How can a Company Fortify Itself against Natural and Man-made Disasters

Data loss usually has a severe impact on companies to the extent that the company in question may never recover from it. Such a data loss can be caused either due to natural causes such as floods or earthquakes. It can also be caused by disasters that have been triggered by human activity such as computer viruses, fire, electrical short circuits or errors committed by humans while handling data. Taking protective measures against loss of data will prove to be quite useful in avoiding such data losses, though they will not ensure total safety against data loss. Let us take a look at some of these measures.

Preventive Measures against Data Loss

Protection against Hardware or System Failure

The computers should be placed away from direct sunlight and in an environment that is free from dust and moisture.

An Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) should be used to prevent damage due to power surges.

The protective covers of hard drives and other parts should not be tampered with or removed without technical assistance.

The CPU or other data storage media should be placed in area where they will not suffer falls easily.

Protection against Human Error

If you are an inexperienced user, you should not attempt any major software installation or a computer repair and should always seek proper assistance for the same.

Moving your computer should be avoided especially during boot and installation of software.

Access to data should be given only to people who require it to perform their work. This will prevent mishandling of data by unauthorised users.

Backing up of data is very important and it will help in case of data loss. This backup can be done either on the same system itself or preferably in a different data storage medium located on a different computer system.

Protection against Corruption of Software or Data

Backing up your data helps here as well.

The software that helps you assess the problems in your system should be used with caution as not all of them are trustworthy and they themselves might spell trouble.

The security of the system should also not be ignored and up-to-date security software such as an antivirus should be installed on your computer.

In case you are planning to upgrade your system due caution must be exercised by taking measures such as backing up all your data, ensure that none of the data that is already present on the system is corrupted.

Protection against Viruses

Check the quality of all the software that you use and ensure that they have been bought from reputed or authorised sellers only.

All the data that comes into your system or server should be scanned by good antivirus software as it is through a media such as email attachments, CDs etc. that a virus usually enters your computer.

It is also advisable to keep a firewall active always on your computer to scan the data that comes into your computer.

Also, if a data is found to have some virus, it is quite likely that its backup also contains the same

virus. So you must remember to check the backups as well.

Protection against Natural Disasters

Natural disasters are quite unavoidable and data loss due to it at a particular location also cannot be avoided as the physical destruction that they may cause is quite rampant. Hence some other measures need to be adopted as protection against them. These include the following:

The backups of data that have been made should not be stored at the same location as the original data.

Important data should not be stored at locations which are frequented by floods and other natural calamities.

Again proper checks and updates of the data that has been backed up should be carried out.

Above all, you need to carry out an extensive training of all your employees on data protection issues. To aid this, you can seek the help of certain data recovery companies that offer you such training programs.

The above mentioned measures will make it highly unlikely that permanent data loss occurs. But, if data loss does take place, it is necessary that you do not panic and handle the situation after due consultation with a data recovery company that you may have hired. Delayed progress is many times better than outright failure.

Article Source: Free Content Articles Directory

James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. If you are concerned about data loss and would like more information on Data Recovery see www.fields-data-recovery.co.uk

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