[ insider_reports_insider ]
Having Some Backup Is Important
SecurityProNews
Staff Writer
2008-12-01
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
Data loss can be inconvenient and embarrassing, or it can be devastating. Only about eight percent of small and medium-sized businesses haven't backed up their data in any way, but half of the respondents to a Symantec survey have lost data.
 | | Having Some Backup Is Important |  |
Much of that disparity there is because many of the respondents hadn't fully backed up their systems. About a quarter of SMBs didn't back up their PCs, and another 13 percent conducted only informal backups where employees are left to themselves to discern what needs backed up and what doesn't. Twenty percent of SMBs conduct no server backups.
"A lot of small business owners don't think data loss can happen to them," said Susan Shea Cameron, Ed.S., BCBA, clinical director and partner, Cameron Consultation.
"When the hard drives failed on our company computers, our work came to a six-week standstill, clients had to wait, meetings had to be rescheduled and we risked losing a curriculum that took 20 years to create."
Even when companies do backup their data, more than half of them backup files on PCs and servers in the same location as the originals, leaving them at risk of permanent data loss. Almost two-thirds of respondents cited hardware failure as the cause of data loss, 27 percent cited employee sabotage, and 27 percent cited data theft.
"In a small or mid-sized business, where money and staff time are at a premium, there's always something more pressing to do than manage backups," said Chris Schin, senior director of product management, Symantec.
"As digital data volumes increase so does the risk of irrevocable harm to a company's bottom line if that data is not protected. Our customers are looking for solutions from a trusted provider that offer simplified management and the ability to scale as their businesses grow."
Data loss isn't limited to SMBs, though. Major companies can also suffer embarrassing data snafus. Facebook, for example, recently had to own up to its second data loss fiasco of the year, perhaps for similar mistakes, simultaneously illustrating why it's a bad idea to store your data in the cloud only.
Facebook members recently received an email apologizing for the loss of their user settings. While that's inconvenient (probably infuriating) for the users and embarrassing for a player as big as Facebook, Graham Cluely at Sophos makes a couple of important points.
One is that Facebook is not immune to data loss scenarios, and perhaps neither are other Internet-based giants. Secondly, now that Facebook has had to send an email to its users notifying them of data loss, the social network has now provided a golden opportunity for phishers to create copycat emails in efforts to glean personal information.
About the Author:
SecurityProNews is a daily online and email publication focusing on internet security issues.
More insider_reports_insider Articles
Insider Reports RSS Feed
|
|
iEntry 10th Anniversary
RSS
Archive
