Upstate companies are looking to the cloud and data centers to protect critical information
As companies plan their IT budgets for 2014, business leaders are – or should be – asking themselves questions like: What would happen if my business were to get hit by fire, flood or wind damage? Would my data be safe? What would happen if our company server went down? What would happen to our phone lines, and how could I conduct business if disaster strikes?
There are some common-sense steps businesses need to take, like conducting regular fire safety drills and having a plan in place for employee safety, but the bigger issue is how to protect company data, experts say.
According to the Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council (DRPC), most companies are putting their business operations at risk by not being properly prepared to recover their IT systems in the event of a disaster.
A recent survey by the DRPC that used the common grading system A (the best) to F (the worst), found that 72 percent of survey participants, or nearly three out of four companies worldwide, are failing in terms of disaster readiness, scoring ratings of either a D or F grade.
Business owners tend to think that only a major disaster such as a flood or fire will bring their business to its knees, but DRPC studies show that human error and software/hardware failures are the biggest cause of outage and data loss, the study’s authors said.
Updating Your Backups
Outdated technology can also be a problem, says Charles Johnson, CEO of EDTS, a regional IT services company specializing in advanced infrastructure, network security and managed IT services. Companies that are using a tape backup system will have a very slim chance of recovering data in the event of a disaster, he said. The technology is old, and the equipment to run tape backups on is hard to find. Also, tapes are magnetic and subject to environmental factors such as heat, humidity and static electricity, he said.
USB drives are also not a good business backup solution, Johnson said. He recommends using an image-based method for incremental backups every 30 minutes or so, depending on the business’s tolerance for data loss. The computers of key executives and personnel should also be backed up, not just the company’s servers, he said.
Companies tend to think that disaster recovery (DR) and backup solutions can be costly, but “we can think outside the box for customers that don’t have large budgets,” Johnson said, noting that virtual solutions are much more cost-effective than previous options.
Phone systems are another area that businesses don’t tend to think about as part of a disaster recovery solution – but they need to, Johnson said. “How are calls going to come in and be answered?” He recommends checking with the phone provider, as many are able to reroute numbers in an emergency situation.
Heading to the Cloud
Immedion, the first data center services company in South Carolina according to its owners, has an 11,000-square-foot data center in Greenville located in a nondescript office complex, with no signage anywhere, even on the door. Cameras, card readers and biometric scanners keep a watchful eye and grant access to only a few.
It sounds like a scene from a movie, but that’s the real world of companies providing data center services, says CEO Frank Mobley, who began Immedion in 2007. Security is tight, and that’s what their customers want, Mobley said.
Immedion’s customers use either its physical rack space in the data center or its cloud computing offering, backing up company data virtually across the Internet.
“Cloud computing is definitely the buzzword right now,” says Mobley, even though most of his customers are in a fifty-mile radius. The trend right now is companies migrating from physical servers to cloud solutions, he said.
“Many small to medium businesses are looking to move to the cloud at some point,” agrees Keith Coker, chief technology officer at Green Cloud Technologies, which helps companies move from a premises-based network to the cloud and locate a secondary site for disaster recovery.
Handle Sensitive Data With Care
Businesses subject to HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and PII (personally identifiable information) laws need to make sure they are following compliance regulations, Coker said. There are specific rules about how data needs to be handled, including encrypting data at rest and backups, he said.
Added Mobley, “It’s also important to have practical data in your DR plan, like a list of critical contacts and key employee contact information.”
Immedion has a room available for customers where, after a disaster, employees can come in, plug into a network and work.
“People tend to think of the big stuff like a fire or flood,” Mobley said, “but it’s the little stuff that usually causes an outage.”
Another technology that is becoming more popular is Virtual Desktop Interface (VDI), which allows employees to have a desktop, complete with applications they use daily, Coker said. VDI can be accessed from anywhere there is an Internet connection.
All experts agree that whatever backup and DR solution is put in place, companies should be sure to test it at monthly or at least quarterly. “Trust but verify” is the best approach, says Johnson.
Both FEMA and the American Red Cross have websites dedicated to business disaster preparedness. Both offer tips, checklists and other preparation tools. For more information, visit readyrating.org and www.ready.gov/business.
