Records, Data and all that Jazz

This is important -if you have data, there is a risk that you will lose it. And that loss may be catastrophic for your business.

I remember very early in my computer using days being told that “she who does not back up shall be sorry”  Oh how true and it applies to he as well as she!

I heard of story last week about a  client approaching an IT person after a disaster – caused by poor IT systems set up – removed 13 YEARS of business data from the server and “backup” system.

You do need a real back up to a separate piece of media and removed offsite so that fire or burglary cannot lose the back up as well as the original

Some years ago my family owned a computer business and one of our clients had backed up from one computer to another – then one night both were stolen.

I have just had a major IT meltdown in my business,
•    First the laptop needed a new motherboard and was out of action for two weeks
•    Then the server stated hanging – oh dear – I had been budgeting for that as I knew its age and it was definitely past the recommended use by date.

Thank fully the backups had all worked and my new server duly arrived and I accessed my date from an external drive and as it was holidays, there was no one but me wanting to access the network  This was able to be backed up easily because my tech has copied the server setup, not just the data so that it was easier to rebuild the new server.
•    Then two days after the server was commissioned, my desktop computer froze irretrievable.  The technical term used by the IT man was that it “shat itself and cooked the hard drive at the same time”.
•    Bother.

I back up my outlook regularly to the server and have no data on hard drives other than what I need to travel on my laptop so data was not an issue  I had no idea however that all three could go down within one month.

I have a good backup system and have just updated from tapes to removable drives.  They go offsite.  I also burn a series of DVDs of my data so that I have multiple copies in case of disaster.  But what a palaver and expense

I also have good virus software and firewall

Do You?

Part of any good business system, even for a micro business, is making sure that your data is secure.
Looking at records and data management is one part any good management system.  ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 help you formalise your record and data management

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

Tweet This Post

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 12:21 am and is filed under Sustainable Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.