How Hands-Free IT Support Prevents Catastrophic Data Loss - NPIT

How Hands-Free IT Support Prevents Catastrophic Data Loss

Simon
Director

Worried that your organization is at risk for cyber attacks and data loss? Protect yourself and prevent incidents by exploring what IT support can do for you.

How important is data to your business? The answer is that it is probably essential. We rely on valuable data daily to run our businesses- we probably even take it for granted. But what would happen if you were to suffer some form of catastrophic data loss?

Data loss prevention is vital in any business. If you haven’t invested in measures that protect you from a network breach or have the facilities such as IT support at hand to deal with data recovery, you could be on course for a disaster. 

So, what can you do to protect yourself from the type of hardware failure or breach that could be costly?

Hands-free IT support services are the answer to your problems. In this article, we’ll discuss how IT support can help you prevent the kind of data disaster that could be costly to your business. 

Do I Need IT Support?

You might be asking yourself whether you need IT support. If you run a small business, you might not think that you do. After all, you may have someone within your organisation with the skills and know-how to handle all your IT needs. 

They may not have been hired as your in-house IT technician, though. If that’s the case, then you might be spreading your team too thinly and taking team members away from their actual jobs to worry about your IT. 

Where you don’t have a dedicated IT department taking care of your IT support needs, you run the risk of mistakes being made. This could result in data being lost or damaged. 

Aside from the practicalities of managing your IT needs, there is a security risk to think about. According to the UK government, 32% of businesses had a cybersecurity breach in the past year. The average cost to a business was £4,180. 

When almost one in three companies are affected by cybercrime in this way, you can see that there is a real need to protect yourself. 

So, to answer the question “do I need IT support?” the answer is a resounding, yes!

What Does Data Loss Mean?

Data loss relates to when your data has either been deleted or corrupted and can no longer be accessed. There are several ways in which this can occur. The most common problem that causes data loss is a hardware failure, problems with software, or human error. 

In addition to this, you could lose data through someone within your organisation, or outside of it tampering with your data. 

Of course, data loss is not the only problem that you may encounter. Data leakages can also be catastrophic. You may not lose the data in the instance of a data breach, but copies may be taken in a ransomware attack. 

However, if you lose your data; having the right IT support in place will help you to protect it. 

Carrying Out Regular Backups 

Your IT support company will carry out regular backups of your data. This means that all business-critical data that you have stored on your servers; be that emails, databases, documents, spreadsheets, customer data, or software needs to be backed up regularly. 

Every company needs to have procedures in place and a routine of backing up your valuable data. This will mean that in the event of your data either intentionally or accidentally getting deleted or corrupted, it can be recovered easily to the last point at which it was backed up. 

In addition to backing up data, your IT support company will test to ensure that your data is definitely recoverable. 

Setting Recovery Point Objectives 

An essential element of your backup process will be setting your recovery point objectives. This establishes the time period that data might be lost from an IT service due to a data catastrophe. 

For instance, if you set your recovery point objective to one hour, then this means that in the event of a data disaster, you will only ever lose a maximum of one hour’s worth of data. The length of time that you set will depend on your business. An hour may even be too long. 

Patching and Updating Your Systems

Something else that should be an essential element of your business’ data loss prevention procedures, regardless of size, is patching. 

While this is most commonly associated with carrying out security updates, it also ensures that systems are operating to the highest standard. Patches tend to get released to overcome problems to do with critical stability and other major risks.

Leaving your system without being patches can mean that they will become unstable and at risk of crashing. This, in turn, can lead to data loss. 

Carrying out regular and proactive updates on your system will save you time and money when it comes to data loss prevention. 

Carrying Out Upgrades

Beyond patching, it is essential that you understand that nothing will last forever. You will need to upgrade your software and systems before they get too old. 

There is only a limited lifespan to hardware. To protect yourself from data loss, you will need to replace things like hard drives every few years. 

Regardless of how big your organisation is, you will need to know all of the software and hardware on your network. You will need to know how old it is and when it will need replacing. 

Having an inventory and a schedule for carrying out upgrades to your systems is vital. 

Protect Your Business From Data Loss

No Problem Technologies are here to help you with all of your data protection needs. We can provide you with hands-free IT support that will help you to ensure all your data is kept as safe as possible. 

To find out more about the services that we offer, get in touch today.