As technology advances at lightning speed, the amount of data that businesses create and store is growing exponentially. Companies are not always on top of how and where that data is being stored, and information can get lost in the confusion.
Maybe you’re just throwing everything on your server, or having your employees use external hard drives or backup as needed. If you’re relying on physical servers or devices to store your data, your information isn’t as protected as it should be. Computers crash, which could lead to disaster if that’s the only place your data exist. Data is critical for a business to survive, so what are you doing to protect that vital asset?
“These days, data is everything,” says Alina Montano, senior director of product management for Time Warner Cable Business Class. “Regardless of size, every company has important information that must be protected. Data protection is critical for the success and growth of any business.”
Smart Business spoke with Montano about data protection and how a cloud-based storage service can protect your company’s data in any situation.
How can a company’s data be compromised or lost?
Statistics show that approximately 12,000 laptops are lost in U.S. airports every week, and two-thirds of those are never returned to their owners.
In addition, 20 to 30 percent of PCs suffer a major crash every year. Portable data storage devices such as USB sticks often get lost and, quite frankly, storing all your data on your computer is no longer an option.
The question isn’t how data can be compromised; it’s what you’re doing to prevent data from being compromised because, in all honesty, it’s a given that eventually every computer, hard drive and server will be compromised in one way or another.
What measures can companies take to protect their data?
All back-up measures are centered on replicating your company’s data and storing it in a remote location. That location can be as simple as a USB stick or a physical server room at a remote location. But, again, USB devices can get lost, and servers and computers can crash.
To truly protect your data, you need to implement a cloud-based storage service. A cloud-based service allows businesses to automatically back up computer files to a secure and remote data center as a protection against data loss; the service is centrally managed and configured with a Web-based administrative console.
