Real SMB IT; Risk Of Data Loss Starts Inside

Some estimates put up to 66% of data loss either accidentally or deliberately performed by insiders.

That is a dry statistic.

Real World

Three times in the last two weeks, and twice today alone, our development staff accidentally deleted data on production servers. Twice were accidentally writing errant database delete statements that deleted entire tables in a database.

The third was dumping data into the wrong spot, overwriting the stuff that was supposed to be there.

The SMB Takeaway

Sure, outsiders, hackers etc are a risk. But the largest risk is inside your walls.

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

Real SMB IT: Drive Mirrors Are NOT a Backup

I was talking with the owner of an IT Services organization. His business is outsourced network and IT support, as other IT services to smaller businesses.

He told me that he was talking to a prospective client and asked what backup strategies were in place, the prospective client said he did not need any back up as the server disks were mirrored.

Hoo Boy!

If you are not familiar with a basic Disk Mirror, mirroring is simply keeping two identical copies of all data on separate hard drives on the server.  In the event that one disk fails, data on the other is still available until the failed disk is replaced.

Let Me Count The Ways…

1) Mirrored drives are exact replicas (exact copies) of all data written to the server drives. Well, If you accidentally delete that critical financial plan, it is deleted. Period. There is no second copy on that mirrored disk, it gets deleted too. (I have had three of those in the last two weeks. More on those in a later post)

2) Mirrored drives are designed to protect your data in the event that one disk in the mirror pair fails. That does not help you if there is a more catastrophic failure on the server. That could include the mirror controller failing among other events.

The SMB Takeaway

Single server disk mirroring can mitigate one single disk drive failure. They are not an adequate backup and recovery strategy.

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

SaaS – When Policies Change, Are You In Or Out?

A Change In Policy

We use a hosted, online Software as a Service tool. It is not a huge or complex one, but use it for a key internal function.

As the possibility of the vendor going out of business, shutting down, or being aquired always exists, we negotiated at the outset that we wanted periodic copies of our data.

In this case, the vendor was simply supplying a raw backup of the database. In the event they did shut down, our development team could at least extract the data for import into any other tool that we wished to use.

A few weeks ago I stopped getting that data backup.

An email with their tech support was responded to with this;

Hi Elliot,

I am with XXXXX support. I tried to contact you few minutes back to discuss this issue and reached your voicemail. I left a voicemessage for you. Currently there are some changes in our company policies because of which database backups are not provided

The SMB Takeaway

Using software applications ‘out in the cloud’ has some benefits. But there are risks.

In this case our data backup strategy for our corporate data had the rug pulled out from underneath it.

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

Photo Credit JM3 via flickr

Real SMB IT: Got Laptops?

Laptops - Backup!

Like phones and PDA’s. laptops are mobile devices.

They can move around daily, plus, as they aren’t nailed down they are at a much higher risk of theft and can breakage.

Yet even though laptops have this higher risk of losing some of your corporate data, too often they rarely (if ever) have all of that corporate data on them backed up!

With desktop PC’s, it is easy to have a policy that all critical data be stored on your servers. It is even fairly easy to simply schedule data backups of those workstations if you so choose.

But with laptops?

If they are not in your office – well, a backup gets harder to do.

You can try to get people to regularly move their data to your network servers – but people won’t. Too much effort or too much time, or too hard.

Mobile vs. Remote

When looking at ensuring that data on laptops is properly backed up, it can help to divide your laptop users into two camps. The first one, lets just call Mobile.

These folks work primarily in your office, may travel once in a while, and generally use the laptop because it adds flexibility to their work environment.

I personally would fall into this category, the laptop basically travels between my office and home as it allows me to get caught up with work that is behind, plus allows me to quickly respond to alerts and problems with our IT infrastructure.

Then we have the truly Remote.

These men and women are either true Road Warriors, gone for days or weeks at a time, or they work out of remote locations or offices, visiting your facility a few times per year.

The Backups

It can be easier for the ones I simply define as mobile. You have the choice of a policy that all corporate data resides on servers, and and that only copies be carried on the laptop, or you can possibly have a backup job that runs during the day, specifically for the laptops.

Personally, I don’t like doing backups during the day, but as a small business I compromise. Those of us lower on the corporate totem pole have the server storage policy, but an exception made for the senior executives.

For the truly remote workers, it gets more difficult. I can supply backup devices that plug into their laptops, I can even subscribe to online backup and storage services.

The Problem?

People are people – and unless you make it automatic – most simply won’t do it. Part of it is regularly communicating the risks, and if you are just reviewing backup services for remote workers, ensure that minimal user intervention is required. The more automatic it is for those remote workers, the better off you will be when it comes time to rescue that data.

You can get updates to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

Death, Taxes, And IT Failures

Sooner or later, it is inevitable that something in your IT infrastructure is going to fail.

Like anything with many parts, failure is going to happen. It is not If, just When

Too often, small businesses don’t plan for that when.

Sure somebody may be sticking tapes in a backup tape drive. But there are still many issues that must be planned for.

Is your critical data actually being backed up onto those tapes? 

You will probably be surprised to find that data has exploded into areas that were not originally part of your backup plans.

Have restore tests been made?

It should be done at least once a month – the day you lose it all is not the day that you want to find that none of those backups have been working properly.

How about your plans if it is the server that controls your backup tapes is the one that fails?

Disaster Recovery

The SMB Takeaway

As managers in the SMB space, you should have at least basic disaster recovery plans. And you should ensure that those recovery plans are practiced periodically.

Because disaster recovery practice is too late if the failure has already happened!

If you have had to fight through a failure that you were not prepared for – let me know!

You can subscribe to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

Photo Credit Topato’s via flickr

Real SMB IT; 4 Weeks To A Better Backup Rotation

As a smaller SME business owner or manager, I am sure that you understand the need to ensure that your key data is being backed up religiously.

If you are like most smaller businesses, your standard backups will be made to standard tape backup drives.

Tape Drive

So, Do You Have A Tape Rotation Plan?

Ask yourself where those tapes are. Are they all sitting in one place right beside the server tape drive?

And ask your self how many tapes there are. Are there only a couple that get reused each day?

Why Ask these questions?

If a pipe bursts and sprays water all over your server and tapes. Can you recover?

If your CFO finished her budget numbers last Friday before flying out for that week long conference.And those numbers had been accidentally deleted during her absence, could you still recover it after one week? 

Or how about two weeks? 

Or did this Fridays tape backup overwrite last  Fridays tape backup, killing any hope of recovering those numbers?

Tape Rotation

Ensure that you have an explicit tape rotation plan that includes at least a portion of those tapes being stored off site. The number and amount may be dependent on the value of your data, but that will be another post.

At the very least look at a relatively simple rotation that still gives you the following benefits.

* The ability to restore daily data every day for one week

* The ability to restore weekly data every week for one month

* The ability to restore monthly data for one year (or more)

This a simple rotation suitable for smaller businesses.

Simply ensure that you have four weeks of tape media (ie weeks 1 through 4)

Label your tapes daily, (IE Monday Week 1) 

Every Friday, ensure that you rotate that tape off site, It could be a safety deposit box, or what ever you have access to. And return the next Fridays tape.

On the final Friday of the month, rotate that tape off site and replace it. Leave it off site.

Sure, those tapes can seem expensive, but they are a lot less expensive than your business!

You can subscribe to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

Backup – The Risks

Mell Duval writes at CIOzone  about an internal survey they performed on security threats.

I have spoken (written?) many times about the importance of back up strategies.

Sure, there are server crashes, hackers and various others. 

But the number 1 identified risk?

Careless employees – 27.6%

The SMB Takeaway

As a manager in the SMB space, you can call it careless, or just  mistake.

The result is the same.

You can subscribe to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

How Much Data Can You Afford To Lose?

What critical data are you backing up every day?

But more important; When are you backing it up?

Just overnight? Or does last person out the door hit ’start’?

What is that data worth to you?

Is that A lot of questions?

Yes it is, and you should have the answers.

Because as important as backing up your data is. It is important to look at how much data you are willing to lose.

Why do I want to lose anything at all!

If something critical dies and you have to resort to going to your backup tapes to get it back. Well, by definition you will only have your data up to the time that backup was made.

If you accidentally delete that plan you were working on for the last few days, getting it back from last night’s backup tape may not be critical, it may mean some frustrated rewriting of what you did today.

But what if it was your point of sale data? Sure, you can restore it from last nights backup tape, but every sales transaction you made today is gone!

Can you redo all of that?

What is that data worth to you if you no longer have it?

Can it be recreated manually some way?

So, what is that data worth?

If it is not worth much, less frequent backup is perfect.

If it is worth the business. Maybe a little more often!

As Managers in the SME space, we may think we are covered by our current backup strategy – but ask your self truly – are you?

You can subscribe to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

Photo Credit zizzybaloobah

Real SMB IT: Backing Up Data, It’s Just A Start

Backing Up Data, It's Just A Start

 

 

As a SMB, I certainly hope that you regularly back up all that critical data that you have.

I also hope that you regularly test those data backups. 

Because all the backups in the world won’t help you if that e-mail or ERP server dies, and the back up tapes were defective.

But that is only the beginning.

An interview with author Geary W. Sikich at IT Business edge titled; Backing up Technology Only Part of the BC/DR Puzzle

Elliot’s Note:  BC is business continuity planning, and DR is disaster recovery planning -

Has a good reminder that a simple checklist of servers is not sufficient.

You cannot neglect the human issues of whom, where, and how you will operate if a calamity strikess your place of business.

You can subscribe to this blog by clicking the RSS icon on the Home Page!

 

Photo Credit Mrs. Gemstone

Real SMB IT – Data Backup and Recovery

I have been in the technolgy business for quite a while. In this business – the ability to ensure that all your business data is backed up and recoverable should there be a failure of any kind is always top of mind.

I had an incident recently that had me thinking back at data recovery over the years (sort of mental doodling!)- and unfortunately some “non” recoverable data as well. One memory that has stuck with me; Many years ago I worked with a software development outfit that had a small business service tool that was still good old MS DOS based. Backing up the data was through a menu option and just needed a good old 3.5 inch floppy disk.

One thing that you must know – magnetic media does not last forever. No matter how often we communicated that, there were customers that backed up their data to the same floppy disk for years. And never knowing at what point that the little floppy had finally died. In one case, we looked at this old floppy disk that looked it had been run over by a truck. It had been carefully loaded into the floppy drive for who knows how many years. The time came that the data needed to be restored….. well it was dead.

Today you will be using a tape drive of some sort for your backups. A question though – do you know how old those tapes are? have you ever tried restoring data from them? If you can’t answer those two questions, a little investigation is in order. (I try to utilize tape tape media for only one year before it is retired)

I always recommend a 4 week tape rotation with weekly and monthly off site storage for businesses in the SMB space. (Although there are more and more online storage services coming around, I have not tried them – maybe a future post)

The final piece though – have you considered what type of tape hardware that you are actually backing up with ?

If you are like many, you probably have old Vinyl LP records hanging around, Maybe some 8-Track cassettes hiding somewhere, how about 8mm movies? Next question – Can you play them on anything still?

The hardware creating those backups does not last forever either – like 8 Track players, once your oldie dies all the tapes are useless. As an IT Manager I agree that it is a challenge to convince my boss of this. It is like insurance! – You hope you won’t need it; Until you do need it!

Like insurance, having a second piece of identical backup hardware can pay dividends if the “oldie” decides that life is to difficult and self destructs.

In short;

Your tape media has a life span – replace it
Your backups need to be tested by doing data restores periodically
Your backup hardware is not going to last forever either – plan for it!