MarketersProtection.com

“It Won’t Happen To Me”

Actually, it almost certainly will and it probably has, even if you didn’t think of it this way before.
Losing data is a part of reality in our computer-oriented world.

How many times have you spent time working on a document, only to have something happen that makes the document vaporize? Or an FTP upload that dies as soon as you walk away from your monitor?

These may not be “disasters” but they indicate the basic frailty of digital data. The machinery on which that data runs and is stored is also at risk — and probably much greater risk than you’ve thought about before.

The good news is, as in many things an “ounce” of prevention beats a pound of cure.

Today’s data risks are higher than ever, especially for those of us who rely on digital media for our livelihood, but the solutions are also easier and frequently less expensive than ever before.

By the time you’re done reading my book, you’ll know everything you need to about how to keep your valuable data and systems humming along, so your cash register can keep ringing.

What’s A “Disaster”?

A disaster in digital media is anything that either costs you unplanned money or unplanned time or both — things like:

· Hard drive crashes
· Power interruptions and power surges
· Broadband or other connectivity interruptions
· System failure
· Fires and overheating
· Earthquakes…

There can be other disasters too, like when your top programmer quits without notice and doesn’t leave any notes on how to update her databases. But for our purposes we’re focusing on hardware maintenance related issues, software security and environmental impacts.

There are some things you can avoid, and some things you can only hope to minimize in their impact without being able to avoid.

There are some disasters you can avoid completely.

The fates won’t rest a Big Mac on your keyboard, but you might.

There are others you can’t — like acts of God, acts of your cranky neighbor, terrorists, or the weather.

The trick here is to plan for their possibility and take steps that make sense in context of managing risk

Heat Is The Enemy Of All Things Electronic

Pssst — fires are hot. Very.

While electronics generate their own heat (which can be significant, and if not managed well can be a problem too, see below) first we are concerned with external destructive heat like your building burning down.

A piece of paper can be locked in a box that will most likely withstand most any conventional fire. So can a data storage item like a diskette or jump-drive, in theory, but the damage point of such devices may be well below their melting point.

Fire Can Easily Destroy Everything In A Building

This might be obvious but we have seen smart people do some pretty dumb things, like keep the original of some data on a computer, keep a backup of the data on a CD in the desk on which the computer is sitting, and keep another backup in a lockbox in the closet six feet from that desk.

Sure, if the computer drive dies you’re fine, but how hard is it to imagine a fire that destroys everything in a single room? It’s easy.

We’ll consider how to survive a fire (from a data and systems perspective) in a few minutes, but first, let’s outline some guidelines. These are useful for more than just fires, too.

· Keep backups in separate physical locations. And we don’t mean here, and four feet from here. We mean here, and Cleveland. Or here, and the World Wide Web. Or here, and in a safety deposit box on the other side of town.
· Update your backups on some understandable schedule. We knew a guy who smugly told us (after his office burned down) he was “all set” because he had backups. Well, he had backups up until about two years before the fire and nothing sooner, which rendered them almost useless. Use it or lose it, as they say.
· Have good insurance on your office equipment. Also, pay the premiums…

OK, you have a Rambo complex which you are projecting onto your computers and data.
Your first line of defense is avoiding having the fire start in the first place. Your second is not caring that it did because you (a) wisely backed up everything to separate physical location and (b) had good insurance and paid the premiums.

But nooooo, you want equipment and data that will give the fire the proverbial finger.

One such option is The Information Safeguard System™ from The Datafortress™.

This system takes the fireproof lock-box to a whole new level. The Datafortress is intended to protect your whole system in the event the room in which it is housed burns.

These kinds of systems are very expensive, but may be important if you run the kind of business where downtime can cost you a fortune.

(The technologies in this area are so rapidly changing, and retail pricing is so scant, that I’m reluctant to give much guidance other than to say that yes, you can in fact put your entire computer system except the input and output devices into what amounts to a fireproof box. See Resources section for more on such boxes for your data and equipment.)

There are conventional fire-fighting methods also, like fire extinguishers.

Even if you never get near a fire, you still need to worry about heat, since your computer itself generates enough to cause harm!

Dangerous sources of heat can come from inside your computer!

There are several sources of heat inside your computer. These include hard drives, integrated circuit boards (ie “motherboards”), power supplies, and batteries.