The Bay Area IT Experts

We’ll discuss some of the most important parts of a data backup solution and how you can keep track of whether or not it will work to keep your business safe in the long run.

The Key Parts of Data Backup
The best kinds of backup solutions have three major aspects to them. They are all important to making sure that the solution can benefit your organization. Here they are:

• Snapshot-based backups: Your backups should be taken periodically throughout the workday so that you can keep data loss to a minimum on the off-chance that you ever encounter a disaster. Snapshot-based backups can be taken as often as every fifteen minutes to minimize data loss.
• Quick data recovery: You need to have a solution in place that can plan for rapid data recovery. Minimizing costs associated with downtime is critical to the success of any business continuity plan.
• Testing to ensure proper backups: How do you know your data backups work if you never test them? You should be testing your backups to make sure that they will work as intended when you need them most.

Why Testing Your Backups Is Important
Imagine that you’re in a situation where your business is having an ordinary workday, only to experience a sudden disaster scenario. It doesn’t really matter which scenario it is, whether it’s a power surge, tropical storm, or hacking incident--the point is that it’s a situation where you won’t last long without data backup of some sort. You try to deploy your data backup, but the files are corrupted or you don’t have an infrastructure to back up to. Now what? You’re stuck in a situation where your organization needs to recover, but it can’t.

If you fail to test your backups regularly, your business--and, by extension, the futures of both yourself and your employees--is at risk. Therefore, testing is something that you absolutely cannot ignore.

What You Should Do
If working with your business’ technology isn’t what you would call your strongest skill, working with a managed service provider can help you make the right calls concerning your organization’s future. To learn more about data backup and disaster recovery, reach out to 415 IT at (415) 295-4898.

Here are three tips for reducing human error in the workplace.

Provide Proper Training
Surprisingly enough, if you train your employees properly, you won’t have to worry about them making mistakes; at least, not as much as you would under untrained circumstances. You should take care to properly outline all of your processes in a way that’s easy to understand, including both intensive and routine tasks, as well as having an established workflow for reporting issues or identifying security problems with spam or phishing emails.

Limit User Permissions
Not all users will need the same permissions on their devices. For example, an IT administrator might need admin permissions, but the average user won’t. The same can be said for access to specific data on your network. You should partition off certain information to only those departments that might need it so you can avoid an access issue with other employees. Basically, the fewer permissions a user has on their device or network, the less harm can come of it in the event a hacker manages to sneak their way in.

Use Your Collective Workforce to “Crowdsource” for Quality
We’re sure you’ve heard the phrase “two heads are better than one,” and you’ll be interested to hear that the same phrase can be applied to the workplace. If you have a large project that could use an extra pair of eyes, why not ask your coworkers for a quick glance? It might help putting out a project with glaring errors that you might not notice because you’ve been staring at it for a few weeks straight. You can think of this process as beta testing in a way, as you can determine potential problems with a product before it is actually released to the public. This can prevent a loss of profit from a product or service that’s not ready to be released can bring if it’s thrown out into the world too soon.

If your business wants to cut out the dangers of human error in the workplace, 415 IT can help. To learn more, reach out to us at (415) 295-4898.

Internal Fraud
You may be closer to some scammers than you would have originally thought. It unfortunately isn’t that uncommon for the employees of a business to steal from it, whether its finances or invaluable data. While you will want to be able to trust your employees, as you should, you also need to be realistic and accept that you may inadvertently hire a few bad eggs. This reality means that you need to have measures in place to keep data inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t need it through access control and other solutions.

Excessive Access
On a similar note, your endpoints themselves should be secured against threats, as these devices could easily leave your business vulnerable if no security measures are put in place. Whether an employee leaves their phone on the counter when they pick up their lunch, or someone sneaks into the office and accesses an unattended workstation, your endpoints themselves need a defense of their own to protect your data.

Insecure Applications
If your business is anything like most, you rely on a variety of applications in order to keep it in operation from day-to-day. While these pieces of software are crucial to your productivity, applications developed by third parties or used by a cloud provider may not be as secure as you would prefer. You need to be selective as you settle on solutions to leverage, or you’ll risk your data being compromised.

Human Error and Mismanagement
Finally, we come to one of the biggest issues that any business has: the fact that it has people working for it. Human error and insufficient management of your IT can create some of the most serious issues and enable more to take root. Without an experienced resource to help protect your network, it is left susceptible to threats. On top of this, there is a long history of simple mistakes leading to IT catastrophes to consider as well. While some errors will ultimately be unavoidable, you should impress upon your employees how important it truly is to focus on their work and review everything they do for mistakes.

With a combination of the right solutions and some old-fashioned vigilance, you can help to keep your business safe and secure against the many threats out there. 415 IT can assist you - call (415) 295-4898 to learn about what we can do for you.