Directive Blogs

Let me ask you this: does your business have a dedicated data backup and disaster recovery system? If not, we need to talk. A comprehensive backup and disaster recovery platform (BDR) can turn out to be one of the most critical parts of managing a business’ IT infrastructure. By having a plan to turn to in the event a serious problem such as ransomware or a natural disaster descends upon your business, you can be better prepared. 

The threat landscape is filled with more types of malware than ever. To keep your business’ network running effectively, it’s important to have a strategy to keep malware out. Today, we’ll talk about a few basics you should know to keep your cybersecurity strategy working properly.

Data loss is no joke - and we’ve heard plenty of stories from people who have experienced it firsthand, when personal or business data was lost. We appreciate everyone who shared their experiences with us, and allowed us to post them here. First, we’ll tell the story of someone who learned something in college that wasn’t in the syllabus.

Don’t forget to share your own stories with us in the comments!

Data is of key importance to many modern businesses, and with the help of a managed service provider, it can become even more useful. Here, as we continue our series on the value that a managed service provider can offer you, we’ll focus on the ways that data can be harnessed to your business’ advantage.

When we discuss backup and disaster recovery (BDR), it may seem as though we’re talking about a single process - after all, there’s just one acronym for it. However, the reality is that - while these two processes are related to one another - backup and disaster recovery each require a different preparation process, with different considerations made for each.

With World Backup Day coming and going approximately one month ago, it hasn’t been long since we should all have been reminded of the importance of data backup. Regardless, there is never a bad time to discuss the harsh realities of business data loss, and how businesses can avoid it.

Business disasters come in all shapes and sizes, which makes it all the more important that you take the time to prepare for those that your business may be susceptible to. This strategy needs to contain numerous considerations, based on the scenario at hand. After all, there is no shortage of events that can lead to disaster in the business world.

Hurricane season can be a scary time for business owners, as those in at-risk climates can never feel safe from these kinds of unpredictable and devastating storms. In particular, those who aren’t prepared to face this destruction are in considerable danger of having their organizations ended for good following a disaster event like a hurricane. We’ll help you make sure your business doesn’t suffer this same fate the next time it stares down a disaster.

Data backup is a critical part of any business endeavor, because if you don’t have one all of your hard work could be taken away in an instant. It’s not great to think about, but your business’ infrastructure could be put at risk of sudden annihilation. With so much at risk, what is the best way to approach managing your data? There are a lot of options out there, but there is only one that will allow your organization to get back in action following a crippling data loss incident.

March 31, 2018 is World Backup Day. Data is a commodity, but unlike other commodities--it can be replicated without hurting its value. As a result, data backup has become a critical need for the modern business. World Backup Day has been created to remind people to protect their assets by backing up their files.

Your business relies on its data to succeed, which lends itself to the fact that your organization needs to have some sort of security measures put into place to guarantee its safety. 2018 is thought to be the year of ransomware, so it stands to reason that your business should prepare to deal with it. One of the best ways to deal with ransomware is to make sure that your company has a plan to restore data affected by said ransomware.

Today most companies utilize computers in the dissemination of their services. Whether you run an office that deploys dozens of computers and multiple servers, a busy restaurant with a full-scale point of sale system, or a contractor that only needs one computer with invoicing software, you depend on your data. Since most businesses also provide goods and services for many people that indirectly depend on it, having a plan to protect the business from potential devastation is important.

Nobody ever wants to admit that their business has a problem with security. Unfortunately, as the one responsible for the future of your organization, you have to consider all possible outcomes of any potential data loss incident. Furthermore, many of these incidents are beyond your control. Thankfully, you can soothe the pain of a data loss disaster by thinking ahead and planning for the worst.

Especially with so many people claiming to be tech-savvy, asking a question about IT can be a bit nerve wracking. Because of this hesitation, there are a lot of people who don’t ask questions about technology because they feel like their questions might be stupid. For example, having an updated operating system is a term that is tossed around a lot by IT professionals, and even some not-so-professionals.

Data backup. It’s something that all businesses need, but not all businesses know how to approach the implementation of it. This is largely due to the tendency to underestimate how disastrous data loss scenarios can be for their business. You know how it goes; it’s impossible, until it happens. Thankfully, you can significantly reduce the damage done by data loss incidents with a little bit of preventative, proactive thought and a comprehensive backup system.

Consumers can now take full advantage of a data backup system that’s both affordable and convenient, allowing them to keep their data as safe as can be in the event of a disaster. While it might not be ideal for business purposes, the average PC user can surely benefit from Google Drive’s new backup system, which takes advantage of the Backup and Sync application.

When we talk about best practices, we are typically referring to the practices used by successful companies to garner the best results. A new study by Disaster Recovery has shown that, as backup and recovery solutions go, enterprises are providing some pretty disappointing results as many fail to continuously back up their data and it results in additional inherent risk.

No business owner wants to experience data loss in any way, shape or form, which is why it’s so crucial that preventive measures are taken. If you don’t have protections in place, you may find yourself out of business due to a data loss disaster. While that’s certainly the worst-case scenario, the other consequences of data loss are downright troublesome in their own right.

As a business owner, you’ve surely thought about what the future holds for your organization. However, one of the things that you need to think about that’s not often considered is the event of a data disaster. How can your business bounce back from such a catastrophic event? One of the first steps is understanding your data backup and disaster recovery process, as well as how you can improve your current setup.

No business owner likes to think about it, but every business needs to be prepared for the possibility of their data disappearing. Have you taken steps to ensure that, should some disaster strike, you will be prepared to dust yourself off and continue operations? Furthermore, are you sure that your preparations will be sufficient and your data will be preserved?

Data might be the single most important asset of any business, but you would be shocked to hear about how many organizations don’t consider data loss to be a prominent threat. The fact remains that it doesn’t take an immense disaster to wipe out an entire infrastructure, and that you should expect the worst to happen regardless of how unlikely it is to do so.

Data backup is a critical component of a business continuity plan, but there are many businesses that fail to understand why data backup is important, as well as what it entails. We want to clear up some facts about how data backup is important, and why you need it for your business. Only with a thorough understanding of how your data backup saves your infrastructure can you effectively use it for business continuity.

Data Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) isn’t your average data backup solution. In fact, it’s far from any traditional backup tool that you might have used in recent years. Here’s how BDR is changing the way that organizations approach business continuity and ensuring their continued success and sustainability.

March 31st is World Backup Day, and it’s the perfect time to evaluate the redundancy and reliability of your data.

The continuity of your business should be a major priority, especially considering how the livelihood of yourself and your employees is on the line. Believe it or not, there are some organizations out there that don’t give a second thought to the preservation of their data and critical assets. Therefore, it’s clear that you need to pay proper attention to how your organization handles problems like natural disasters, data loss, hacking attacks, and other hazardous incidents.

The cloud is a fantastic addition to the business environment that can aid your organization in achieving great things with your technology, but some professionals still feel that the cloud isn’t as secure as it needs to be, especially in light of the incredible number of threats loose on the Internet. However, contrary to popular belief, the cloud is a very effective way of storing data, particularly for your business’s data backups.

A business’s data is one of its most valuable assets. Without it, your organization would fail to function and, more likely than not, crash and burn. This is the reason why hackers try so hard to steal or corrupt data from businesses just like yours; they understand its value, and it’s about time that you do the same. Therefore, protecting your business’s continuity by backing up your data is of critical importance.

There’s no question that data backup is absolutely critical for the success of any modern-day business, but how does your organization go about it? Just like how we rely on quick snapshots to capture moments with our smartphones or digital cameras, most backup solutions take advantage of image-based backup technology. How does this kind of data backup work, and what are the benefits it provides your business with?

When it comes to your business’s technology infrastructure, the more basic it is, the better. Granted, a simple IT infrastructure isn’t always easy to install, especially when there are so many great solutions on the market that can be implemented to achieve optimal efficiency. Sometimes the best IT solutions are those that make your technology simpler to manage, and your network less complicated. That said, you’d think redundancy would complicate this formula, but it’s actually a necessity for your business continuity plan.

Today is Disaster Preparedness Day! This means that there’s no time quite like the present for preparing for potential future data emergencies. While the type of disasters vary immensely depending on your business’s geographical location, every business needs a disaster recovery plan implemented as soon as possible.

September 30th is Disaster Preparedness Day. This gives us a great reason to go over some of the most common disasters that can potentially affect your businesses. There are dozens of potential disasters to choose from, but since we’re an IT company, we’re going to focus on the four top disasters that can mess with your company’s IT infrastructure.

If you don’t already have a backup solution put in place, no time is better than the present to consider what it would cost your business if you were to lose everything in one fell swoop. There are plenty of ways you can back up your data, but the reality of the situation is that if you were to lose your business’s information, you wouldn’t be able to continue operations. It would put the entire future of your company in jeopardy, so you need to be absolutely certain that your backup and disaster recovery solution is fool-proof.

When it comes to your business' backup, you have a ton of options, but how much thought have you honestly put into it? It’s naturally one of the most imperative parts of your entire IT infrastructure, so you want to pay particularly close attention to how you are storing and receiving your data in the event of a disaster.

It’s the goal of every IT administrator for every part of their network to run smoothly. Achieving this level of IT perfection is a beautiful thing that makes the job of everyone in the company easier. Unfortunately, all it takes is one component to fail for this dream of IT utopia to come crashing down.

Your business relies on its IT to get things done, but if disaster were to strike, would you be able to recover efficient operations without having to deal with the numerous headaches that are associated with downtime? Even if you have instituted a reliable backup solution, your business could still be hurting if your backup failed. Here’s how you troubleshoot this scenario.

2015 isn’t the year to go without backups. If there’s anything 2014 showed the world, it’s that businesses can fall victim to data breaches when they least expect it. You want to be prepared in the event of a data breach or data loss, and the easiest way to do that is by taking advantage of an external backup. Unfortunately, even an essential solution like data backup can be forgotten amidst the everyday operations of the average business owner.

You’re walking your dog when all of a sudden, you get this game-changing idea for how to manage your technology. You get excited to integrate it into your IT strategy, but by the time you get home, the thought is gone and you can’t remember it. This “Eureka” moment is just like data loss; it could occur at any time, and without warning, whether you’re ready for it or not.

During the broadcast of Super Bowl XLIX, Coca-Cola premiered a bold new commercial meant to inspire viewers, make the world (wide web) a happier place, and of course, sell Coca-Cola. To be sure, it was a monumental marketing effort, but for those of us in IT, we find it cringeworthy and must object to the commercial’s content.

There are a number of disasters which could hamper your business’s continuity, but the most dangerous ones occur when you least expect it. Despite this, it’s not always clear that your business needs a data backup and disaster recovery solution until it’s too late. You stand to lose everything your business has worked so hard for by ignoring potential threats, many of which can be prevented by simple proactive measures.

You always hear about IT professionals discussing the importance of data backup. Why? Because it’s one of the single most-important processes you can integrate into your business continuity plan. While all managed services present a value to your business, only the Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution is capable of restoring data that has been lost thanks to unexpected hardware failures or natural disasters.

There are several factors at work when scoping out your current network security situation. According to a study from 1&1, 67 percent of people confirmed that someone they know has had information stolen from them while online, which means that your business could be next. In order to remain one of the few unaffected by security breaches, consider these three network security features for your business.

Every business owner knows how important data backup is to their company's continuity plan, and they realize that a disaster recovery solution can help save them in the event of catastrophe. However, some businesses think they are the same thing, and they are sadly mistaken. While they are similar, a backup is not a disaster recovery solution.

In 1859, our planet was hit with the largest recorded solar flare. This particular flare was known as the Carrington Event and it produced auroras that could be seen all around the world, even as far south as the Caribbean. The 1859 solar flare caused minimal damage and was seen mainly as an oddity. If such a flare struck today, however, the world would erupt into chaos.

It's been said that a company's data is its most important resource. If this is true, then is it possible to assign a monetary value to your files? If you attempted to do so, you may come to the conclusion that your company's data is more valuable than anything else in your business, maybe even your own job!

Your mind is racing at a mile a minute, and you keep a to-do list for all of the things you are supposed to do. Unfortunately, that to-do list is often forgotten about. You save it as a .DOC text file on your computer, which has been making a strange clicking noise lately. But one day, the clicking sound gets worse, and worse, and worse, until your computer stops working completely. Just like that, all of your data is gone, and that's when it hits you.

Are you aware of the value of your company's data? If you lost it all today, what would it cost your business in terms of productivity, downtime, and liability? Security precautions need to be taken in order to keep your data safe, including data backups. However, after you have a backup system in place, don't neglect the need to secure those backup files!

A business that manages its data efficiently will be well positioned to handle growth. One of the most crucial components of data management is ensuring that everything is backed up properly; an increasingly difficult task as businesses use more data every year. Implementing a cost-effective and reliable data backup solution should be the goal of every IT professional.

It's good to backup your data, but can you have too much of a good thing? While this may be the case for several enjoyable activities like partying and buffets, this isn't the case with data backup. In fact, the more layers of data backup you have, the more secure you will be. How good is your data backup solution?

Businesses that are aggressive will grow quickly, and in the same way, businesses that have an aggressive continuity plan will survive the worst disasters. You need to aggressively be prepared for any disaster, even the scenarios that leave your company without computers.

You may feel like your computer network is immune to data loss, but according to a study by Blackblaze.com, 46% of users experience data loss every year. Whether it's from something big like a natural disaster, or minor like improperly removing a flash drive, every form of data loss is costly and can be prevented with a data backup plan.

It's important to understand how long your hard drive will last so you can minimize the risk of data loss from a drive failure. Disk hard drives are made up of tiny parts with platters that rotate at thousands of RPMs, which makes it the most vulnerable component of your PC. How much life is left on your server's hard drive?

The importance of backing up your company's data cannot be stressed enough. Data is your business' most valuable asset, as evidenced by the fact that companies unable to access their data for ten days after a major disaster (like Hurricane Sandy that hit the mid atlantic and northeast U.S) will not survive the next fiscal year. Here's how to protect your business with data backup.

What would happen if your business experienced a disaster and your sensitive information was erased? If you don't have a business continuity plan in place that includes data backup and recovery, then it's highly unlikely your company will survive. To protect your business, you will want to consider and choose one of these three backup solutions.

In a recent survey of small businesses, only 13% of respondents believed themselves to be susceptible to a disaster resulting in data loss. That means 87% of small businesses must be located in a fortress where they are protected from every natural disaster--yeah right! No business is immune from disaster; therefore, every company needs a disaster plan.

Backing up your company's data is critical when it comes to keeping operations going after a disaster. Data backup is an important operating expense that you can't afford to skip out on, but if you're looking to cut back on the cost of your data backup service, then you should consider the 80/20 Rule.

You can take out an insurance policy on anything, even a wedding. Insurance company Fireman will protect your big day against "nonrefundable expenses, including cancellation due to serious illness, injury, extreme weather, a missing caterer or officiate -- even a bankrupt event facility." Your businesses technology is important enough to insure; is there a policy to protect your tech?

Every business needs to have a business continuity plan to keep operations going after experiencing a disaster. The centerpiece to every plan is having a backup and recovery solution in place for your company's data. If something happens to your data, your business may not recover. Here are four backup statistics that show the importance of backing up.

Something that's redundant might be understood as something that's no longer needed, excessive, or unnecessary. While the word redundancy is used as a negative adjective for most of life's scenarios, when it comes to business technology, redundancy is an asset. Here are three ways redundancy can help.

What would you say if we told you that disc error rates have been found to be ten times worse than what the vendor's drive specifications state? They're not lying, they are just predicting their own drive's failure rate. In order to be accurate, you must account for failure rates associated with the disk controller, the cables, the PCI bus, the memory, and the processor as well.

For those of us that have been able to witness the current technological revolution, we can say mankind has progressed at an exceptional rate. Remember spending hours on your TRS-80 writing code to play the simplest of games? At that point, if you didn't have the floppy disk drive, once you turned it off you had to spend all that time to rewrite the code. This period has taken us from bulky PCs (albeit still marvelous at the time) to devices with hundreds of times the computing power that fit in the palm of our hands.

When it comes to computer memory, redundancy is a good thing. The more places that you have your data backed up to, the better off you will be if something happens to your hard drive. RAID is a common hard drive formatting procedure that improves server performance and protects your data in the event of a crash.

Every business needs to backup their data. If your company is hit with a disaster, and there is no backup in place, then it will be a critical hit to your operation. Backing up data with tape is a widely used solution, and while this is better than nothing, it is very inefficient compared to using BDR.

It wasn't too long ago when a person could go to his or her local supermarket and rent a copy of their favorite movie on VHS. When that novelty fell off, you could still get the movies at your local video store. Every town had one. Whether it was a chain such as Blockbuster or a locally owned store, millions of people relied on the video store in their town for entertainment for the better part of a quarter of a century.

Remember the good old days? You'd come home from school and break out your new copy of Superman: The Secret Years. You knew that you always had a Super Hero you could depend on. Unfortunately now, bound with the ties of life, you no longer have time to spend reminiscing on the heroes of your youth.

One uncontrollable aspect in life is Mother Nature. There's no way you can stop a hurricane from ripping your roof off, but you can have an emergency plan in place for when/if it happens. People need to know what their responsibilities are and the action they need to take in those cases. How will your business continue operations in the event of a natural disaster?

There was a time when tape backup was the cheapest and the standard data backup solution for businesses. Over the years, cloud services have become more affordable, and now cloud backup solutions like a BDR are cheaper and give businesses more security features. If you are still backing up with tape, then you may be losing money and even putting your business at risk!

Step back from your monitor for a moment and take a look at your business. Customers from all over the Upstate New York area and beyond are being helped. You have an inbox full of email from countless prospects and clients, and your activity on the world wide web is literally connecting you around the world. This complex coordination of of resources and people in front of you is called logistics.

The expression on Drew's face is a perfect picture of what data loss looks like. There is nothing more frustrating than spending an entire day on a project, only to have it all disappear with a system error. Drew's mistake was that he was saving all of his work directly on his laptop. Not only is his work susceptible to a hard drive failure and the computer crashing, but his laptop is also at risk of being stolen along with all of his personal data.

It's evident having a solid backup solution for your business data is not just important, but crucial in order to ensure the survival of your company in the event of a disaster. One backup solution involves using a magnetic tape medium to store data. Unfortunately, tape brings some inconveniences that make other solutions more appealing.

Nature can be pretty impressive. It can interrupt the day-to-day operations of businesses, cause major damage, and cost your business in expensive downtime. Having a good business continuity plan (and ensuring you have it set in place) can make or break your company when mother nature comes knocking at your door.

Pixar, known for CG Animated films like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and Up, produced a short video about how they almost lost Toy Story 2 due to a simple linux command and faulty backup.

Nobody likes thinking or talking about this (except maybe if you are in the insurance business), but businesses are fragile entities. Enough hardship and loss will greatly weaken the foundation that keeps the business running smoothly. What if your business suffered from a fire, devastating flood, or even a misfortunate bolt of lightning that destroys your server? Would you be able to pick up the pieces and start over?

"As a business owner, when should I worry about implementing data backup for my company?" The answer comes in the form of another question, "How much do you value your business?"

We can't stress how important data backup is for businesses. Backup is so important that March 31st is World Backup Day, a day for people and businesses to observe the importance of backing up data regularly.

Read on for World Backup Day's excellent Infographic.

If your company has employed a backup solution, what process do you go through to ensure it is doing its job? Backup systems need to be tested regularly to ensure all the proper files are being backed up, and to check data integrity.

We saw a statistic the other day that really boggled our minds. LoJack, a security firm that specializes in theft, estimates that two million laptops are stolen each year. That's about a one in ten chance that your laptop will fall into someone else's hands. What can you do to prevent that?

If you've been using computers for a while, then there has probably been at least one point in your life that you've lost data. Maybe it was something you were working on when your computer crashed, or maybe a disk failure wiped out some data. Does this bring back memories of frustration and angst?

Microsoft OneNote makes it very easy to take and organize all of your daily notes. Today we're going to show you how to ensure your OneNote Notebooks are backed up so you don't risk losing any information in the event of a computer issue.

Is staying in business important to your company?

We don't want to be sensationalistic here, but there is a serious real-world link between data loss and staying in business. Let's look at some statistics.

Hard drives have been getting bigger (capacity-wise) and cheaper over the past decade which is great news for everyone. Toshiba predicts that in 2012 that over 2 zettabytes (2 trillion gigabytes!) of data will be created and replicated (double from 2010). While costs are going down, data growth is still a challenge for data centers and IT administrators.

When you mention the term 'disaster recovery,' most people think about the big ground-shattering events like earthquakes, fires, floods, tropical storms, etc. While these natural events are certainly disasters and devastating in their own right, smaller things can constitute as a disaster for your business, and they aren't seasonal.

It's January, it's 2012, and you know what that means! It's the time of year everyone tries to start fresh and make big changes in their lives to hopefully improve themselves. Does your Upstate New York business have goals and resolutions to work out for 2012?

It's always important to be prepared for emergencies, and for a small business these days even a minor disaster can have long term ramifications with serious consequences. Whether the disaster is short lived, like a power outage or hardware failure in your server, or a more serious event like a flood or fire, you want to be able to get back in business as quickly as possible Here are some steps Upstate New York businesses should take to prepare and add to their disaster plans.

Take a look, a good hard look, at your employees. They are working diligently, right? You've staffed the company with some quality A-players and everyone has taken responsibility for their work. You see good communication, organization, and dare we say motivation emanating from each member of your well-armed team. Or maybe you don't and the company is working on improving that - we understand. We also understand that while an employee might be a rockstar at their job, they could still pose a risk to IT.

Some companies go to great lengths to make sure their backup is up to date. Data is extremely important, and yet fragile. There are so many situations that can cause data loss, is your backup solution ready?

Everyone here at Directive would like to wish our clients a happy and safe Halloween! We'd like to share a couple computer and tech support horror stories to set today's spooky mood!  Get out your flashlights and gather around the campfire for these chilling tales that could happen to any small business.

In today's IT industry, downtime can have a huge impact on your company's bottom line. When system downtime occurs, whether it affects an individual employee or the entire company, it means lost money. The definition of the term "downtime" is very ambiguous, although at Directive we consider any issue where an employee can't do their job properly due to technology not being available to be downtime. Even though an application may be up and running, it is essentially "down" to a user if the application can't be used no matter the reason.

RAID, you hear it everywhere. From the techs in the server room talking about it to computer manufacturers asking if you want a RAID formation for your computer's hard drive. Not all RAID configurations are considered equal. Here's an explanation of RAID formats in plain English.

When can a single dust particle lead to thousands of dollars worth of damage (or more)?

The answer is when your data isn't backed up. Today we're going to talk about just how fragile your data's very existence can be.

We'd really like to gear this conversation towards the other Oneonta business owners out there who might not have a solid plan when it comes to IT & Computer Support.  At DirectiveSHORT, we deal with a lot of the same business-related issues that our clients do.  Marketing, driving the business forward, taxes, internal policies, you name it.  Believe it or not, we also have our own IT infrastructure that needs to be kept up and maintained.  We see the same kinds of expenses (after all, working on our OWN technology internally is time our techs could be doing their jobs).  We've put together a few big mistakes that we've seen businesses make that take much less effort to prevent than they do to fix later on when it is too late.

I'm sure nobody has missed out on any of the storms happening here in New York. Even our lights have been flickering. Mother nature can be cruel to your IT; a well-placed bolt of lightning can do plenty of damage. Of course, we always recommend quality UPS systems to our clients to protect their most valuable tech, and good surge protectors for everything else (not power strips, mind you, they aren't the same). Regardless, whether there's a risk of the power going out or not, it's important to save often and keep your files backed up. Here's a few tips after the jump.

We’re not trying to be negative here. We're not trying to scare you and make you run out and buy a backup device (We’ll save those horror stories for another time). Today we’re going to talk about why hard drives fail. It doesn’t matter what manufacturer your drive comes from, what connection interface it has, who you bought your computer from, and believe it or not, it has nothing to do with the day your warranty runs out (no sir, that’s just a Murphy’s Law coincidence). All hard drives are built in pretty much the same fashion.

If you don't have an Exchange Server, it's likely that your email isn't being backed up.  Fortunately, with Microsoft Outlook, it's not very difficult to create a copy of your email, contacts, calendar, and other Outlook data. While this isn't a complete backup solution, you can at least take the current state of your Outlook data and store it elsewhere for safe keeping in the event of data loss or a hardware malfunction that causes you to lose your precious data.