Your I/T equipment may be worth a lot of money, but what is the value of the data stored on your computers’ hard drive? How much would it cost your business if you suffered a loss of your company’s critical data? The cost of data loss is directly proportional to the value of the data and the length of time it is unavailable. There are five main cost areas that may need to be considered:
1. Down time: Can the users still be productive without their computer, and if not, how long are they going to be non-productive for?
2. Data recovery: Although in many cases, can be very successful, it can also be time consuming and expensive (a typical cost of £350 to £750 for a head crashed 750GB hard drive depending on how quickly you need it). In some cases the integrity of the data may be damaged beyond repair.
3. The labour charge for a technician to get the show back on the road.
4. The legal implications regarding loss or theft of sensitive data including identity theft.
5. The time it would take to recoup the loss, if at all!
The cost of not backing up can run into £100s or even £1000s and can easily outweigh the cost of your I/T equipment. In more extreme cases it has and does cost companies their business! A case study documented in the Graziadio Business Review (Los Angeles) reported that “A company that experiences a computer outage lasting for more than 10 days will never fully recover financially and that 50 percent of companies suffering such a predicament will be out of business within 5 years.”
It is important to realise that is in not a case of if a hard drive fails – but when! A failed hard drive isn’t the only form of PC disaster. Motherboard failure, human error, malware infection, fire, theft & flooding are other ways to cause temporary or permanent data loss.
ADS ITsupport provides backup/recovery solutions tailored to your business needs. A backup system would typically consist of:
• Files and folder backup/recovery.
• Roll back facility to allow previous versions of files to be recovered.
• Complete disk/partition imaging to enable the full operating system, applications and settings to be restored to a new hard drive or complete new machine ( in case of disaster), with minimal down time.
• Full and incremental backups at scheduled intervals.
• AES Encryption & password protection of backup data.
• Online (cloud) backups if extra security is required.
As laptops are an integral piece of equipment in many of today’s businesses, it can be just as important to include them in your backup plan. It is estimated that 10% of business laptops are lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed each year. The chance of losing data on a laptop is at least 5 times greater than that of a desktop PC.
If your business does not have a backup plan and you decide to be proactive with regards to your data, then it is well worth acting on!
