Charleston - How to Prepare Your Charleston SC Business for Natural Disasters

Tropical Storm Elsa is headed our way and now is the time to prepare your small business for this summer’s storms. When businesses are affected by natural disasters, they’ll find it hard to fully recover. As a matter of fact, one third of the companies that have been affected by disasters never resumed their operations.

Begin developing a natural disaster preparedness, disaster recovery plan and data backup strategy now so that you can concentrate on business continuity and make sure that your business has a plan in place so your company can bounce back right away in case an incident happens.

Natural Disaster Preparedness and Data Backup Tips

Know the natural disasters that can affect your business. Keep in mind that the natural disasters that affect one state is different from the others. When you develop a data recovery plan, you should assess the possibility of each kind of natural disaster that may affect the area where your business is located. The emergency management representative or office in your city can provide you with the help you need.

 

Call Now

 

• Determine the vulnerabilities and mitigate the potential risks.
• Create an evacuation plan.
• Organize your contact list.
• Assign a meeting place outside of your workspace
• Share your natural disaster preparedness plan to your staff.
• Take control during an emergency.
• Prepare your property and secure it.
• Help in the creation of evacuation procedures.
• Evaluate document losses.
• Help with the recovery.
• Test your disaster recovery plans.

Execute Communication Plans

Your office staff should know the sequence of operations that they have to follow when there is a natural disaster. You need to have quarterly meetings so you can educate your staff about your disaster recovery, data backup plans, and natural disaster preparedness recovery plans, to help make sure that your communications are streamlined.

You should let your workers know what the company’s expectations are, their responsibilities and the department’s obligations during a disaster. You should also plan drills so that your employees will be familiar with the company protocols.

In the disaster recovery plan, you should outline how your business intends to communicate to your staff who are directly or indirectly affected by the natural disaster. Social media, email, and phone trees are well-known methods to inform customers, employees, insurance companies, emergency workers, restoration companies, the media, as well as other stakeholders.

Data Backup Is A Must

Losing electronic or physical documents can be disastrous for any business. You avoid such losses by having a data backup plan in place. Here are other tips you need to know.

• Create copies of important documents and store the original copies in a safe offsite location.
• Scan and save essential documents such as client files and store them on an external drive that you may keep offsite or with the help of a cloud based solution.
• Ask your employees to scan essential documents as part of your new disaster recovery and preparedness policy.
• Create copies of any licensed software that you may have. You can keep the originals offsite along with their licensing information.
• Backup your data every day.

You should also invest in a generator, UPS system, and surge protector because most natural disasters can trigger power outages that may shut your operations down for prolonged periods.

 

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now if you want to prepare your business for natural disasters and cyberattacks. Our IT support professionals will help develop a disaster recovery and backup plan that’s suitable for your company’s needs.

 

SpartanTec, Inc.
Charleston, SC 29407
843-418-4792
https://manageditservicescharleston.com/

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

Charleston - 10 Guidelines To Secure Your Data Backup

Data backup is crucial elements of excellent storage security and general business reliance. However, they’re commonly the source of various security woes. As a matter of fact, a significant number of security breaches could be associated with the mismanagement of the data backups.

The security surveys and headlines show the reality that there’s no appropriate data backup controls. As much as people hate the term best practices, they are required especially in terms of developing a backup plan.

Lately, countless confidential business data may have been compromised in gaffes that are related to data backup. And these are only the known breaches that affects personal information. There’s almost no doubt that unreported and unknown compromises about data backup that affects all kinds of confidential information such as intellectual property are several. Not having a robust backup plan when unexpected events happen could result into one of the worst outcomes in cybersecurity.

A lot of IT experts believe that having a process for replicating information is all that is required to keep a company secure. However, that’s only part of the battle. It’s what could be done with the data backups that will introduce a whole new set of risks that are commonly disregarded. Therefore, it’s crucial to include data backup guidelines as part of the general company data security program.

 

  Call Now   

 

 

10 Ways To Make Sure That Your Data Backup Is Secured

Include data backup in your security strategy - Make sure that backup related systems are included in your security policies.

Include backup systems in your disaster recovery plan – you should have data backup systems in your incident and disaster recovery plans. Data backups could be compromised, breached, or destroyed in events like an employee break in, ransomware outbreak or an environment-related incident.

Restrict access rights to data backups - You should only provide access rights to people who have a need to handle the backup process. This applies to the actual backup files as well as the backup software.

Think of different data backup locations – You should store your data backups offsite or in a different building. A fire, natural disaster, or other rare incidents could be all that is required to bring down your data center and your data backups in a single sweep.

Restrict physical access to your data backups - Regardless of how you want to store your backups, whether it’s on an external tape or drive, NAS or backup servers, you need to make sure that access is properly controlled in those facilities. Take care of your backup files as you would in other essential hardware. You may be able to validate this through SOC audit reports, your own company audits, or through a third-party security assessment reports.

Protect your backup media devices – storing data on solid state drives are common these days. If you do so, make sure that it’s fireproof and rated as safe.

Check the security measures of your vendors -  check the cybersecurity measures that your managed IT service providers, cloud, or data center are taking to make sure that your data backups are safe.

Secure your network – you should store your backups on a different file system or a cloud storage service that is located on separate or physical network.

Prioritize Backup encryption – you should encrypt your backups whenever possible. Encryption when done and managed properly could be the best final layer of defense for your network security. It will give you the peace of mind in the knowledge that worst outcome is that your data backup have been lost or tainted but can never be accessed.

Regularly test your backups – you may have heard about this several times but it’s worth repeating. Your backups are as good as what’s on it. Make sure that you back up all your important data and don’t forget to test your backups regularly.

 

Call SpartanTec, Inc. now and let our team of IT professionals help you with your data backup and disaster recovery plan.

 

SpartanTec, Inc.
Charleston, SC 29407
843-418-4792
https://manageditservicescharleston.com/

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence

Charleston - How to Prepare Your Business for Hurricane Season

Data backup is one of the many responsibilities of a business owner. They also have to ensure the continuous function and safety of their business as well as prevent disruptions such as hurricanes that could affect their bottom line. Therefore, business executives should know the dangers brought on by natural disasters as well as the destruction that natural cataclysmic events can bring.

Hurricane is among the natural disasters that can cause a lot of damage. They are unpredictable and rotate rapidly, which poses threats to any form of business. Companies are responsible for protecting their businesses, executing emergency preparedness drills, and performing incident management during hurricane season.

Fortunately, there are several preventative measures that can be taken to protect your businesses during this time of the year and through the use of incident management solutions such as disaster recovery and developing business continuity plans has become easier than ever.

 

  Call Now   

 

Data Backup and Disaster Recovery: Preparing Your Business

Company owners and business executives should be prepared for hurricanes and acknowledge the possibility that they may disrupt their operations. So do can you prepare for the hurricane season? Here are a few steps you can take.

Plan, Prepare, and Practice

These are the three Ps that are considered as the cornerstone of an efficient disaster recovery plan. One way to prepare for a disaster is to have a plan. The NOAA and the weather forecasts are great at predicting storms. If you don’t have a plan in place, you’ll find it hard to keep your business operations going when a hurricane strikes.

You should include the identification as well as the consolidation of important business infrastructure in your business continuity plan. It must also involve data backup at offsite storage centers and getting rid of important equipment from locations that are at risk.

All these should be done before a disaster happens. Trying to do these under pressure or duress will only cause problems and lead to the loss of assets that cannot be replaced. A plan to manage mission-critical assets should be set in place ahead of time before a disaster takes place. Practice your plan and make sure it has contingency and backup plans in case unexpected events take place. Hire Charleston managed IT services if you need professional help.

Data Backup

Data backups are a crucial part of preparing for a disaster. Losing data will decimate your business operations. As a company owner, you must have backups of all your information. You’ll be able to resume operations easily if you have access to the data that you have backed up. Look for a data backup method that you’re familiar with and comfortable using. You should also back up data and be sure that you’re familiar with how the process works before disaster strikes.

Protect Your Company’s Physical Site

You should also consider storm-proofing your company’s business location. If there are materials or equipment that you’re unable to relocate, you should find ways to minimize possible damages. Generators, batteries, ad power supplies that are uninterruptible are a great way to continue your business operations in case a power loss takes place. Be sure that you have set in place plans that will help recover your workplace in case unforeseen circumstances destroys it or renders it unusable.

Work Remotely

If your business has switched to remote work, you and your staff are safe from the effects of a destructive storm. If you’re not operating remotely, you should consider switching in case a disaster may happen. You should have contingency plans set in place so you could remotely operate important business functions.

Remain Informed and Outsource Disaster Recovery

In case there’s an impending storm, you don’t have time to wait. You should recognize the dangers that hurricanes may cost including losing your valuable time, your resources, and even the lives of your employees. Having an efficient disaster recovery plan will help you resume your operations in case of a hurricane.

 

Call SpartanTec, Inc. for more information on how our data backup and disaster recovery solutions can help your business.

 

SpartanTec, Inc.
Charleston, SC 29407
843-418-4792
https://manageditservicescharleston.com/

Serving: Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Columbia, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Florence