Project Description
Securing Your Small Business With the Right Windows Backup Service
As the weather changes, so should our approach to protecting our assets. But what is the right kind of protection for something that is running through a network or server and not a physical product in our hands? How do you ensure something which fluctuates as your company grows? Larger companies might have the budget for individual protection plans, but what about small businesses, or even just your home devices? How will you be sure that your data is protected come winter?
Securing Your Small Business
Having a secure backup for business hardware can be a juggling act. Different businesses utilize different hardware, which in turn need separate service and security. We know data backup and recovery has become a significant issue concerning small companies because we used to be one.
“What gets most small businesses is when they skip the data recovery playbook,” said Omry Farajun, President of Storage Guardian. “You want to make sure everything is working, and you’ve run through a test recovery multiple times.”
During a Windows Server backup, you owe it to yourself as a small business to make sure all systems are a go. You should be inclined to run a validation of data restoring, and usually, you want this process running through an alternative location in the event of ransomware or any other disasters. Don’t let yourself get caught up in the idea that nothing has gone wrong up to this point, so nothing will go wrong. Especially now, during the holiday season, you want to run as smoothly as possible to enter the new year without new worries.
Covering Your Losses
In the event of a data breach or natural disaster, there are several different types of local and offsite backup protection strategies which specify either excellent Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) or Recovery Point Objectives (RPO). Your small businesses is vulnerable, and local ransomware can cause corruption. Because of this, everyone is moving towards offsite backup solutions to avoid complete loss of digital information.
Off-site or alternative locations are ideal for storing data because they ensure that someone is protecting you. With Storage Guardian, as your Managed Service Provider (MSP) you won’t have to navigate through services and products like Veeam because it will be done for you. The goal of an MSP is to provide security and guidance while alternating between the best services for your specific needs as a small business or individual. This proactive monitoring approach is used by some of Storage Guardian’s clients such as PRO-TAX, Dynamic Mutual Funds, Logica3, and the Canadian Special Olympics – just to name a few.
“During tax season crunch, we needed to amend a return at the last minute…when the file was opened, it was corrupted! What could have been a disaster was painlessly averted in 10 minutes with Storage Guardian. Tax season is a bit less stressful with partners like Storage Guardian” said Milo Farineau, director of IT at PRO-TAX upon reflection of his experience with Storage Guardian.
Every three years your small business enterprise will run into a cycle of refreshing its hardware. These include keeping up with the hardware space to ensure that it can keep up with the critical amount of growing data over time. Many small businesses make the error of utilizing space for new endeavors and projects, forgetting that they need to maintain a foundation of data in case of an emergency.
When you utilize an enterprise offsite backup solution, it will go through document by document and file by file to make sure all data is authentic and uncorrupted. Human error is just as likely as a ransomware attack on your small business. Getting to use “big-boy” technology for a more modest company is a rare offer, but affordable in the case of Storage Guardian. What small businesses need is more proactive tracking from a distance; continuous monitoring that can determine if installations are carried out correctly and provide technical support immediately if they don’t.
Cyberattacks
According to the latest report about ransomware from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), there were nearly $18 million in losses due to Cryptowall and other malware in 2015 alone. During a cyberattack, the ransomware will drop an encrypted wall between a business and their data and applications. However simple the case may be, cyberattacks can still take out the majority operating systems and data, making it difficult to get yourself back and running.
Some of the worst incidents in recent years have been attacks on Hospitals and police stations. In 2016 Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center paid out a $17,000 ransom to get back into their operating systems. The hackers requested a bitcoin payment – untraceable and easily transferable – and finally gave access back to the hospital after 10 days.
After seeing the effects of ransomware on your small business, the best solution is a reliable backup and recovery service. To avoid serious setbacks, we suggest considering cloud storage on top of a local backup. By balancing your hardware between a local and offsite backup, you can orchestrate between the changing definitions of ransomware and viruses. Ransomware changes 3 times every 17 seconds, so what kind of solution is feasible for this type of infestation?
The truth of the matter is, if you have not protected your small business against ransomware and antivirus, your business is exposed to dangerous risk. It might even seem favorable to just pay out the ransom than to repair your servers. But, how honorable a criminal can be, once paid off; how do you know they will return your files truly unencrypted? In some cases, these hackers will even use your ransom to develop more malicious software.
Staying productive, rather than buckling under pressure, will help your small business gain favor in the IT community. If you refuse to pay your hacker, it shows that you have an interest in protecting future victims of ransomware.
Orchestrate Your Small Business
Many small business owners do not realize that a single individual cannot save all of a company’s servers after a disaster. It takes a team of different specialists to walk the tightrope of recovery. As a remote backup service, Storage Guardian will orchestrate between you and your network, making sure accounting, IT, marketing, sales, and so on, are all connected by communication, and all updated throughout a recovery situation.
You want to make sure your small business operations are in line with your objectives. Orchestration is important in order for all departments to recover and review information together and on a regular basis through the MSP. If you’re not talking about your RTOs and RPOs then your small business is missing the point of sending the data offsite and your data might be old/stale by the time you actually need to restore it from ransomware. Those are the best practices for protecting small business servers from today’s climate and ransomware, not a matter of if it happens, but a matter of when.
For more information about Storage Guardian’s enterprise off-site backup solutions and Windows Server backup services click here.