeping provides a scalable, affordable, sustainable solution to your filing needs.

Implementing digital archiving

A lot of businesses are keen on the idea of digital archiving, but most of them don’t really know how to go about it. If your goal is to reduce the amount of paper your office uses, consider the following beginning steps to digital archiving:

• Acquire a digital storage option that offers high server capacity
• Consider scanning options that will allow you to properly archive every document digitally
• Adopt a document management system that will do all of the hard-work for you
• Create electronic signatures for employees to access the documents virtually

For help following the above mentioned steps to adopt digital archiving for your business, contact Infomax today.

Maintain Business Continuity with Digital Archiving

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Whether it’s an angry hurricane or a destructive fire, disasters can and will happen. Sadly, most businesses that suffer through a disaster will fail within two years. Digital archiving is one effective tool you can use to help protect your organization’s long-term health against the threat of a disaster.

What are digital archives?
Digital archives are electronic versions of your company’s historical assets. Archive content is fixed and not needed for current operations; its main purpose is long-term storage and retrieval. Archives can provide an automated mechanism for regulation-mandated records retention, and typically have extensive metadata attached to allow for search and retrieval of even the oldest records.

How are archives different from backup?
Contents in your digital archives don’t change to reflect your daily operations. Archived data is not in current use and will be kept essentially as-is over the long term. Backup for disaster recovery, however, generally involves up-to-date copies of operational information that can be restored quickly. In fact, you’ll even want to back up your archives to protect yourself in the event something should happen to the original files (a safety net not available with paper-based archives). Remember this rule for backing up: three copies, on two types of media, in one additional location.

Why are archives needed?
Digital archives go beyond operational recovery (disaster response) and organizational recovery (business continuity). Your company doesn’t want to lose regulatory records or long-term, institutional history. Corporate governance, litigation, and regulatory compliance all demand data be archived past three, seven, or even ten or more years. Digital archives also provide security and traceability, with audit trails recording who accessed what, when, and what they did.

What else should I consider?
Since digital archives are for the long term, don’t forget to address issues such as life expectancy (of the software required to read data and the storage technologies themselves), increasing capacity needs over time, and the eventual disposal of the data.

A disaster could strike at any time. If you want your business to be one that bounces back after the worst happens, it’s time to get started with digital archiving. Contact Infomax today to learn more.

Archiving Solutions for Optimal Protection

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If your organization has large volumes of data—and let’s face it, most businesses do—you’re probably in need of digital archiving solutions. Digital Archiving provides a secure method for storing and accessing your electronic content, so you can easily find what you need, saving you time and resources.

Digital archiving provides the ultimate in asset preservation, so you never have to worry about your files disappearing or being unavailable in the event of a crash. Here are some of the ways digital archiving protects your data.

Be prepared for an audit. Audits are an unfortunate reality in today’s business world. By implementing digital archiving solutions, you can ensure that you have everything you need in the event of an audit. Although audits are never enjoyable, being prepared for them makes all the difference. Digital archiving means your data is retrievable in an instant, should your business find itself under the microscope.

Reduce server crashes. Data left uncontrolled can flood your networks and cause huge headaches. Those years-old files are not helping anyone. In fact, obsolete files can clog your servers and cause crashes. By removing these files across your servers and archiving them instead, you can save around 60-70% of your server space.

Reduce your backup window. No one likes to watch a pot of water boil. Similarly, waiting around for your data to be backed up can feel like a lifetime. Instead, bundle your data and don’t backup duplicate files, so your backups take less time.

Get compliant. The devil is in the details, and your business must remain compliant. Everyone wants to think their data is compliant, but without proper storage and security measures, many businesses simply drop the ball. But many industry and governmental policies dictate just how long documents should be saved. Digital archiving will help ensure your documents are securely stored for the right amount of time, so you can avoid financial or legal penalties.

To learn more about digital archiving and how it can free up space and resources, contact Infomax today.