Top Sources of Business Data Loss - No One Is Safe

Not too long ago we were contacted by the Macomb County Clerks office due to a fire that shut down the building for months, to help them get their operations up and running again as quickly as possible. The wiring, which connected the county network to the data was burned and the building sustained damaged. Since the fire, users had to do their best to carry on with paper documents, a frantic return to carbon copies and limited phone service.

When your entire staff works out of a single office and all of your data is stored on PCs, laptops, or a server housed in that office how do you carry on after a disaster? Are you able to return to paper documents? Will you be able to provide that same level of service and keep your clients and customers?

Data Loss a Foregone Conclusion

Disasters are always looming, but believe it or not they are not the top cause of data loss. Earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, power outages, the chances may be better in some areas than others, but at most will happen 1-2x per year. How many times do you drop your phone? Maybe twice per day. Delete the wrong file? Maybe a few times a week. Run out of battery? Maybe once a month.

Learn More About Data Backup

Schedule a 1:1 consultation with Newmind Group and learn how we can help with:

• Reduced Downtime & Data Loss During a Disaster
• Data protection for multiple platforms and devices
• Application Aware backups

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Sources of Data Loss

Believe it or not, human error is the number one cause to data loss, responsible for 75% percent of all data loss occurrences. Just recently, the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada announced the loss of financial information for 52,000 brokerage firm clients, due to the loss of a mobile device.

Rounding out the top 3 common causes of data loss, after user error, include:

violations of policy (can still be considered user error)
Internet-based threats, attacks and hacks

Here’s another eye opening stat, 90% of businesses lose sensitive data 3+ times each year, according to study by ITPolicyCompliance.com (ITPC). That includes customer data, financial data, corporate data, employee data and even IT security data. If you’re lucky to be in the 10% that only experience 2 losses a year you have multiple IT backup solutions, redundancies, and security protocols racking up enormous costs.

What to Plan For

What we’ve learned from experience and the news, is not to worry about a natural disaster, but to plan for human error. Just like having an effective mobile policy is good and may prevent a future loss of data via mobile devices, implementing a backup and disaster recovery strategy is even better, because you ensure the access to and integrity of your business critical data, keeping operations up-and-running.

Daniel Proczko has been working with organizations and individuals to build & grow the entrepreneur community of Kalamazoo, MI. From organizing TEDx events, hack-a-thons, and documentary screenings to engaging with business leaders, Dan strives to inspire individuals with new ideas and better thinking.

Having always been interested in tech and understanding the value of innovation through IT, communicating the importance of strategic IT thinking is one of Dan's primary goals within Newmind Group.