MSPNetworks Blog

Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) are incredibly important elements of any successful business, as without them, you’re just one disaster away from a world-shattering wake-up call. We take a strategic approach to data backup and disaster recovery that considers your daily data backup needs while recognizing its long-term benefits. Let’s discuss how you can ensure that your business can use BDR to survive any potential threat the world throws at it.

The late American author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” Written in the 20th century, it has been put in practice by 21st century businesses. As the Internet has grown, the amount of companies expanded, and the amount of data that those companies collect has grown exponentially, especially now that there is a market for such data.

The modern business technology market is filled with exciting innovations, but one area that doesn't quite capture the imagination is data backup. Perhaps backup is not the most thrilling topic, but nevertheless, the growing demand for enhanced data security and redundancy in businesses is driving developers to push the boundaries of the technology, creating more advanced features to meet the growing demand for redundancy. Today, we take a look at three intriguing features of these emerging data backup solutions.

Comprehensive Data Center Security

When it comes to data backup, adaptability is key. Businesses of the future will maintain diverse on-premises infrastructures, distributed across various private clouds, and possibly entangled with multiple cloud vendors. A robust solution must seamlessly handle data backup across these varied environments. An ideal tool should address each environment's unique requirements while offering users a unified interface. This approach simplifies migration and enables IT admins to back up specific applications without the hassle of dealing with the entire infrastructure.

Recovery Anytime, Anywhere

While backing up data is crucial, the real test lies in the ability to recover it. Imagine the need to restore an application from the public cloud to a private cloud or vice versa. Such flexibility ensures high availability and disaster recovery, allowing your organization to remain productive even in the face of obstacles preventing access to information. The speed of recovery continues to improve, ensuring minimal downtime and safeguarding your data effectively.

Automated Data Backup Processes

Modern data backup processes include advanced automation, but as applications become more adept at recovering from adversity, complexity arises. Future backup solutions will discern which applications require backup and under what circumstances, making informed decisions in real-time for effective company operations. This level of sophistication relies on intricate configurations and heightened automation, reducing the impact of human error almost completely. Applications can autonomously set their backup schedules based on predefined parameters.

If you're reconsidering how your business manages data backup and disaster recovery, consider the potential for a more robust solution that minimizes reliance on human interaction. We specialize in implementing powerful data backup solutions tailored to your needs. For more information, reach out to us today at (516) 403-9001.

Tape backup has been used for a long time, and it was once the most prominent solution for data backup out there. Nowadays, it’s not used much at all, mostly in favor of better and more convenient solutions. However, there has been a slight resurgence in tape backup, so we want to look at why some companies might still use it, despite its flaws.

Why Use Tape Backup?

Data redundancy tends to fuel businesses and their data strategies, and this is even more true as the cost and availability of digital backup systems has decreased over time. Tape backup has mostly been phased out, but some businesses still choose to cling to it for a variety of reasons. Here are some of them:

• Reliability and Longevity: Tape backup is reliable, and has been for a while. It can last for a long time when it’s cared for properly, being less susceptible to corruption over time compared to some storage media.
• Long-Term Storage: Tape is also helpful for storing large amounts of data for long periods of time. The infrastructure is the initial investment, but ongoing costs are low compared to other solutions.
• Data Retention Regulations: Data retention is a point of contention for some organizations, entities, and industries. Tape backup is a way to meet those standards for the sake of compliance, if nothing else.
• Large Data Sets: Businesses that have a lot of data to work with will find cloud backups somewhat impractical, largely due to bandwidth limitations. Tape backup can skirt around this issue.
• Legacy Systems: If compatibility with legacy systems is a factor, then tape backup could give businesses an out while they migrate to newer systems.
• Offline Backups: Tape is stored offline and in a secure off-site location, keeping data loss low in the event of a system failure or natural disaster.

Other Solutions Are Better, Though

We think it’s great that people are making the effort to protect their data, even if it’s with tape, and even if there are better options available. One such solution that we love to recommend to our clients is the BDR, or backup and disaster recovery solution. This system uses incremental backups that occur as often as every 15 minutes to save and store data both on-site and in the cloud or a secure, off-site data center. This provides the redundancy needed to guarantee recovery when it’s needed most.

In comparison, tape is labor-intensive and time-consuming. It could take hours or days just to restore a backup. It’s not reliable, and you can do so much better. Let us help you get there with BDR. To learn more, call us today at (516) 403-9001.

Data is the lifeblood of a business. In the event of unforeseen circumstances such as hardware failure, malware attacks, or human error, having a well-designed backup and data recovery strategy in place becomes paramount. Today, we try and guide you through the process of creating a robust backup and data recovery strategy, ensuring the safety and accessibility of your data.

Assess Your Data

Before delving into the specifics of a backup and data recovery strategy, it is essential to assess and categorize the data you possess. Identify the critical data that must be safeguarded, including financial records, customer information, and intellectual property. Categorize the data based on its importance and relevance to your business operations.

Define Recovery Objectives

Understanding your recovery objectives is crucial in designing an effective backup strategy. Determine the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for each category of data. The RTO defines the acceptable downtime, specifying how quickly you need to recover data, while the RPO outlines the maximum data loss you can tolerate.

Choose the Right Backup Solution

There are several different ways that an organization can back up its data. It can simply back it up to hard drives, pay for cloud storage to send its backups to, it can even backup files to a tape drive if it so chooses. At MSPNetworks, we believe the backup and disaster recovery (BDR) system we offer offers the best, most comprehensive data backup.

The BDR offers incremental onsite backup to our BDR device, while also pushing copies to an offsite data center. The integration of the cloud provides a level of redundancy that ensures that regardless of what befalls your business, you can recover your data and keep working forward. 

Implement a Backup Schedule

Consistency is key when it comes to backups. Establish a regular backup schedule based on the criticality of your data. Consider the frequency of changes to your data and the associated risks. Automated backup solutions, like the BDR, can simplify this process by ensuring backups are performed regularly without manual intervention.

Test and Validate Your Backups

Creating backups alone is not enough; it is vital to regularly test and validate their integrity. Perform periodic recovery tests to ensure your backups are complete and can be successfully restored. This step guarantees that your data can be recovered when needed, minimizing downtime and potential loss.

Secure Your Backups

Protecting your backups is as crucial as creating them. Implement security measures to safeguard your backup data from unauthorized access, theft, or malware attacks. Encryption, both in transit and at rest, adds an extra layer of protection. Offline backups also reduce the risk of ransomware attacks targeting online storage.

Your backup is a crucial part of protecting your organizational data. If you would like to talk to one of our knowledgeable consultants about getting your business outfitted with a BDR, give us a call today at (516) 403-9001.

A disaster can take many forms, from a raging snowstorm to deleting the wrong file. Regardless of what kind of disaster you face, you can know that it doesn’t take much to impact a business, especially if the business doesn’t have a business continuity plan in place. How does your business recover from such a devastating scenario? How can it get its data back and in proper working order? That’s what we want to tell you about today.

The Value of Infonomics

There is value in your business’ data, whether you realize it or not. The value itself depends on what you collect and who it’s from, whether it’s from vendors, clients, employees, or otherwise, but there is always value in what you store. Infonomics is the process of assigning a monetary value to the data so you have a better understanding of how much you lose when you suffer a data loss incident. Ask yourself these questions to determine the value of your data:

• How much capital would replacing the data cost? 
• How much and what percentage is your organization’s data?
• What kind of revenue could your organization see if it were to buy and sell it? 
• What will it cost to completely protect the data?

With these questions in mind, you should be able to determine the true loss you can associate with data disasters. To help you further gauge the impact of your data loss, let’s look at some deeper concepts you should know regarding your data loss scenario.

Data Backup

Obviously you need data backup in order to get back to work following a data loss incident. Many companies utilize comprehensive data backup systems that take snapshots of their data throughout the workday. This provides you with a tool to revert back to your infrastructure at any pivotal moments when data would be damaged or corrupted so you can hopefully dodge the ramifications of it.

MSPNetworks is of the mind that backup and disaster recovery systems should take incremental backups throughout the day and deploy to both a local network-attached device and secure, remote data center. This allows for total data redundancy that will ensure your data loss is minimal.

Disaster Recovery

The actual act of recovering data comes down to disaster recovery, which is a bit different compared to data backup. Data recovery is when you have a plan to deploy your backup in the hopes that you never have to actually use it. Here are some of the factors that contribute to a disaster recovery platform:

• Recovery Point Objective (RPO) - The amount of time that your core business processes can be interrupted before your business begins to fail.
• Recovery Time Objective (RTO) - The amount of time your business can withstand interruption before it can be considered a complete break in continuity. 

You’ll want to ensure that you reach for specific metrics for both according to your business’ operations. The closer you can get these metrics, the better, as you don’t want to take any chances with your disaster recovery or business continuity. After all, each moment spent wasted during this process is a moment that could send your business hurtling toward destruction.

MSPNetworks can help your business implement the smartest data backup and disaster recovery solutions on the market. To learn more, call us today at (516) 403-9001.

We often discuss data backup and disaster recovery on our blog, and you may even be familiar with some of the terms and practices we throw around. Today, we want to take a closer look at the 3-2-1 rule and how it impacts your business’ ability to recover in the face of a disaster. Let’s dive in and see how the 3-2-1 rule can make or break your company’s data infrastructure.

What is the 3-2-1 Rule?

When we discuss the 3-2-1 rule, this is what we mean:

• Three copies of your data: You should have three updated copies of your data, including the original.
• Two types of media: You’ll want to use two different storage mediums, at the very minimum. For example, you could keep one in the cloud in addition to the original stored on your network.
• One copy off-site: Whether it’s in an off-site data center or stored in the cloud, you should keep one copy isolated from potential attacks against your network.

Of course, this isn’t an end-all-be-all for data backup and disaster recovery; it’s merely a baseline that you can augment in whatever way you need. For example, you might choose different storage sites for various parts of your data infrastructure, or other unique requirements in addition to the baseline established above.

Why Does the 3-2-1 Rule Work?

The 3-2-1 rule is important for businesses no matter the size or industry, and it’s an important part of ensuring redundancy for your organization. For example, if something happens to your on-premise hardware, you will rely on your cloud-based data backups to recover. This is particularly important in today’s ransomware-filled business environment. And don’t forget to test your data backups periodically, too; the last thing you want is to find out your backups are corrupted when you need them most.

MSPNetworks can help your business with our comprehensive backup and disaster recovery solution. Our BDR tools can help you ensure that your company follows the 3-2-1 rule while ensuring redundancy. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

Running a business is stressful, but so is thinking about a future where that business (and its data) no longer exists. If you’re not careful with your preparedness, you could stare down a disaster with no hopes of recovery. This is why we urge you to take proactive action now—so you can prevent these kinds of scenarios from taking your business off the market for good.

Let’s go over four scenarios where you’ll be glad you have implemented a comprehensive data backup and disaster recovery solution. Goodness knows your business and bottom line will thank you, too.

Natural Disasters

Threats like tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and so on can all impact your ability to access important data. We acknowledge that not every business is in a region where extreme weather conditions can threaten them, but you should be prepared for any type of natural disaster, just in case something were to happen. There are some natural disasters that can harm a business no matter where it’s located, like electrical fires, power surges, and so on.

Data Breaches

Ah, yes, the dreaded data breach. It doesn’t matter if you are a small business or a major enterprise; your organization has data that hackers would love to get their grimy hands on. Personal data, financial records, and other types of sensitive information can all fetch a handsome price on the black market, and in some cases, your data could be held for ransom or even destroyed by malware. It’s always a good idea to prioritize not just cybersecurity but also data backup.

Hardware Failure

Technology cannot be expected to last forever, and a server unit crashing can be a devastating blow to your business if you are unprepared to handle it. You should have a data backup plan in place that is capable of restoring your infrastructure in the event you experience such a hardware failure.

User Error

People make mistakes, and you should not only expect them to, but be prepared for them to do so. Implementing a data backup and disaster recovery solution can help you recover files in the event your employees accidentally delete them or harm your technology in some way.

Implement Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Today

Just because you don’t foresee a situation where you’ll have to use it doesn’t mean that you don’t need data backup or a disaster recovery solution in place. A major part of business continuity is ensuring that you have access to your data at all times, and with MSPNetworks, you don’t have to worry about this ever becoming an issue. We’ll work with you to ensure that you are prepared for even the worst situations possible.

To learn more, call us at (516) 403-9001.

We often think about disasters in the context that they completely destroy the office, rendering your business incapable of operations. However, this is only part of what is encompassed by the term “disaster,” and the whole picture is far more terrifying. Any disruption to your operations can be considered a disaster in its own right, so we wanted to take some time to go over what you should look out for with your disaster planning.

Sure, there are disasters that threaten your physical infrastructure, but the types of disasters that most organizations will suffer from are something quite different.

Disasters are Common Occurrences

Natural disasters might be the first thing that comes to mind, and depending on where your office is located, you might experience various different types of them, whether they are structural fires, electrical storms, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, or others. They can inflict serious damage to your office and potentially make it impossible to conduct business from that site. There are other types of disasters that aren’t so in-your-face, though, and these are the ones we want to talk about today.

The disasters that don’t destroy your office are the ones that can impact your operations in serious ways, like data breaches, hardware failure, or user error. If you’re not careful, these disasters can bring your productivity to a sudden end. Hardware failure in particular can lead to data loss and downtime, both of which can be devastating for your bottom line.

Data breaches can be a serious problem, especially when they can impact operations. An active data breach makes your infrastructure inaccessible while the threat is mitigated, and in some cases, data can be locked down by ransomware. User error can also create situations where data is misplaced or lost. All it takes is poor security practices or a network misconfiguration.

Get Ready to Handle All Types of Disasters

If you want to keep your business from suffering due to unpredictable disasters, you need to 1) implement a data backup and disaster recovery solution, and 2) consider all aspects of business continuity.

With comprehensive data backup and disaster recovery solutions, you can follow through on the 3-2-1 data backup rule with three copies of your data in two locations, one of those located in the cloud for accessibility purposes. Business continuity includes much more than your data backup, though, and it includes aspects of running your business such as your workforce, your place of operations, and chain of command.

Let Us Help You Out!

To take some of the stress out of your disaster preparedness, give MSPNetworks a call at (516) 403-9001. Our trusted technicians can work with your team to implement the best solutions on the planet. We can even help you develop a business continuity plan. Don’t delay; call us today!

There are countless ways your organization could face down a disaster, whether it’s a high-profile natural disaster, a physical disaster, or a technology-related disaster. If you aren’t prepared to face the consequences, your business could falter in the face of such incidents. How can your business best prepare itself for all manners of disasters?

Disaster Recovery Is a Big Issue

There are two ways to approach a disaster: reactive and proactive. The reactive approach involves the mindset that you cannot prevent the disaster; therefore, there is no reason to try, as you will experience the consequences anyway. The other mindset, proactive, subscribes to the idea that you can be ready for a disaster and can mitigate the damages ahead of time with the right amount of preparation.

In just about all situations, it’s better to be proactive than reactive, especially in the case of disaster recovery. Due to the nature of the situations, you never know if and when they will strike, so you had best be prepared to handle natural disasters, physical disasters, and technology disasters. Let’s go over them.

Natural Disasters

A natural disaster is usually what people think of when they think of disasters, and they include situations like fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, and so on. You could even put a pandemic in this category. While the severity might vary, there can be no denying that these situations can impact operations. You need to have a plan to address unexpected weather and illness for your business; the continuity of operations hangs precariously in the balance.

Physical Disasters

A physical disaster has to do with the physical infrastructure of your company, which might include your building, its utilities, physical security breaches, or theft. Examples include burst pipes, HVAC system errors, and power failures. While it might not seem like a massive loss, you can be sure that the accumulated downtime will be costly enough to make you wish you had a contingency plan in place.

Technology Disasters

Technology disasters are the result of technology failures, including the components of systems, as well as cybersecurity breaches. These are the most likely issues you will deal with regarding your hardware, and it will inevitably fail with enough wear and tear. Furthermore, they require a very specific skill set and expertise to maintain. Technology-related disasters like data loss and cyberattacks can both be prepared for, so it’s your responsibility to do so.

How to Go About Planning for the Worst

The general goal of a disaster recovery plan is to reduce downtime and get back to business as usual as quickly as possible. The devil is in the details, here; you need to know exactly what must be done, including metrics and benchmarks you want to hit, in order to successfully prepare for a disaster incident. There are certain things you’ll need regardless of the situation, though, such as data backed up both on and off-site. With the appropriate preparation, you can ensure that these situations don’t derail your operations.

MSPNetworks can help you build out a disaster recovery plan and test it periodically to ensure your business can recover without a hitch. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

A good business owner envisions the future and what it could bring about. You may have already devoted a considerable amount of time to the good things that could happen, but how often do you picture the bad? If you don’t imagine the worst-case scenario, you could be putting your business’ life on the line. Are you prepared to deal with a data loss incident?

You might think we are being a bit dramatic, and maybe we are, but a business that doesn’t focus on longevity is one that will ultimately fail in the face of adversity. You need to consider what a worst-case scenario could mean for your business.

Data backup and disaster recovery are critical components of any successful business. Most companies rely on data in at least some capacity, so without it, operations can be stymied significantly. This data might include client information, metrics, corporate data, important files, and so on. If you lose this data, how do you plan on keeping your business running?

The process of disaster recovery is just as important, as without it, you cannot get back in business following critical data loss. Disaster recovery is what enables your business to maintain operations even in the face of severe disasters, like a hacking incident or a natural disaster. While having data backup is helpful, you still need a method to restore it as quickly as possible so as to avoid downtime. You might consider concepts like data backup, operations, workforce longevity, and alternative working conditions when putting together your disaster recovery plan, whether the disaster is from nature or your fellow humankind.

Your business should implement a cloud-based data backup system and disaster recovery tool that takes periodic snapshots of your data. This will allow you to accomplish the following:

• Backups can be taken throughout the workday rather than only once at the end of the day.
• Your backups will be accessible at a moment’s notice, something which is incredibly valuable when recovering from a disaster. 

When your company is under pressure from a disaster, time is of the essence. You don’t want to be worrying about how and when to restore your data. It helps to just have the cloud take care of these processes for you.

Start taking your data backup and disaster recovery seriously before you suffer from a situation that could easily have been prevented. To learn more about how you can take advantage of enterprise-level data backup and disaster recovery solutions, reach out to MSPNetworks at (516) 403-9001.

Business can be difficult when everything goes right, but when disaster strikes, serious issues arise that need to be answered fast and if you don’t have a business continuity plan in place, your business will be in peril. It doesn’t matter what you do, if circumstances decide that your business needs to shut down, having a disaster recovery policy in place as a part of a larger continuity plan, will do more than you think to save your business. 

Consider the Risks

Having a business continuity plan is to consider the risks your business is likely to face. Some of them have to do with your geographical location and the types of disasters that you could legitimately face, some have to do with operational downtime and the causes of that, but regardless of what risks your company could potentially face, having a plan to circumvent those potential risks is at the core of your continuity strategy. 

When we talk about disaster recovery, we are talking about instances that stop your business’ ability to function. Sure they could be flood, fire, or weather, but they could just as easily be computer component or utility failure. Most businesses were not ready for the COVID-19 pandemic, which turned out to be a huge disaster for a lot of businesses. The businesses that were able to quickly pivot to deal with the problems of state-sponsored quarantine or the lingering uncertainty of operations in response to the global pandemic, were the businesses that thrived over the past couple of years. 

So while you can’t rightly have a response to every problem, covering your bases to help maintain your business’ ability to operate is essential to overcoming these issues. Let’s take a look at some variables your disaster recovery strategy needs to ensure that digital assets are protected.

Data Backup and Recovery

The truth is that any business that is unable to recover data when struck by a data disaster will likely lose customers. This can happen from malware attack, component failure, or any natural disaster caused by weather. The best way to mitigate this scenario and protect your business’ data is to have a reliable, redundant backup of all files and applications. Not only should you keep an onsite backup, you need a solution to the fact that many times, that backup would be compromised due to the disaster. A cloud-hosted backup that is incrementally updated makes the most sense for almost every organization. 

Think about it, a data backup service can effectively keep your whole organization from descending into chaos. Think about all the negative circumstances there are surrounding the compromise of people’s personal and financial information, and a data backup and recovery service begins to pay for itself. Here are a few scenarios:

• Ransomware attack - Your business gets hit with one of the millions of ransomware attacks that hackers are disseminating and your files are locked down. With a timely backup, you can restore your systems rather than paying a huge ransom to get your files back. There’s no telling if you would even get them back, either, a whole other can of worms that you don’t want to face. 
• Natural disasters - Regardless of where your business is, disasters come in many forms. If you are knocked out of commission because of a natural disaster, ensuring all your operational data is safe in an offsite data center, it makes it easier to make the important moves necessary to get your business back up and running.
• Human error or sabotage - End users are the cause of 88 percent of all data breaches. With that knowledge, understanding your data is protected against employee mistakes, negligence, or sabotage makes dealing with an internal data breach that much easier. 

Those are just three examples where disaster recovery can save your bacon. Having the ability to restore your data and applications quickly in the face of a perilous situation not only provides peace of mind, it provides stability in situations that demand it. If you would like to talk to one of our security professionals at MSPNetworks about getting a backup system in place that is right for you, give us a call at (516) 403-9001 today. 

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that a lot can go wrong with business just about every day. If something were to go horribly wrong and you lost access to your data infrastructure, what would you do? Let’s take a look at some of these disaster scenarios and how much data backup and disaster recovery can make a difference for your organization.

Hardware Failure

Technology does not last forever, and you cannot expect it to either. Your components will fail eventually, so do your part now to prepare for such an event before it occurs. Monitoring solutions these days are excellent at predicting hardware failures and other such events, so consider implementing a solution like this to keep hardware failure from becoming a problem for your business.

Natural Disasters

If your business is not in a disaster zone, it can be easy to think that your organization won’t suffer from one. Unfortunately, even disasters are not limited by geographic locations; certain disasters are more prevalent in disaster zones, but others aren’t exclusive. Businesses are susceptible to hurricanes, tornadoes, structural fires, power surges, earthquakes, and so on, so you’ll need to have a strategy in place to address them from both data and human resource aspects.

Hacking Attacks and Security Breaches

It’s hard to tell when your business will be struck by threats, especially those infiltrating through the Internet. Regular backups can keep threats from derailing your organization’s operations by giving you an out in the event you need to “go nuclear” on any threats that breach your infrastructure.

User Error

People make mistakes, so you need to be ready for the fallout of these mistakes, too. Sometimes they can be so bad that you don’t have any other choice but to use a data backup to resolve the issue. User error can be avoided through adequate training as well as access control for critical systems and important data.

The biggest way to keep disasters from becoming issues for your business is to take proactive measures now and be ready for just about anything. One such way you can do so is by implementing data backup and disaster recovery of your own by working with MSPNetworks. Our solutions are designed to be automated and hands-off on your part, meaning you don’t have to risk things going even more wrong in the face of issues. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

When we are talking about the continuity of your business, we typically use the colloquialism “disaster” for just about anything that could put the brakes on your business’ ability to do business. But what happens when that “disaster” is an actual disaster and threatens to derail your business completely? Today, we take a look at some disaster preparedness tips that can quite literally save your business from ruin. 

Tip #1 - Plan Emergency Guidelines

Your business can be humming along as usual when a disaster strikes. This could be weather-related, a structure fire, a malware attack, or any other circumstance that threatens to take down your business for good. For these circumstances, you absolutely need a plan. Emergency preparedness is a difficult endeavor since there are many different scenarios where you would need to enact it, and many of them require different considerations. That’s without mentioning that every business has unique elements that need consideration. 

The first thing that needs to be accomplished—even before you begin planning how to combat each type of emergency—is to ensure that you have the resources in place that will work regardless of the type of disaster. This includes thorough instructions for your team, including assigning roles individual people will need to fulfill in the case of a disaster. Having proactive strategies in place to combat large-scale business interruptions may be difficult, time-consuming, and oftentimes costly, but you will be glad you have them if disaster hits your business.

Tip #2 - 3-2-1

You will also want to have a comprehensive data backup and recovery strategy in place since most small businesses won’t be able to have the type of contingency plan that would involve moving to a new location immediately. For many small businesses, having access to their applications and data is a crucial part of being able to mitigate downtime. 

At MSPNetworks, we suggest following the 3-2-1 approach to data redundancy. That is having three copies of your data, two of those copies stored onsite, with one stored offsite. This allows for fast recovery in the event that the “disaster” isn’t something that takes out your ability to do business at your brick and mortar location, but also protects against tragic events that render your place of business offline, without power, or worse.

Tip #3 - You Have to Test

Nothing could be worse than taking all the time, effort, and expense to plan for a disaster, assign roles, and train your people in their assigned disaster recovery roles only to find out that there is a critical failure somewhere in your disaster recovery strategy. It’s like building levees to keep the water out only to find out when the time comes that they weren’t maintained properly. 

To keep this from happening, you need to know, not think, but know that your disaster recovery strategy will work if it is called upon. Part of risk management—and this whole plan is nothing more than managing risk—is to ensure that you are able to weather the figurative (or literal) storm and come out okay on the other side. To accomplish this, you need to test your disaster recovery system, your guidelines, and your overall strategy to ensure that it will work if the time comes. 

If you would like to talk to an IT professional about disaster recovery and what your business should be doing to ensure that when a disaster strikes your business that you will be able to reliably continue operations, reach out to our knowledgeable staff at (516) 403-9001 today.

Data recovery is a major pain point for small businesses, but not all organizations have the same resources and assets that make it possible. Small businesses in particular are more prone to forego data backup and disaster recovery because it does not provide an immediate return on investment. Well, we’re here to tell you that this mindset is wrong.

In a lot of ways, having data recovery for your business is kind of like insurance; you want to have it in case an emergency strikes, as the disaster could potentially be more devastating than paying for the service itself. Think about it like this; does it actually hurt your business to have data backup and disaster recovery?

We’re here to walk you through some important information to consider for your own data backup and disaster recovery solution. You want to focus on two specific areas for your disaster recovery solution: how much data you need to restore, also known as the recovery point objective (RPO), and how long it takes to recover that data, or recovery time objective (RTO).

Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

Our earlier explanation is a bit simplistic, in all actuality. Recovery point objective is more clearly defined as the maximum age of files that need to be restored in the event of a disaster in order to resume normal operations. The RPO is expressed in days, hours, minutes, and even seconds moving into the past from the moment of the data loss incident. RPO also takes into account how often backups are taken and when.

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

As explained earlier, RTO involves how long the process of data recovery takes to get you back to a place where normal operations can resume. You generally want to shoot for a minimum amount of downtime for something like this to reduce wasted resources. Depending on how much data you have to restore, RTO might take some time. This is why RTO is often staggered into steps starting with the most critical of data. From there, data that is less important can be restored over a longer period of time, based on how necessary it is to get back to normal operations.

Both RPO and RTO play significant roles in helping your organization determine the best path forward in the event of a disaster. If you are not sure how to approach either of these requirements, we have just the solution.

Does your business need a hand with implementing a comprehensive data backup and disaster recovery plan? MSPNetworks can equip you with a BDR solution designed for maximum data restoration and minimal downtime. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

All businesses store and transmit data on a regular basis. From financial spreadsheets to client information to employee records, there is no shortage of data required by most organizations to maintain operations. What would you do if all that data were to suddenly vanish into thin air, or worse, be stolen by hackers?

We get it--nobody likes to imagine the worst-case scenario--but if you fail to do so, you could be leading your business right into a disaster that it has no hope of recovering from. Nobody wants to be that kind of business owner. You owe it to yourself, your employees, and your clients to keep business continuity at the top of your mind. To this end, we want to share with you a solution that all organizations should implement: data backup and disaster recovery. Many people think that data backup only has value if you need to use it, but the fact of the matter is that failing to have it can have devastating consequences.

Data Backup vs Disaster Recovery

Data backups are copies of your organization’s data that can be utilized in the event that something happens to the original. They are especially helpful in case your organization suffers from a data loss incident or a security breach. Data backup has historically been done through the use of tape. The process involved setting the tape, running the backup, and storing the tapes containing these backups somewhere on or off-site in the event that they might be needed some time down the line.

 Even though tape backup was the gold standard for quite some time, there are several issues with tape backup that modern technology solutions have addressed, such as slow implementation and deployment speed, user error, and storage space. Thanks to the advent of the cloud, businesses can automate the backup process entirely, eliminating the possibility of user error, speeding up the process, and freeing up on-site storage for other purposes.

 Data backup is but one part of a successful disaster recovery scenario. You need to have data backups that are available and ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice. Many of the disasters that could disrupt your operations, such as a data breach, natural disaster, or user error, have the potential to corrupt or destroy your data, as well as the infrastructure on which it is stored. Without access to data, operations cannot return to normal, resulting in unexpected downtime that can cripple your budget and sink productivity.

 As for disaster recovery, you want to aim for a solution that minimizes downtime. Ideally, the solution should be able to deploy a cloud-based backup directly to temporary hardware that you can utilize until an adequate replacement can be implemented. A good rule to follow is that you should have three copies of your data: one located on-site or on-network in case it’s needed, one located in a secure off-site data center, and one located in the cloud for ease of restoration. This kind of redundancy can minimize data loss and downtime as a result of a disaster.

Implement BDR Today

A backup and disaster recovery solution, or BDR, is the ideal solution to all of your organization’s data backup concerns. MSPNetworks can equip your business with this powerful tool and oversee its operation so that you don’t have to worry about how your business will survive the next disaster that strikes. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

With the future so uncertain, it’s no surprise that many organizations are turning their focus toward business continuity. There are a lot of components that go into making a successful continuity plan, and if you want to optimize your chances of survival in the face of a disaster, you need to ensure that all your bases are covered.

First, let’s take a look at what business continuity means, particularly in a post-pandemic world.

Defining Business Continuity

A lot of things can go wrong when you run a business. From natural disasters like electrical storms, fires, floods, and so on, to not-so-natural disasters like hacking attacks, ransomware, and user error, there are a lot of ways that your business’ operations could be disrupted for extended periods of time. At its core, the business continuity plan is a list of steps that must be taken following such a disaster to keep downtime and losses to an acceptable minimum. It should be noted that business continuity and disaster recovery, while two sides of the same coin, are not one and the same. Disaster recovery is simply one of the many components of a successful business continuity strategy.

The Primary Components of Your Strategy

Before identifying where you should invest your time and effort when planning for business continuity, it’s best practice to run what is called a business impact analysis, which helps to identify critical functions of your organization. Basically, you take a look at which operations would be most costly during a disaster scenario; this helps you shore them up with your business continuity strategy.

The various parts of your business continuity strategy will generally fall into one of these three categories, based on what the above critical functions are for your specific industry:

• Digital resources: Most businesses rely on data of some form or another, whether it is stored on-premises or in the cloud. Making sure that you retain access to that data in the worst of times will be crucial. Data backup systems can aid in this process and make certain that your digital assets are not lost forever.
• Human resources: Your business cannot function without its employees, so you need to account for them, too. Establishing a chain of command and guaranteeing that you stay in touch with any clients or vendors will be critical to ensuring business continuity.
• Physical resources: This includes things such as your office space, physical assets like your hardware solutions, and anything else of the sort that’s needed for your employees to do their jobs in an effective way. Especially if you rely on manufacturers or a supply chain, ensuring that this is not broken is critical to success in the face of a disaster.

At the end of the day, your business continuity strategy should be accessible to anyone who will need it, along with a list of necessary equipment, the locations of your data backups, and contact information for additional resources as needed.

Reinforcing Business Continuity

A business continuity strategy is only effective if it can be feasibly pulled off and it meets your expectations. Imagine going through a disaster scenario only to discover that your business continuity strategy simply does not return the expected results, or perhaps it doesn’t execute well at all. This is why it is important to routinely test and adjust your strategy; you don’t want to be caught unawares. Here are some details to look for when testing your business continuity plan:

• Expected downtime: Does your plan meet the expected minimum amount of downtime and the costs associated with it?
• Ease of implementation: Is your plan able to kick off without a hitch?
• Feedback from staff: Have you listened to key staff who might be able to identify opportunities for improvement?

Need a Hand Getting Started?

The world of business continuity can be a bit daunting, but in today’s business climate, you cannot afford to be passive with it. MSPNetworks can equip you with the tools needed to ensure minimal downtime and disruption in the face of a disaster. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.

With most businesses dipping into their disaster recovery strategies, and millions of workers either out of work or working remotely, it is honestly a great time to remind you that March 31st is World Backup Day. This is a day where we help promote the idea of taking backups of your crucial IT systems to ensure that you have access to your important information if a disaster were to strike your business.

Well, here we are...A disaster has struck millions of businesses from around the world in the form of Coronavirus. While having a dedicated backup system probably is the last of your worries at the moment, you may be surprised to learn just how important comprehensive backup strategies can be in times where you lose access to your physical infrastructure. 

Today’s redundancy best practices dictate that you keep at least one copy of your data in an offsite data center to ensure that you have access to it if something happens to your servers. We recommend skipping all of the consumer-grade backup solutions out there, and using a device called a BDR (short for backup and disaster recovery). In times like this, your BDR can be used as a temporary server, ensuring that you and your team have access to the data they need while they are being forced to work remotely.

This year’s World Backup Day may come at an inopportune time, but regardless of what is going on in the world the following practices remain important:

• The 3-2-1 Backup Method - The 3-2-1 method means that you keep at least three copies of your data. Two of these copies can be stored on central infrastructure, but one is kept in an offsite data center or other cloud storage facility.
• Backup Your Backup - You will want to check and double-check all backups to ensure they were successful. There are several reasons why a backup would fail, so you can’t just assume they are working as intended. Check them and then check them again. Your diligence will pay off when you need the data. 
• Protect Your Backup - You will want to put password protection on all devices that contain data. Today, many of these systems come with options for multi-factor authentication, which ensures that you get an extra layer of protection. You will also want to ensure that your storage is covered by an up-to-date virus and malware protection.

If you would like to talk to one of our IT experts about your data storage or building a backup and disaster recovery strategy that will work to ensure that your data is always protected, call us today at (516) 403-9001.

World events have always had a big impact on the banks that one finds on Wall Street, but in many ways, the one that coronavirus (COVID-19) has demonstrated has been unprecedented. As such, it almost provides a case study of the importance that disaster recovery planning has for any business… Wall Street institutions included.

As the virus has spread across the world, markets everywhere have felt its impact. Distribution patterns have been disrupted due to assorted blocks on travel. Additionally, the meetings and conferences that this industry typically sees have been cut off. Naturally, this has led to these banks rolling out their backup strategies, the pits that are typically filled with traders abandoned… but more on that in a moment.

How Has Coronavirus Encouraged Disaster Recovery Awareness?

Getting right down to brass tacks, it is clear that COVID-19 is a disaster, albeit one that you may not have considered a “business disaster” at first. However, anything that interrupts a business’ processes is considered a disaster… and it is safe to say that COVID-19 has done just that. So how do you prepare a business for a pandemic?

Actually, it isn’t all that different than what your routine business continuity processes should consist of, specifically, the fact that--in case of a disaster--you need to be sure that your business has the mobility it will need to survive.

Coronavirus’ hallmark is the social distance that is recommended to be kept between people to prevent the spread. Therefore, it makes sense that people would want to keep as far of a distance from each other as possible.

The solutions for remote work, software-as-a-service delivery, and cloud-based disaster recovery prove very valuable both when you want to give your users the capability to work from their home, as well as when your office is the location of a disaster event.

So, in order to protect your employees from the spread of coronavirus, you only need to be protecting your business from other disasters as well. Sounds like a win-win.

For assistance in implementing the technology needed to maintain your operations through any disaster, reach out to the professionals at MSPNetworks by calling (516) 403-9001.

The late American author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” Written in the 20th century, it has been put in practice by 21st century businesses. As the Internet has grown, the amount of companies expanded, and the amount of data that those companies collect has grown exponentially, especially now that there is a market for such data.

Today, many of the largest and most lucrative companies in the world, Google, Apple, AT&T, Amazon, Verizon, Facebook and Microsoft are all, more than manufacturers of computer-based goods and services, data brokers. These data brokers create services that they then sell to advertisers that allow them to target you based on the information these companies have of you, which can accurately tell how and what to sell you.

Since nearly everyone has a near-ubiquitously-connected experience there is a lot of data collected, bought, and sold every year and it’s big business. Facebook, a company whose main revenue stream is from selling advertising, made a net profit of nearly $16 billion in 2017. This tells us that if you have people’s data, you have people’s hopes, fears, and dreams, which means you can pretty easily get someone to pay you for access to that information.

For small businesses it’s much less lucrative. In fact, all the data your organization needs to keep, is probably necessary to simply do business, not to sell to advertisers. Facebook voluntarily gets a lot of personal information from every one of their users, as where the typical small business often has to strategize to just get a name and a phone number. The information that is sensitive (mostly customer information that you collect) has a lot of value to the people looking to steal it. So while you aren’t making billions of dollars selling consumer profiles, it is still a mightily important part of doing business, and needs to be secured.

Is Data a Commodity?

Technically speaking, it isn’t. Since a commodity’s value is based namely on its scarcity and the amount of capital that needs to be put up to create it, in both resources and labor, the data that is being purchased isn’t really a commodity. In lieu of the dissolution of the U.S. Net Neutrality laws, this has created the argument in the U.S. that since now it’s up to the telecommunication companies how they want to manage (or more accurately bill) data consumption, that they would throttle and tier service, something that isn’t possible with a true commodity, where there are laws prohibiting those types of practices.

On the other hand, Internet access is something that a majority of the commerce requires, and delivering data is in itself an expensive endeavor (infrastructure spending, development, utility costs, etc.) so telecoms, who are seeing their would-be profits syphoned by over-the-top content providers, and publicly demonized as a result of a very public lobbying effort to gain control of the ability to implement some sort of prioritization strategy, have to find a strategy to sustain their ability to get a workable return on their investments.

Securing Your Organization’s Data

Regardless of what your view of data is, it’s an important resource for your organization, and as mentioned above, it needs to be secured. For one of your company’s most important resources, data can be lost relatively easily, so there needs to be a concerted effort to keep your network and infrastructure free from the threats that could put your data at risk. At MSPNetworks, that’s what we do. We ensure organizations like yours get the professional IT expertise you need to work efficiently, effectively, and securely in what is the most turbulent time in computing history. With the litany of threats your business faces everyday, you need experts that have your back. We offer:

• Backup and disaster recovery: With a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery system in place, all of your organization’s data is safe, redundant, and able to be restored on demand.
• Proactive monitoring and management: By keeping a dedicated eye on your network and infrastructure, our technicians can be proactive.
• Patch management: By keeping all of your organization’s software up to date with the latest threat definitions, you can ensure that your software isn’t going to be a problem.
• Access control and threat detection: By having full control over who can access what, and a complete view of the entire network, we can keep people who aren’t supposed to see certain information from accessing it.
• Training: Most times, your own staff is responsible for data breaches and malware. We can train you all on what to look for to ensure that you are doing your best to keep your network and infrastructure free from threats.
• Around the clock support: If three out of every four businesses deal with phishing emails, and over 95 percent of all phishing emails deliver ransomware, chances are that if a mistake were to be made, you will need immediate IT support. Our support and help desk can remediate a lot of your security issues to keep downtime to a minimum.

With data such a major part of doing business today, ensuring you have the right solutions and support in place to be confident that any situation you face will be managed before it becomes a problem is in itself a benefit. Call MSPNetworks at (516) 403-9001 for more information.