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October 19, 2015 - by Synoptek
I know what you’re thinking about the security of your data and disaster recovery. I know, not because I read minds but because I’ve heard it all before. “I’ve got a guy that takes care of all that.” Or “I don’t have the money to move everything to the cloud right now, I just paid off the server” or, (and this one is like fingernails on the chalkboard…) “We’ve got one of those tape back-ups that has run flawlessly for years.”
People have crazy ideas about data, it’s location and security. A truly smart man at work, upon finding his connection to the server lost, once asked me, “Why have all the files disappeared from Snoopy’s head?” I quickly learned that the icon he used for his server connection was in fact, Snoopy’s head. Naturally the files lived on a terrestrial server in a server room, that was in that moment of whacky question in fact, on fire along with the tape drive in it.
I recently experienced a disaster, a natural disaster. In Columbia, SC we experienced rain of epic proportions. In twenty-four hours we had upwards of 24” of rain fall. Portions of I-95 were closed along with 200 other roads and 90 bridges. The waters rose so fast people couldn’t get out of their cars. One small creek that is normally at a max of five feet rose to over seventeen feet! The rain lasted ten days and the ground was so saturated, trees crashed into homes. Whole buildings fell down from the crush of the water. Even Al Roker and Lester Holt reported from right here!
It’s been ten days now and Al and Lester have gone home but we are still here with FEMA and influx of insurance adjusters. Our water is contaminated and restaurants can’t keep their doors open without water. Those businesses are really taking a very hard hit.
Many businesses will bounce back, but many will not survive. The ones that won’t survive sadly were the cornerstones of our landscape here in Columbia. At the Old Mill Building in Lexington, offices literally crumbled and I thought, I sure hope, those businesses were glad their data was in the cloud or backed up. But their data wasn’t in the cloud, or backed up, it was floating downriver.
Did you know, according the Strategic Research Instituted that…
It’s astonishing to me that today, in 2015 that so many businesses still operate under the assumption that it will never happen to them. A hundred year flood only happens every 100 years, it won’t happen in my lifetime, but it did. No amount of saying it’s not a matter if, it’s when, seems to get through. This time it was South Carolina but next time it could be your state, your business. Think about it, what impact would that have on you, your family and your business?
Ask yourself right now, “If this building collapsed tonight, could I start my business from somewhere else tomorrow and not skip a beat?” If you answered yes, well then, you’re a gifted over achiever and deserve a gold star. But if you answered “no”, or “well sort of”, or worse “I’m not sure…” then we need to have a serious heart to heart talk about Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR). BDR isn’t mysterious like predicting the weather. At Synoptek we want to show you that when the clouds open up, you’ll be glad your data was there.
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