Top Sources of Business Data Loss - No One Is Safe

Not too long ago we were contacted by the Macomb County Clerks office due to a fire that shut down the building for months, to help them get their operations up and running again as quickly as possible. The wiring, which connected the county network to the data was burned and the building sustained damaged. Since the fire, users had to do their best to carry on with paper documents, a frantic return to carbon copies and limited phone service.

When your entire staff works out of a single office and all of your data is stored on PCs, laptops, or a server housed in that office how do you carry on after a disaster? Are you able to return to paper documents? Will you be able to provide that same level of service and keep your clients and customers?

Data Loss a Foregone Conclusion

Disasters are always looming, but believe it or not they are not the top cause of data loss. Earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, power outages, the chances may be better in some areas than others, but at most will happen 1-2x per year. How many times do you drop your phone? Maybe twice per day. Delete the wrong file? Maybe a few times a week. Run out of battery? Maybe once a month.

Learn More About Data Backup

Schedule a 1:1 consultation with Newmind Group and learn how we can help with:

• Reduced Downtime & Data Loss During a Disaster
• Data protection for multiple platforms and devices
• Application Aware backups

Schedule

Sources of Data Loss

Believe it or not, human error is the number one cause to data loss, responsible for 75% percent of all data loss occurrences. Just recently, the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada announced the loss of financial information for 52,000 brokerage firm clients, due to the loss of a mobile device.

Rounding out the top 3 common causes of data loss, after user error, include:

violations of policy (can still be considered user error)
Internet-based threats, attacks and hacks

Here’s another eye opening stat, 90% of businesses lose sensitive data 3+ times each year, according to study by ITPolicyCompliance.com (ITPC). That includes customer data, financial data, corporate data, employee data and even IT security data. If you’re lucky to be in the 10% that only experience 2 losses a year you have multiple IT backup solutions, redundancies, and security protocols racking up enormous costs.

What to Plan For

What we’ve learned from experience and the news, is not to worry about a natural disaster, but to plan for human error. Just like having an effective mobile policy is good and may prevent a future loss of data via mobile devices, implementing a backup and disaster recovery strategy is even better, because you ensure the access to and integrity of your business critical data, keeping operations up-and-running.

Daniel Proczko has been working with organizations and individuals to build & grow the entrepreneur community of Kalamazoo, MI. From organizing TEDx events, hack-a-thons, and documentary screenings to engaging with business leaders, Dan strives to inspire individuals with new ideas and better thinking.

Having always been interested in tech and understanding the value of innovation through IT, communicating the importance of strategic IT thinking is one of Dan's primary goals within Newmind Group.

Power Outages & Brownouts Secretly Hurting the Bottom Line

Consumer's Energy Outage Map of
Kalamazoo for July 23rd, 2013

Consumer's Energy Outage Map of
Downtown Kalamazoo for May 29th, 2013

A power outage today, July 23rd, has left 4500+ without power!(Another on the east side of downtown Kalamazoo, on May 30th resulted in almost 1000 Consumers Energy customers out of power for the majority of the afternoon.) The outage left many Kalamazoo businesses unable to process transactions.

Of course, we're writing about this outage because it affected out direct surroundings, but that's what power outages do. And they do not ask if it is convenient to occur, nor are they predictable, yet they cost businesses millions every year.

Here are the hard facts. The US Department of Labor estimates that power outages cost $80 billion per year and that 73%, or $57 billion, of those losses come from the business sector and 25%, or $20 billion, come from the industrial sector. A typical convenience store/gas station, for example, can lose about $445 per hour in revenue.

But lost revenue alone does not tell the whole story.

Power Outage Effects

Power outages not only affect sales, they can also affect the technology systems, data and hardware businesses use in their day-to-day operations. They cause electrical surges damaging or even destroying hardware, both servers and workstations. The costs of acquiring new hardware and hiring qualified personnel to install and configure that hardware can easily run into the thousands of dollars for small businesses and tens-of-thousands for medium- to large-businesses.

New hardware, servers, computers and other devices, can be purchased, but recovering data from the damaged devices can take several weeks and in worse case scenarios may not even be possible. Any data not properly backed up can be lost for good costing much more than a few thousand dollars in hardware.

Hidden cost of Power Outages

I took some time to talk with fellow Newminder Matt Vollmar, whose had years of experience delivering managed IT services and he said, “Business data is the real lifeblood, including, customer/client information, financial records, HR & employee information, etc. Losing business data can put a business in a position where it cannot continue to operate.  What’s more, a data loss can significantly damage the reputation of a business.”

Exactly how costly is a power outage? I had to do some digging, so get ready for more facts.

Learn More About Data Backup

Schedule a 1:1 consultation with Newmind Group and learn how we can help with:

• Reduced Downtime & Data Loss During a Disaster
• Data protection for multiple platforms and devices
• Application Aware backups

Schedule

According to the United Kingdom’s Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) and Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), 70% of businesses that experience a major data loss will go out of business. A Pepperdine University study found that each data loss instance can cost about $4,000 for small- to medium-sized businesses(SMB). Larger businesses may be able to weather these costs, but as power outages are common occurrences, if you're a small- to -medium-sized business you may find yourself in deep water.

How to combat Power Outages

We recommend implementing the following disaster recovery & business continuity solutions to help combat data loss from power outages, hardware failure, and natural disasters:

• Regular data backups
  
  Its important to backup your data frequently. A lot can happen in a month and if you’re only backing up monthly you may lose so much data you will not be able to stay in business.
• Redundant Backup
  
  Hardware is not infallible and will fail eventually. Maintaining multiple backups will ensure that you will have a source to restore servers and business-critical data.
• Storing Backups off-site
  
  Storing a backup 20 miles or farther from your day-to-day operations can help to protect it from being damaged by the power outage.

Power outages are common occurrences and can have a damaging effect on a business. Implementing a disaster recovery and business continuity plan now can save your business thousands of dollars and mean the difference between staying in business or closing your doors for good.

Daniel Proczko has been working with organizations and individuals to build & grow the entrepreneur community of Kalamazoo, MI. From organizing TEDx events, hack-a-thons, and documentary screenings to engaging with business leaders, Dan strives to inspire individuals with new ideas and better thinking.

Having always been interested in tech and understanding the value of innovation through IT, communicating the importance of strategic IT thinking is one of Dan's primary goals within Newmind Group.