Picture this; you arrive in the office and your PC fails to start, so you spend some time taking a look to see what’s wrong and just can’t figure it out.
You get in touch with an IT specialist as your files from the past five years are all saved locally on your desktop and desperately need them to run your business.
You hear back from the IT specialist and it’s not good news. They explain that your computer’s hard drive has corrupted and will need replacing. When you ask about the files stored on it, they explain that unfortunately they have all been lost, so you would need to restore a backup.
It’s at that point you realise your worst fears as the hard drive you used to physically back up files got dropped and is also corrupted, meaning that you have lost all of the files from the past five years of running your business.
This horror story is something that we have seen more than a few times and really is every business owner’s worst nightmare.
In order to mitigate against risks such as this we always recommend using a cloud-based storage solution which means that your files are not stored locally, but in a remote location meaning that your files are also stored offsite, which is the ideal situation for disaster recovery.
Using a cloud-based storage solution also means that your files can be generally accessed from any location (even your mobile phone). This means that you can always have important documents to hand when they are needed. In addition, you will be able to restrict user access to your files due to the enhanced security features that many solutions provide.
There are a few types of cloud-based storage and which type you require tends to depend on your business size and requirements.
A small business, for example, may choose to opt for a commercial solution such as OneDrive which comes with Office 365, however, it is important to remember that OneDrive does not guarantee that your files will be backed up. This means that if your files get erroneously deleted, there is no recourse or recovery option.
Another solution is an off-site storage solution provided by your IT Support company. For example, we provide bespoke file storage solutions for our clients and tailor the setup to their business requirements. This option is generally preferred because of the ability to tailor the solution to your specific business.