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When it comes to backup's you are not paranoid if you properly store files offline, you are incredibly, unbelieveably stupid and dangerously reckless if you don't! I haven't got the figures to hand but something like 80 percent of businesses that suffer setbacks and lose their accounts / business details go bankrupt within 18 months, usually far less.
"But I only play games" And it took you how long to get to level 37? Game over man. Start again...
Me, I just don't get it, as the expression goes. I learnt the hard way years ago when I lost months of personal documents to a new virus. Luckily I was wary even then and just went back and back until I found a secure backup. I've known businesses lose tens, even hundreds of thousands of pounds when there account system was corrupted and they hadn't implimented a proper data retrieval system. One idiot managed to do it twice, despite expert advice!
Suppose you have 100 or even a 1,000 customers, a third of whom religiously pay at the last possible minute and another third who are corporates / local authorities who not only leave it to 120+ days on a 30 day invoice but absolutely will not pay unless the invoice is bang on.
Disaster strikes, but that's OK, you are insured and can rent temporary offices to continue trading. You just need £50,000 to pay this months wages. The bank, ever reliable, has instantly pulled your overdraft at the first sign of trouble. That's OK you are sure have £100,000 in outstanding invoices. But can you remember who from? For? Exactly how much?
If you tell your customers, besides having egg on your face which is now dripping onto your shirt, you run into a bigger problem. From a legal standpoint, if you go bankrupt, the courts are only interested in your assets. Even if you could prove you were owed a vast sum of money, bad debts are not assets and will not be chased. And you reckon frugil clients and cash strapped local authorities won't see this as a windfall...
Food for thought
I'm alright Jack, I (chose from the following) :
Have antivirus and firewall(s)
Have a RAID system
Have a CD-Writer / Tapestreamer / Other
Back up every month / week / day...
Back up regular - and use new media every time
Have a fireproof safe to store them in
Store a copy at a separate location
Store copies at multiple locations
*Shrugs* The only data I really have to worry about is a few spreadsheets, pictures of the kids and this website but I use most the above because I know for a fact if I lost all the files for Ackadia I'd never be able to recreate them. There's nothing life staggering if Ackadia vanishes, can you say the same if you lose your client database, your payroll, your accounts system?
You are morally, if not legally responsible for your staff. (Offers visions of Bob from the maintenance department comforting his wife and children as his home is repossessed after losing his job because YOU never protected your biggest asset).
Going back to the checklist...
Viruses and firewalls are a must. I won't even lower myself to explain why!
A RAID. Always good. If one of the hard drives fails the data is on the other disk(s). Oh yes, I'm sure the RAID array helped BNFL a few years ago when a thief, disguised as a technician, bold as you like walked into their nuclear research facility and strolled out with one of their (many) servers!
Oh come on, a CD writer is forty odd quid, and blank CD's are buttons. 20p and 3 minutes to back up essential files vs days, weeks, months, years even trying to recreate the data, if it's even possible. Never mind the cost in man hours to re-enter. Naturally this will scale up with the size of the organisation.
Fireproof safes. Well done that man, or woman.
Unless it's the same dizzy begger that I found had spend a fortune on a Chubb safe that towered over six foot, but had been securing the same set of tapes used to religiously back up the accounts: because "replacement tapes cost £18 each and these three Iomega have worked for years."
"!"
The same three tapes years on year out. Daily and year end Sage accounts stretching back in time trusted to an aging tape streamer. Even assuming the tape never snapped any faults would quickly be copied onto all three tapes and the restore simply wouldn't be worth the effort as you've long since overwritten useful data with garbage.
And you can stop smirking. Fires can get sometimes intense enough to trash files even in data safes, so having multiple backups in the same building is just false security. You think for a second large banks don't have up to the minute (almost literally for a few banks) duplicated data in separate sites within the same country and say mirrored in the States?
Paranoid, me? Too blooming right! But my files are safe - are yours?
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