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.

Business can get messy, particularly when variables outside your control are involved, which could spell doom for your organization. We’re talking, of course, about instances where your organization might be under a particularly large threat—instances where your data is at risk, which could jeopardize your future. Thankfully, there are options to mitigate this risk.

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.

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.

Multi-factor authentication is great when it works, but when it doesn’t, it can leave you in a pretty difficult situation. After all, what happens when all of a sudden, you cannot access your secondary authentication methods? We’re here to help you bypass this particularly challenging and frustrating scenario.

First, let’s look at how and why you might accidentally get locked out of your MFA methods.

How Might You Get Locked Out of Your MFA Solution?

Multi-factor authentication works by shoring up the problematic password and augmenting it with other, secondary methods of authentication that are more secure. The logic is simple; two keys for a single lock is more effective than one. You might use a password and a fingerprint scan, or a password and a USB key. Here is a brief rundown of various MFA methods:

• Something you know: A password, passphrase, or a PIN.
• Something you have: Something you own or have in your possession is required to access the account, like a key card, smartphone, or hardware-based security key.
• Something you are: Think biometrics, a fingerprint, or retina scan—something to confirm your identity.

By requiring more than just one form of authentication, it becomes much more difficult for an attacker to get into an account.

Of course, requiring two keys also means that if you lose one of them or forget one of them, you cannot access your account, leading to the exact opposite problem of hackers infiltrating your account.

Potential Solutions to Your Dilemma

Rather than give up immediately and start over, let’s consider two paths you might be able to use to gain access to your locked account.

You might be logged in elsewhere.
Most services and applications using MFA will have a website and an app, and chances are at least one of them will still have you logged in, if you’re like most individuals who dislike the hassle of logging into your account every time you have to use it. You can sometimes check the settings to discover an option that will let you temporarily disable two-factor authentication. You will probably have to provide the password, so make sure you don’t accidentally log out until you have finally gotten control of your account again.

Customer support might help.
Customer support might not be the most ideal solution to your problems, but it’s an effective one. Simply put, you never know what’s possible until you ask about what is possible. There might be a simple way you can get back into your account. If there isn’t, there might still be a way too, but it could take up to a couple of days before it takes effect.

Really, the best way to address this issue is to not find yourself in it in the first place. If you have to open a new account just to get around this frustration, make sure you contact the vendor to disable the old account so that no one can take advantage of the old one.

What Other Options Do You Have?

Most modern MFA tools have contingency plans built into them specifically for situations like these. One way is to set up multiple methods of secondary authentication, like having secondary phone numbers, email addresses, or biometrics in place, providing you with more ways to get into your account should you lose access to one of them.

Many MFA platforms also provide users with recovery keys or backup codes that you can use to communicate with the MFA platform, further guaranteeing that you are the designated user. If you generate one of these codes, you’ll want to ensure that it is protected in a safe place, preferably one with encryption.

If you go the security key route, you should consider getting a second key as well, just in case. Some services enable you to get multiple keys tied to your account specifically because they understand how easy it is to lose something important like this. Plus, if you ever upgrade your key, you’ll have the old one to use as a backup.

Let’s Make Sure Your IT Works

One of our big responsibilities as a managed service provider is making sure you get the value you expect out of your technology, which includes accessing your resources and accounts as needed. We can help you ensure that you are always connected to what makes your business run. 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.

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.

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.

I hope I don’t have to tell you how important your business’ data is to its continued survival, just as I hope I don’t need to explain why this makes this data a priority to protect, regardless of your business’ size. What I do want to explain is the concept of the 3-2-1 Rule and how it pertains to your data backup, and why we would recommend that one for your business’ purposes.

What Makes a Data Backup Such an Important Asset?

In a word: insurance.

Data is, as we’ve well established, a crucial component to your business’ continued operations and survival. Tons of it is generated, collected, stored, and updated each day to support our daily lives. If a business were to lose the data that it had accumulated, it would suddenly find itself in a very bad spot.

This is what makes the idea of a data backup such a good one—in many cases, it is this backup that keeps a business from going under. Of course, this requires that the data backup be properly maintained as well.

To put themselves in the position that offers the most success, we generally recommend that businesses prepare their data backups in accordance with the 3-2-1 Rule.

What is the 3-2-1 Rule of Data Backup?

Simple: keep at least three copies of your data, in two mediums or formats, at least one copy of which kept off site and separate from the others.

Why multiple copies? Multiple copies ensure that—should one of your backups become corrupted or infected or otherwise infiltrated, you have a spare or two to fall back on. While we say three, three should really be considered the bare minimum.

Why multiple formats or mediums? Well, consider what would happen if you made yourself two lunches in case it rained, but packed both into a paper bag. With both in a paper bag, the backup lunch would end up equally soggy as the original lunch. Keeping your backup in a different format or storage medium helps prevent it from being impacted by the same thing that damages the original.

Why the offsite version? Keeping a backup offsite helps to ensure that—even if a disaster were to completely annihilate your business’ physical location—the data you rely on would still be accessible to you by virtue of the data backup. This gives us something else that is important to consider: the concept of an “air gap” in terms of data security.

What is an “Air Gap?”

Let’s go back to our “backup lunch” example, for a moment. While having an extra lunch was a good idea—our example made it clear why—keeping it so close to the original removed its benefits. However, if we were to take the same concept of having a backup lunch and add in an air gap (keeping an extra lunch in the break room at work, or stashing a few bucks to order something out, perhaps), we removed the threat of a single disaster preventing us from eating.

In terms of the data on your network, an air gap is just that—physical distance and separation helping to isolate resources and protect them from many threats.

MSPNetworks is here to help businesses like yours manage all the complexities of their technology so that you have more room to succeed. Give us a call at (516) 403-9001 today to find out more.

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.

Data recovery can make your break your business’ continuity plan, and you absolutely cannot underestimate how important this is for the future of your organization. There are countless ways your business could lose data, and if you encounter even a single one of them, your organization could be put at serious risk. We’ll take a look at operational data loss and how your organization needs to strategize data recovery.

Data Value in Business
First, you need to realize just how important your data is to your business. There is a field of study called infonomics that can place a dollar value on your business’ data, but there is a surprising number of businesses that don’t place tangible value on their digital assets. As time passes, however, it’s becoming more apparent that organizations need to find the value in their data if they want to be prepared for the future. In particular, they are paying attention to this for the purposes of insurance and accounting, assigning monetary value to their data so they can judge their losses more effectively.

Since analyzing your data can make for more efficient and profitable business practices, being able to evaluate the value of your data in the event of a disaster is incredibly valuable. Basically, it’s all about guaranteeing your organization’s future and improving redundancy in the face of impossible odds. Here are some questions to ask yourself when thinking about the value of your data:

• How much capital would it cost to replace lost data?
• How much revenue is dependent on that data?
• How much money could you make by selling or renting the data you have?
• How much capital will you have to spend to protect this data?

Data is the life’s blood of your business. Without it, whether it’s destroyed in a natural disaster or stolen during a hacking attack, you face certain demise. Therefore, you need a way to restore it.

Data Backup
The best way to make sure data restoration happens is with a data backup solution. MSPNetworks can equip your business with a strategy that promotes redundancy. We do this by helping you implement a strategy that involves data backups being stored both locally and off-site, giving you more options and more copies of your data in the event anything goes wrong. BDR initially backs up the entire network, and it takes incremental backups following this throughout the workday, minimizing downtime in the long run and keeping data loss at an all-time low.

Disaster Recovery
The best data recovery strategy is one that never has to be used, but it still presents value as a contingency plan in the event that something does go wrong. The best way to pull this off is by having a dedicated recovery platform in place that takes advantage of these two factors:

• Recovery Point Objective (RPO) - The interval of time that might pass during a disruption before the amount of data lost exceeds the maximum threshold that your business can weather.
• Recovery Time Objective (RTO) - The duration of time within which data or business process must be restored after a disruption before it can be considered a complete break in continuity.

With a thorough disaster recovery strategy, you’ll minimize the chances of your business suffering needlessly from future disasters. To learn more, reach out to us at (516) 403-9001.