Business continuity plan
According to a Chamber of Commerce publication, 93% of business experienced irregular intrusion or an ICT virus in the previous year. 61% experienced a computer-related crime.
Critically - and showing the urgent need for any business, large or small, to have a business continuity plan - 70% of businesses that had a disastrous data failure went out of business in the next year!
[Source: David Frost, Director General of the BCC, March 2003.]
But using media such as CDs, tapes, or USB sticks, does not help, if the backups are not done regularly and also kept securely off-site! So we really do recommend that you make internet backup a key component of your business continuity plan.
Do you belong to the more than 90% of companies who do not have a backup strategy in place, let alone a full business continuity plan?
Yet you have fire insurance, right? But what good is it getting replacement computers after a fire if you don't have the data? Like, all your customers are going to send you a statement of what they owe you?
Take the first step in your business continuity plan today and protect your data with regular backups. To get you under way, we have an offer where you can backup 2Gb FREE. Why not try that as your first step, as an evaluation? You will see how simple it is to protect data, and carry out a restore on demand, and can then expand to bigger volumes as and when required. And it really is so inexpensive to backup 30Gb
Remember that the national average is that 60% of business critical data is held on laptops, and these often fall outside the "backup strategy". Ensure that your business continuity plan takes account of this, as it is so easy and affordable to assure regular laptop backups.
Are laptops redundant?
Route1 of Canada have launched the innovative MobiKEY, which looks deceptively like a standard USB memory stick, but which is smart card enabled. The first time you connect it to your desktop PC, it installs software on your PC. Then, any time, anywhere in the world, you can plug your MobiKEY into a USB port of an internet-connected PC and are connected safely and securely in seconds to your desktop.
The MobiKEY leaves no trace on the computer you have visited, and is useless to anybody who finds it, as you have to use your password to log on. So data remains safe, and all issues of an organisation's data and privacy being violated are taken care of, unlike if a laptop is stolen.
As a further step, should you not be able to access your premises, staff can work from anywhere using their MobiKEY. If the experts are right when they say it is "when" rather than "if" there will be a bird flu pandemic, the MobiKEY forms an inexpensive route to business continuity planning!
A different approach is taken by Australian company Vidog, with their
finger print protected flash drive (up to 4Gb), which gives you direct connection
to a PC, domain, or network, but also carries several applications on the
USB stick, such as an email client, messengers, and Skype.
An alternative for travel use is to carry both programmes and data on a
USB stick, with the "Stiqmo"
set of portable applications and one-click encryption. This works on any USB stick of your own with more than 768 Mb storage,
so you can run presentations from any USB device through ANY Windows PC, as well as taking your email and browsers with you.
You can also deploy complete workstations without changing anything in clean installations!
Phone numbers
An essential component in your business continuity planning process is to allow for the worst case scenarios: what would you do in the case of fire or other serious disaster?
The insurance will provide for replacement furniture and computers, and - if you've taken our advice on internet backups - you have your data. But while the insurance will also buy you a new phone system, you could be up and running at replacement premises using the previous phone number, if you have really planned ahead.
We can provide phone numbers for just about any area code in the UK (and for lots of other countries too!) that are routed via the internet to where you wish to answer the calls. So that could be in your office today, and, if you had a fire overnight, to a business centre or anywhere with IP access tomorrow.
Ask for details!
