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Before
you dispose of your old computer... what
are you going to do with all that data
on the hard drive?
Before
you send your defective computer back
for warranty repair... what are you
going to do with all that data on the
hard drive?
Before
you replace your hard drive with a new
unit... what are you going to do with
all that data on the hard drive?
Many companies that suffer a major data loss (a hard drive failure, or flood, or a
fire, or theft, etc.) never fully recover, if they are even able to remain in business
.
Here are some things for you to consider and plan for, before disaster hits:
- How much did you pay for your computer(s)?
- What would it cost you in time, lost productivity and income, employee wages
and salaries, and related expenses if you no longer had it (stolen, fire, flood),
or the data in it (hard drive crash or a virus that erased files)? Is your
computer worth “millions”?
- How would the the loss of your computer(s) impact your:
- continued business.
- customers’ and employees’ personal or financial data data (potential for
Identity theft) and your liability for such impact.
- How much is your computer(s) insured for - replacement cost of the hardware
and/or software, or for the cost of recovering or rebuilding all the data, or for
the “value” of the data?
- Protection of your clients’ and employees’ personal and financial data.
- Do you have a method to notify your clients/customers/employees if one
of your computers is lost or stolen or compromised?
- Do you have a method of finding out who’s data has been compromised
(what was on the computer’s hard drive)?
Portable USB storage devices and unauthorized file copying.
- easy to plug in to a computer’s USB port to copy your company’s confidential
or critical data or your customers’ data.
- also easy to inject a malicious program into your computer.
- “pod slurping”
Protection against theft.
- Notebook computers used outside of the office are particularly tempting
targets for a thief.
- Have you implemented any type or form of security on your notebook
computers?
- Boot-time password?
- User login by password and/or by “bometrics” (fingerprint scanner)?
- encrypted data files?
- an antitheft cable and lock?
- A “phone home” type of computer tracking service?
Data backup - for when, not if, your computer or hard drive fails, or it is stolen, or
a critical file is corrupted or deleted.
- Off-site storage or backup is best. If your office is burglarized or burns down or
is flooded, you will probably still have your data.
- On-site could be an external hard drive or a tape drive backup unit.
- Consider having TWO hard drives in your computer, configured as a RAID
(Redundant Array of Independent Drives) that operates in “Mode 1”.
In a Mode 1 RAID, there are two hard drives in your computer, but the
computer thinks there is only one. When the computer reads data from or
writes data to the “one” hard drive, the RAID controller actually reads from
or writes to BOTH drives, identically. If either drive fails, the RAID controller
will automatically keep your computer running with the good drive, and
notify you that the other drive has failed. Some time later, you merely
remove the failed drive, install a replacement, and tell the RAID controller to
“rebuild” the array. The RAID controller will then proceed to make the new
drive into an identical copy of the existing drive.
RAID Mode 1 merely keeps your computer running, with no loss of data or
programs, in the event that one of the two hard drives fails. RAID Mode 1
will not protect your data or the hard drives if something goes wrong in the
rest of the computer or if your computer becomes infected with a virus or
other malware. This is what off-site backup storage is for
Off-site storage. Remember that you are still responsible to protect your off-site
data according to applicable laws and regulations.
- Get at least two external hard drives.
Back up your data to ONE of the external
hard drives, then take that drive home with you at the end of the day. The
second day, back up your data to ANOTHER external hard drive, then take that
drive home with you. The 3rd day, bring the first drive back to the office and
use it to back up to at the end of the 3rd day, and take it home. The 4th day,
bring the 2nd drive back to the office and use it to back up at the end of the
4th day, and take it home. Continue alternating drives every day. You will
always have two drives with your data, and in case of a disaster at the office,
the data will be no more than a day or two old.
- Get a tape drive backup unit and at least two tapes. Proceed as above.
- Use an on-line storage service. At the end of the day, upload your data to an
on-line storage service. This could take a lot of time if you have a lot of data.
But your data might still be at risk. What if the service goes out of business?
How do they control access to your data while it is on their storage units? How
do you access your data if you don’t have an Internet connection (like after a
storm)?
revised: March 22, 2007
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