Technology Solution
Provider Offers Six Tips to Prevent Data Loss
Farmington Hills, MI, May 10,
2011 – When you’re thinking about business continuity and
disaster recovery (BC/DR), you know you can’t protect yourself from
every disaster - some circumstances are simply unimaginable.
But you can mitigate potential damage by taking a few up-front
steps to ensure your data remains safe and secure. Logicalis
(http://www.us.logicalis.com/),
an international provider of integrated information and
communications technology (ICT) solutions and services, has
developed a checklist of six tips to help prevent data loss.
“The most important thing you can do to
mitigate damage in any situation is to know what the true business
impact of data loss will be to your organization,” advises Joe
Long, director of business continuity and storage solutions for
Logicalis. “And no matter how experienced your IT department
is, IT alone cannot define that. Those answers have to come
from the individual business units within your company. That
means, to develop a foolproof plan, you’ve got to get IT and the
business units talking to each other.”
Six Tips to Prevent Data
Loss
1.
Understand your data’s importance: Start
with a clear understanding of what your company’s data means to
your business and whether it can be easily duplicated or not.
Imagine a retailer that loses orders due to a system failure.
Even if that data can be re-entered from a hard copy, how many
man-hours will that take and what is the dollar figure for that
recovery process? What if this is an online retailer and the
orders were all placed electronically? Without the right BC/DR plan
in place, those orders would be lost.
2.
Define your data’s attributes: What is the
Recovery Time Objective (RTO); how fast do you have to get your
data back? What is the Recovery Point Objective (RPO); how
old can restored data be for your company to function properly? If
the data is gone forever, will there be a financial loss or
regulatory repercussions? Consider the immediate
implications: A stock trader who cannot access data for an hour
could lose millions of dollars. A retailer that loses online
orders must have them restored to an exact point in time.
HIPAA-regulated organizations that lose patient data could face
industry sanctions. Knowing what you’re up against will help
you create a plan that works.
3.
Identify the risk factors: It’s impossible to
imagine every scenario in which data can be lost, but you can
identify the obvious possibilities. Are tornadoes or
earthquakes commonplace in your area? Are there water pipes in the
ceiling above your data center? Is it conceivable that a car from a
nearby street or freeway could crash through your data center (it
happened to one of our clients)? What about internal threats –
disgruntled employees? Who has access to your data and what damage
could they do? Every scenario imaginable should be explored
and resolved.
4. Never take
anything for granted: Replicated data is safe, right? Not
necessarily. Imagine a hacker that deletes your data in one
center. The deletion is then replicated. Now that data
is permanently lost. Your data is only as safe as the BC/DR
plan you or your data storage provider has in place. Better
to ask questions today than to be disappointed – or out of business
– tomorrow.
5.
Test your recovery plan: You won’t know if your
BC/DR plan works or not unless you test it. And don’t just
test it once; as your business changes and grows, so does your data
use, consumption and storage. Test often to be sure your plan
works.
6. Get an unbiased
opinion: It’s a good idea to get a second opinion,
particularly if you are relying solely on in-house people for your
BC/DR plan. Experienced outsiders are unbiased and they bring
a fresh eye to your solution, helping you identify holes in your
plan before they become problematic. The key is to choose an
experienced outsider – someone who’s “been there, done that” and
seen a host of unusual and unimaginable circumstances so they can
help you think about the unthinkable.
About Logicalis
Logicalis is an international provider of
integrated information and communications technology (ICT)
solutions and services founded on a superior breadth of knowledge
and expertise in communications & collaboration; data center;
and professional and managed services.
Logicalis Group employs over 1,900 people
worldwide, including highly trained service specialists who design,
specify, deploy and manage complex ICT infrastructures to meet the
needs of over 5,000 corporate and public sector customers. To
achieve this, Logicalis maintains strong partnerships with
technology leaders such as Cisco, HP, IBM and Microsoft.
The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of
$1 billion, from operations in the UK, US, Germany, South America
and Asia Pacific, and is fast establishing itself as one of the
leading IT and Communications solution integrators, specializing in
the areas of advanced technologies and services.
The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec
Limited, listed on the Johannesburg and London AIM Stock Exchanges,
with revenues in excess of $4 billion.
For more information, visit http://www.us.logicalis.com/.