Here’s how you can Prevent Data Loss Due to Natural Calamities

The heatwave in 2003 led to a mammoth loss of EUR 15 Billion, according to the European Environmental Agency.

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Earlier this summer, a searing heatwave burned through Europe. It was one of those scorching days, while traveling from Gottingen to Witzenhausen, we encountered a forest fire. Moments later, our technician informed that our external hard disk constituting of documents and all other important data have stopped working due to overheating and it\’s difficult to retrieve the complete data.

We lost our passwords, documents, balance sheets, credentials, codes, etc. At several companies, 50 percent of the helpdesk calls are for password resets, states Gartner. Using a similar password everywhere is an insecure practice and remembering all unique passwords is a task. There are several services wherein you have to change your passwords every month which makes it difficult for us users to remember variable passwords each time.

So how can Entrepreneurs prevent such loss of data due to natural calamities?

What are digital assets?

• Business account online banking credentials, stocks, transaction passwords, etc.
• Business social media accounts, messenger services like slack, official emails, file sharing services, etc.
• Sensitive employer data, customer data, client information, email list, stats on growth, profits, assets, etc.
• Website admin access. apps, content, design, domains, landing pages, online stores or any business entity with digital assets.
• Digital subscriptions to various services like invoices, customer support, analytics software, tools, payment gateway, etc.

Intellectual property like product designs, patents, working process, shares certificate, trademarks equity, etc. In a few cases, digital designs or structures can be copied.

How can companies avoid such a data loss nightmare?

Technology that can replace old-style backups:

According to FEMA, forty to 60 percent of small businesses never reopen after disasters and nine out of 10 small business will close within a year if they don\’t resume operations within five days of a natural disaster (reasons: data loss, communication failure, etc). It isn\’t the question about recovering your data, it’s about how fast you can. The following technology will just work for you.

During data loss, restoring all sorts of the data requires the latest backup. Incremental backups certainly delay recovery time and having too many such incremental backups increases time and chances of data loss. After resuming work, how quickly you can start working while recovering data matters rather than having a quick backup system. Hence recovery time should be enhanced rather than the backup.

CDP technology: Instead of backing up huge data files all at once, CDP technology works on a block by block algorithm where it backs up uninterruptedly 24 hours a day. The software monitors the data for any alterations applied and backs it up. The index takes responsibility for tracking and makes sure only the changes are backed up.

Cost effective substitute for remote backup:

Remote backup can be a little expensive for small organizations so a lot of them only have onsite backups. An onsite backup set up cost can start from 27 k € initially based on timeline and storage capacity of archive files. It is relatively cheap for small and medium businesses but just an onsite backup will make them vulnerable to overheating or hurricane, the data center gets affected along with your data inevitably resulting in data loss and costing the business it’s hard earned money. Nightmare, isn\’t it? By frequently collecting tapes and guarding them in a fireproof temperature monitored location a lot of costs can be saved.

List and store in a protected location:

According to McCafe, 47 percent of private data is uploaded on the cloud. Make a list of digital accounts you have access to along with their authorisations.

• Use fire and tamper-proof briefcases and vaults to store the credentials of your digital assets if it is stored on a paper
• Store your hard drives in a moisture-free, dry, temperature controlled environment with numerous backups at various locations