backups

One Last Time… How Important Are Small Business Backups?

December 30, 2013

tlfheadshot_web — Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Last month, I shared with you my personal experience with local search and how it impacted the surgery my dog Daisy needed. This month, I’m going to share with you my personal experience with the importance of offsite backups.

Earlier this month, we had a pretty bad fire at the house. Everyone got out ok, including Daisy and Bailey, but the damage is incredible. We’re living in a condo for the next six to nine months while the house is repaired.

The fire started in the center of the house, where all of my networking equipment is located, including my Fortinet router and my Western Digital network attached storage (NAS) device.

I use the NAS primarily to store old tax information, backups of my Quickbooks files, backups of my extremely important pictures from Michigan Football games, and other personal information.

The Fortinet, NAS and everything else that was in that room are completely destroyed – all that remains is a charred mess of plastic connected together by the thin copper wire that used to be Ethernet cable.

As is always the case, the fire was completely unexpected. And, it happened so fast that we had just enough time to get ourselves and the dogs out. There was no time to save network equipment, much less anything else.

And that’s the important thing to take from this. No matter how convinced we are that “it could never happen to me,” it’s our responsibility as business owners to be prepared for any eventuality.

Fortunately, all of my personal data is protected by the same industrial strength backup solution we use for our business clients – our Experts Total Backup service.

All of my files and documents were backed up to the Tech Experts cloud servers, and nothing was lost. Our Experts Total Backup service works quietly in the background, compressing and encrypting your files before sending a copy of them to the backup server in the cloud.

A few days after the fire, once things settled down, it took just a few hours to copy everything down from the cloud and onto a new NAS unit.

So, what’s the take away from all of this? Expect and prepare for the unexpected. If I didn’t have an offsite backup for my data, I would have lost a ton of information, but none of it mission critical (except, perhaps, my U of M football pictures).

A similar disaster at a small business would be catastrophic in the best instance, and deadly if the company didn’t have offsite backups.

And as I’ve written many times before, your business’s backup is only as good as the last time you tested it.

Whether your backup is onsite using tape or other removable media, or offsite using a service like Experts Total Backup, you must routinely test and verify your backups.

Thanks!
Everyone around me has pitched in to help, but a few folks have gone above and beyond.

Leski Insurance Agency and MEEMIC Insurance Company (734-242-6759) have been incredible.

The Frenchtown Fire Department was on-scene in minutes.

Annette Perna-Taormina from Gerweck Real Estate took literally one day to find us a temporary place to live. Call her for your real estate needs at (734) 243-4200.

Finally, friends Michele Paled, Marlene Messina, Tammi VanAken, Candie Mulligan, Kim Harper, and my mother Carol have been incredibly helpful and supportive.

It’s A Scary Time For Your Company’s Systems And Data

October 18, 2013

We sent out an email a few days ago alerting folks to a new and particularly nasty virus that’s making the rounds. It’s called CryptoLocker and, if your systems get infected with this particular kind of “ransomware,” it is, frankly, a nightmare.

CryptoLocker scans your system and looks for all of your file storage locations – your local C: drive, any USB thumb or external drives, and even network shares (if you save files on your S: drive, for example).

It then encrypts every file it finds using a sophisticated, spy-level type of encryption. Your files – Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. – all become unusable.

Pay up, or else
You’ll then get a pop up on your system, letting you know that your personal files are encrypted, and if you want the key to unlock them, you’ll need to pay the cyber crooks to get it. The ransom (thus, the term “ransomware”) is anywhere from $300 on up. And, there’s a deadline – 72 to 100 hours – after which, the key to your files is destroyed, and you’re simply out of luck.

Prevention
This nasty virus is spread by opening email attachments or through other “social engineering” means.

Spam/virus filtering are generally aware of the threat and actively block emails that contain elements of this and other malware.

We suggest notifying your employees immediately of this new virus and making sure everyone is following some basic preventive measures:

Do not click on attachments in emails from someone you don’t know or companies from which you haven’t expressed interest in receiving information.
Do not click on links, advertisements or pictures that pop up on your screen when visiting other websites.
Do not engage in social media games or click on links that appear on social media platforms.

The virus emails come in the form of a shipping notice from UPS or FedEx. It is obviously fake, but the scammers make it look very real.

Why aren’t you backing up your data?
I’ve been in the IT business for nearly 27 years and I can say I’ve pretty much seen it all. But I’m still astounded when we run across a business owner who isn’t backing up their data.

Studies show that only six out of every 10 people back up their computer files. The 40% that don’t said that it was because they didn’t think they needed to.

According to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 70% of small businesses that suffer a significant data loss go out of business within a year.

These ransomware and other destructive viruses are becoming more and more prevalent. We work hard to keep your systems safe and protected, but no antivirus software catches 100% of everything.

More than ever, it is vitally important that your business have a solid backup system that is managed, monitored and tested. Too many times we’ve gone in to help a new client who is in the middle of a disaster, only to find out they were religiously changing tapes in a system that hadn’t successfully ran a backup in months – or years.

Choosing The Best Option To Back Up Your Data

September 25, 2013

by Michael Menor, Network Technician
We highly recommend that all computer users regularly back up their data in order to prevent losing information in the case of a disk failure.

We recommend at the very least backing up files that are frequently changed. A basic backup strategy involves copying important files to a location separate from your hard drive.

Having more than one copy of important data is insurance against the loss of that data in an event such as a hard drive or system failure.

To make your backup strategy more complete, you should try a trial restore of your backup so you will be comfortable enough with the process to use it before you experience the loss of data.

Flash drives that plug into a USB port are a convenient technology for backups. They do not generally require any extra software and are very portable and they can be reused many times.

Flash Drive
A flash drive can serve as an external repository for important data as a protection against an event such as the failure of your hard disk.

However, a single flash drive does not have the storage capacity to backup an entire hard disk or file system, and they tend be more expensive than other storage methods for the same amount of data.

Cloud Storage
You can access your data from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection and you don’t have to keep track of any extra hardware or external storage media.

There are many providers that offer free online storage. A few popular ones are Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft SkyDrive.

Many of these are cross-platform applications that enable you to access whatever data you have stored as though it were stored in a folder on your computer’s hard drive.

CDs/DVDs/Blu-ray discs
CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs are also an option for backing up data if you have an internal or external drive that can write to one or all formats:

CDs: 750 MB
DVDs: 4.5 GB (single layer) or 8.7 GB (double layer)
Blu-ray: 25-100 GB

CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs are among your cheapest backup options (per gigabyte), and they are also among the most durable (no moving parts to wear out or metal parts to rust).

However, while it is technically possible to back up your entire system to CDs, DVDs, or Blu-ray discs by spanning multiple discs, it would be a time-consuming process that would require many discs.

External Hard Drives
An external hard drive is often the same type of hard drive as found inside most computers, only in a stand-alone enclosure with a USB or other data port that is powered by your computer or a separate wall adaptor.

As such, it is possible to purchase an external hard drive that is as large or larger than your computer’s internal hard drive, allowing you to backup your entire system to a drive that you can separate from your computer, carry with you to transfer your files, or set aside as a backup.

Most external hard drives have moving parts, however, making them more prone to wear and damage due to drops or vibration than some other backup options.

Also, some external hard drives do not operate cross-platform, which means that if your drive is formatted for use with Mac OS X, it may not be recognized by a Windows computer (or vice-versa).

External hard drives are available in sizes ranging from 100 gigabytes to many terabytes, and some are small enough to carry in a purse.

However, in whatever size you choose, external hard drives are the fastest and most versatile way to back up large amounts of data.

Backup And Disaster Recovery For Small Businesses

April 25, 2013

by Jeremy Miller, Technician
It is that time of year again; “Storm Season”, and computers and other electronics can be damaged.

We see at least a few computers each year come in from damage caused by a storm. This can vary from a failed power supply to computers that cannot be repaired due to the damage done by the storm.

This is one reason why it is important to have a disaster recovery plan. A good disaster recovery plan starts with backing up vital information regularly.

It is best to have at least two forms of backups as well. You need on-site and off-site backups.

On-site backups are stored on some media like a hard drive or a flash drive that is not permanently attached to the computer. This is a removable storage device that can be transferred to a different computer, or even a network resource like a server.

We can also offer a device that will take a complete system image of your computer at regular intervals. If your computer or server fails, this device can actually boot up as a temporary copy of your computer or server, within minutes. This will keep your downtime to a minimum in the event of a disaster.

Off-site backups are the most important. There are instances of when the on-site backups become unusable. This can happen in the event of natural disasters like fires, floods, and electrical damage from lightning, or even something simple such as a system failure or even a virus.

It is a good idea to have your data backed up securely over the Internet to a different location that has many redundancies in place.

You need to decide what the best options will be for you and make sure that they are cost-effective. Backup and disaster recovery is something we take very seriously here. We have had clients accidently delete their entire QuickBooks databases, they called us, and we were able to restore the databases in minutes.

This client was proactive and worked with us to setup the best backup solution for them and it paid off. Being proactive and setting up a disaster recovery plan is the only way to help prevent data loss.

The most important part of backing up your data is testing your backups.

You have to test your backups to make sure everything will be able to be restored in the event of an emergency.

You do not want to spend a lot of money on backup software only to have your data become corrupt and unusable. Our backups are regularly tested to verify integrity.

We have helped many people implement backup and disaster recovery solutions. The backups that we setup off-site are tested regularly. We have had 100% success rate in restoring backups that we have setup and monitored.

If you are interested in having your current backup solution audited, or would like consulting on a new backup solution we will be happy to help. Please contact us with any questions or concerns you may have.

Ghosts, Goblins And Failed Backups… Oh, My!

October 8, 2012

Welcome to October, fourth quarter, and Halloween!

The season of ghosts, ghouls and other scary creatures is the perfect time to talk about another frightening subject: The state of your backups!

First, the facts:

6 percent of all PCs will suffer some sort of data loss each year.
Every week, 140,000 hard drives crash.
Simple drive recovery can cost more than $7,500.
More than 600,000 laptops are lost or stolen each year.

Scary Statistics
These are pretty scary numbers, particularly if you use your laptop for business. My experience has been that, while most business owners understand the importance of backing up their server, many forget about the data stored in email, on local PCs or laptops and flash drives.
The cost to replace a laptop pales in comparison to the effects the lost data can have on your business.

Whether it’s theft, a natural disaster, fire, flood, theft, or human error, any loss of important business data can be debilitating to your business if you’re not prepared for them.

Fortunately, there are three easy steps you can take to protect your business from the downtime and data loss that can result from a disastrous event.

Choose the right backup provider
Make sure that your backup system can provide you with both offsite and onsite backup, with an option to be back up and running within 24-48 hours. This is what our Experts Total Backup service is designed to do.

Keep in mind that many low-cost solutions require days or even weeks for full recovery of your files, due to the slowness of the Internet.

Your backup solution should not only protect your data, but should also give you a backup of your programs and network settings so your business operations can return to normal as quickly as possible.

Conduct a “fire drill”
You also want to be sure that you conduct a periodic “fire-drill” with your backup. Too many times, we see clients who religiously change tapes, but never check their content. When disaster strikes, we discover the tapes are blank. That’s why we’ve gotten rid of tape based backups.

Keep your backup current
Finally, whenever you add computers, new software, or new services to your network, be sure your backup solution reflects those changes. This will ensure that you are backing up everything you need.

Free Report
Business backups are complex, and require a professional solution. I’ve put together a free, 12 page report that covers all of these items – and more – that is your’s free for the asking. Just give me a call!

Local, Offsite Or Disaster Recovery: Backup Options Explained

October 8, 2012

By Tech Experts Staff
Many businesses have a lot of highly important data. A sudden, catastrophic loss of data has proven to put many businesses out of business within months of the data loss.

The extreme costs of both getting data back, if it’s even possible, and the expense of down time and lost business is an insurmountable obstacle to business continuity.

Thankfully, we have many options to proactively prevent data loss and in some cases, keep your business up and running when your original source of data is no longer accessible. With our Experts Total Backup service we’ve got your data covered.

Choosing the right backup option depends on the type of data your organization has, the amount of time that is acceptable to be without access to your data, and the amount of time you need to retain backups of your data.

For small to medium sized businesses, we offer a file based backup system that comes in several tiers.

The various tiers are based on not only the amount of data you have to backup but also on the type of data you need backed up.

For instance, if a business runs around the clock or routinely has files open at all hours, has SQL or other databases running, or the high likelihood of having files open during the backup jobs, we have a backup system that can backup these files, even though they are open, offsite to our secure offsite backup server.

So, what if your business can’t be down for any period of time, even if your building were to burn down?

For situations like this, we offer Backup and Disaster Recovery options.

A Backup and Disaster Recovery machine or BDR, is designed to take continuous snapshots or your server as well as upload this data to a cloud based server.

There are many benefits of having a BDR in place versus just having a standard backup job in place.
The first major advantage is that in the event of something catastrophic like a business being demolished (fire, flood, tornado) access to the server can be quickly restored via the images the BDR uploaded to the offsite server.

What this means is that even servers running applications, databases, etc. can still be completely accessible even if the original equipment was destroyed.

After the equipment has been replaced this image of the server that you have been using via our secure cloud environment can then be transferred to the new server.

This allows you to continue to function as a business, using your original data, while we work to setup a new server onsite for your business.

Planning on replacing an old server soon? We have backup solutions that can be included for onsite backups as well when a server is purchased through us.

Using Windows Server 2008, we can configure onsite image based backups that allow your servers image to be restored to another server in the event your server fails and cannot be used again.

If you need help sorting out the options, give us a call and we can go over your current backup solution to make sure you’re protected.

We’ll help you develop an appropriate backup solution to protect your data and ease your mind. Remember: Neglecting your backups is extremely risky!

Steps To Improve Your Virus Protection

September 21, 2012

by Jeremy Miller, Technician
Many people have asked lately how their computer might get infected by viruses. There are a large number of ways that a virus can get into your PC.

So you need to be properly protected so that in the event viruses find their way onto your system they will be eradicated.

The most important part of improving virus protection is starting with good reputable antivirus software. These usually do require that a little bit of money be spent, but the benefits far outweigh the cost.

There are a lot of antivirus software providers making it difficult to choose which antivirus to purchase.

When choosing an antivirus application, you want it to protect against known threats and irregular behavior or heuristics. Heuristics is a form of “artificial intelligence” which monitors patterns of behavior similar to malware activity.

You will always need to make sure that your antivirus software is up to date.

In some software, where it is okay to fall behind on an update, here and there to maintain functionality in some proprietary software, this is not true with your antivirus software.

Each update contains another list of viruses that have been found in the wild. Antivirus software usually costs a periodic fee that must be paid to continue your subscribed service.

This subscribed service is the updates to the antivirus software, and you will want to make sure that your subscription does not run out.

Once you have an antivirus program installed, you will want to schedule it to run at a time when your computer is on but not in use. This will keep your computer clean and not slow down your work.

Another serious measure of protection is keeping all applications on your computer up to date. Windows updates all the time to fix any new security vulnerabilities that become discovered.

All of the programs that you have installed on your computer must remain up to date as well. These applications update to improve the application and to fix security vulnerabilities.

If for some reason you have to keep an outdated version of software on a computer, then is is even more important to protect that software against viruses.

Even the best antivirus software cannot protect against all viruses. This is where backups are useful. You should back up your network constantly, and your workstation weekly.

Having backups on and off site is the best way to prevent costly disaster from striking your company. You will need to monitor your backups on a regular basis in order to confirm that the process is working properly.

Without testing, your backups may be corrupt and you would have no way of knowing.

We offer managed antivirus, backups and services such as patch management. This means that for a low monthly cost we can manage all of your computer updates and backups.

We can take the hassle out of which updates you should or should not install. We can also offer a cloud based backup solution to protect you from losing data that cannot be easily replaced.

Why Should You Backup Your Data?

August 22, 2012

by Jeremy Miller,Technician
Even though it’s common knowledge, I thought I’d offer a quick refresher on data backup and why it is important.

What is a data backup?
A data backup is a copy of your data stored in a different location. This can be as simple as copying a document or picture to an external drive or disk.

It could also be a copy of your entire operating system, so if your system crashes you could recover it relatively quickly. Backups are usually not stored on the same location as the primary data.

Why should you backup your data?
You should always backup your data to at least one external source. It is best practice to have at least one on-site backup and one off-site backup.

You never know when a catastrophic event will take place. There are a number of things that can corrupt your data to the point of needing recovery.

For example, you could corrupt a file from losing power, or selecting cut instead of copy when moving files and the process errors out.

If you have files that cannot be replaced such as photos or emails that you have saved, and they become corrupt, the only way to guarantee recovery would be to have backup copies of these files in a different location.

The different location is one of the most important parts of backing up data. The reason is because if the drive your original data is on fails, and your backups are stored on the same drive there is a good chance you will not be able to recover your backups either.

If you are constantly making changes or installing and removing software then taking a backup image of your PC during a known-good configuration would be a great option.

You could set up your PC with a fresh-install of your operating system of choice that is up-to-date and just the way you like it.

Then you could take an image backup of the instance that way if you want to recover to that state it will only take the effort and time to load the image. There will be no hunting for drivers or remembering settings for printers, it will be easy to just load and go.

What is the best backup option?
Choosing the right backup is based on the kind of data you need to backup and how often it needs to be protected.

You must decide if you only need to backup some files, most files, all files, or the entire operating system.

Then you must decide how much money you want to spend on your backup solution. You must also decide where you want to store your backups such as an external hard drive or using a cloud storage service.

We offer Experts Total Backup, a cloud-based off-site storage system that’s rock solid and secure. It operates entirely in the background, encrypting your files and replicating them to an off-site storage system.

In conclusion if you have data that you cannot or do not want to lose then you must backup your data. This is the only way to guarantee that you do not lose any data. Once you have these backups you must test and safeguard them.

Keep a few copies so that if one backup gets damaged you have more to fall back on. Testing your backups is a great way to know that you will be able to restore from your backed up data.

Springtime Brings Seasonal Storms – Protect Your Network!

April 9, 2012

It’s a topic I touch on every year around this time – the criticality of power protection and backups for your network. The sad fact of the matter is, no matter how often I preach about it, too many of our clients still aren’t adequately protecting their systems.

Adequate power protection entails three things: Prevention, protection, and testing.

Prevention
During thunderstorms, many people leave their computers unprotected. Simply turning a computer off during a thunderstorm does nothing whatsoever to protect the computer.

Nearby lightning strikes can cause surges through the power lines or phone lines into your house or office, and these often damage your equipment.

The easiest way to prevent problems caused by lightning and power surges is to unplug your computer during a storm. Don’t forget to unplug your phone line or cable Internet from the computer too. These are the second most likely way for surges to get into your computer.

Protection
Having a good, quality surge protector is great for the day-to-day power surges that happen mostly unseen in the background. Don’t skimp on your power protection.

The $9 “surge strip” you can pick up at a hardware store simply gives you more outlets to use – it doesn’t provide protection against power problems.

A good surge protector should run you around $50 – a small investment when you consider the cost of the computer and the value of your data.

Servers and critical workstations should be protected by a battery backup system. We prefer APC because they offer an equipment insurance policy, but any good, well known brand will protect your network.

Testing
Power protection devices, whether a surge protector or battery backup, are designed to fail. They absorb the power fluctuations that could damage your server or workstation.

Your battery backup unit should be tested at least twice per year to ensure it’s functioning properly. The test can be as simple as plugging in a lamp, and disconnecting the unit from utility power. The lamp should stay lit. If it doesn’t, it’s time to replace the batteries in the UPS.

In general, surge protectors and battery backup units should be replaced every three years. This ensures your network, servers and computers are protected by the latest technology in surge supression.

New Year’s Resolutions For Problem Free Computing

January 20, 2012

Even though we’re a few weeks into the new year, it’s not too late to take a look at your company’s network and make a few resolutions for better computing in 2012. Here are a few suggestions.

Better backups – now!
Implement a better, more reliable backup system to ensure your critical business data is properly protected. If you’re still using tape drives or not employing the latest professional-grade backup software, there’s no bigger New Year’s resolution that you should have.

You should have both an onsite and offsite backup of your data that allows you to restore files fast. Your backup should also be image-based, not just file-based.

Data loss can happen from human error, hardware/software failure, fire, flood, theft or other disaster. Every hour that you’re without your critical business information could cost you thousands of dollars.

Check out the cloud
Is cloud computing is right for you? In many cases, parts of your IT infrastructure can easily be put in the cloud to save you money and give you better service. It is important to talk to someone who can honestly assess your situation and tell you the pros and cons of making the switch to the Cloud. It’s not for every business but it’s worth exploring closely.

Dump the old PCs
I know that no one really likes spending money on new computers but think about how much unproductive time your staff spends waiting for their slow machines.

You can get an entry-level business desktop now for as little as $600, and speed upgrades to newer machines are very reasonably priced. What’s the cost of staff sitting around waiting for their computer or dealing with computer problems?

Upgrade your server
New servers are light years ahead of the ones made three, four and five years ago. Your company is less productive and less profitable with a server that slows everyone down.

Change your passwords
Most businesses regularly have employees leave, including those who were involved with supporting the computer network. Changing passwords regularly will improve security and protect your valuable customer and business data.

Perform a security review
We’re seeing all sorts of increased threats from hackers these days and you need to make sure your security approach is up to date. There are many parts to your security that you should examine including password strength; anti-virus software; and getting a strong firewall that will prevent intrusions, attacks and other malicious activity.

Keep up with your preventive maintenance
Downtime and annoying IT problems can be prevented with regular maintenance on your computers and network. If you’re not doing this now, it’s time to start!

Start the year right with a full audit of your network to develop your IT plan for the year.

Our top of the line network audit is a 27-point review of the security, performance and reliability of your network, and includes a full hardware and software inventory, plus checks on the health of your server, firewall, and network backup.

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