It was 1993. I was called to meet with a new client. They were in an extremely hard way. The company, a small manufacturer’s representative, had experienced a type of data loss that few anticipate: their single computer had been stolen. But they had backups, right? Yes. They had a tape backup system. With one tape. That they left in the tape drive in the computer. Their only backup had been stolen with the computer! They had no offsite backup plan.
Fast forward to 2014. I got a frantic call from a customer. They thought their database was backing up. Then their database file became corrupt and they checked their backups. Nope! They had no backup of this key file. I got a frantic call from the CEO to see if I could help. Why would she call me? Because in 2009 I did some development work for the company, and she was hoping I’d have a backup copy they could use. They had an offsite backup of sorts. I found a time to dial into their network and had them up and running in about 2 hours. This not the normal backup plan, but it saved the day for this company.
Fast forward to 2018. I was on vacation in Florida with my wife, 5 kids and grandson, and mu son in law. We were swimming and riding wave runners, hitting the local attractions and having a blast. I got a call at lunchtime one day from one of my clients in the Midwest. Their stock trading server had gotten struck by lightning. When a wealth management firm can’t trade stocks, it’s critical. Fortunately, I had created a daily offsite backup for them FOUR YEARS earlier. It took a bit of (billable) time, but I was able to help them set up a replacement server and restore their backup from Florida. They were back in business quickly!
Here are some more reasons to set up off-site backups:
· In case you lose your facility. Imagine being in the path of Superstorm Sandy. Or the recent Hurricane Laura in the south. Imagine a tornado. Or fire. By the way, 30% of the companies that experience a major fire go out of business within a year. On-site backups won’t help in this situation.
· You experience a destructive virus. One of my clients had a kryptovirus “eat” all of their files, including their USB backup drives. I had created an offsite backup for them and they were fine. These viruses are becoming more and more common.
· Selected employees at your company can access off-site backups so they have the latest corporate data.
You owe it to yourself…and your company…to set up a clear off-site backup program. We can help!
For more information, please contact Verified Backups at Info@VerifiedBackups.com