Author: Richard McNeal

For most individuals and businesses, data loss happens. Even the most established technology companies with expert experience in network and laptop security, accidents and hacks happen and data is lost. With the right support and preventative measures, however, losing information doesn’t always have to end in disaster. By making information safety a priority of your computer IT staff and for the employees who use your equipment, data loss can become a rare occurrence.

Preventing Data Loss

Most causes of work station (laptop or PC) data loss can be attributed to human error, physical malfunctions and hardware failure. The Boston Computing Network characterizes data loss into four different types: human error (overwriting a major file), file corruption (virus attack), hardware (fried hard drive), and site-related (earthquake causes coffee to spill on laptop).

For an IT staff member, preventing data loss within a company means making sure employees are:

- using equipment with up-to-date antivirus software
- securing their laptops both physically and electronically with computer locks and good passwords
- backing up their work onto a secure storage device
- using a surge protector and uninterrupted power supply (UPS)

Additionally, computer IT staffers need to have a best practices document in place that employees can follow related to how to handle incoming email, working outside of the office, and traveling. The document should describe how employees can avoid data loss through phishing scams, when and how they should use other wireless networks and how to protect company laptops from theft. By giving employees the information they need to prevent data loss, companies can stop many problems from every happening.

Recovering Lost Data

So much information flows electronically now that it is likely some data loss scenario will occur in a business. Whether it is a major server loss or a small problem on a single hard drive, there are certain things that should be done to avoid making the situation worse.

- Don’t: Use the system restore or system recovery setting on the computer. This will not bring your info back instantly

- Don’t: Implement an off-the -shelf system recovery software on your own. If you use the incorrect type of software, you are likely to ruin your chances of recovering any information.

- Do: Contact a computer it specialist or tech professional to attempt to restore the data safely and correctly

Many IT and computer services offer continued preventative maintenance and care, but in the case you don’t regularly use an outside IT service, contact one as soon as you realize a problem has occurred.

In addition to dealing with data recovery, IT and computer services provide a vast array of additional preventative measures for combating data loss. For instance, many IT service providers will offer security and back-up solutions like electronic data storage, information security, server support, desktop support, and networking.

Recovering lost data is not always possible but there are ways to reduce the chances of complete loss.

~Richard McNeal, 2009

About the Author:
Richard McNeal is a frequent writer for Ascensha, a VTM Company. Portland computer support is now even easier to find. Contact Ascensha.com, an Oregon small business IT management firm to talk to an expert about securing and maintaining your small business computer network.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Computer Data Loss Prevention and Recovery

Why is it so important to backup your business data? For one company, its data loss cost them their entire business.

JournalSpace.com is a popular blogging software that generated quite a bit of traffic. Earlier this year, they lost all of the data that made up the content of the blogs that were stored there. Unfortunately, due to a hardware failure or malicious intent, they were unable to recover and had to sell off their company. 6 years of work and content was lost.

JournalSpace.com is intending to sell their domain name and trademarks, and an enterprising investor may find this a good time to grab a valuable piece of electronic real estate. But for a large part of the blogging community, it is the end of a six-year voyage, and one that could have been easily avoided by the correct procedures for data storage and retrieval.

It looks like JournalSpace.com is back live today, but it is using another open-source software to allow people to maintain their blogs.

Full Story from AssociatedContent.com

This is an interview from CNBC with Roger Richardson, CEO of Nexus Management. Nexus Management is one of our data partners, and is responsible for the Diamondback Data software that you use to backup your personal and business files.

Nexus Management focuses on small business markets, rather than giant corporations, which is why Diamondback Data can offer such cost-effective personal and business data backup.

See the interview below:

In a digital world, data backup is vital to keeping your sanity. The time and money you could waste when disaster strikes far outweighs the cost of almost any data backup solution. Diamondback Data offers an off-site, automatic, and secure way to back up your files. Restoring your files is as easy as a few mouse clicks.

Consumer Reports Writes:
A hard-drive crash from an infection or mechanical failure is an unlikely event, but it’s a catastrophic one. Sure, backups can be time-consuming, but weigh the few minutes you might spend securing your data against the painstaking task of reconstructing it, or worse, losing it forever, and there’s no question which is the preferred alternative.

CDs and DVDs aren’t the only way to back up your data, nor are they the most convenient. The best method is the one that’s easy enough that you’ll actually do it, so keep that in mind as you decide which way to go. You’ll also need a backup for your backup–one copy at your physical location and another offsite, in case of fire, flood, theft, or other disaster. Ideally, both should be continual and automatic.

Online Data Backup Services Make Great Solutions

Continued: Online storage services make a great secondary backup solution because your data is safe in case of burglary or damage from a fire or flood. The services generally provide software for file encryption and for scheduling automated, incremental backups, and they typically store your data at multiple remote locations for increased security. Some sites even let you share files remotely.

Article Source: Consumer Reports

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Diamondback Data, Inc. releases unlimited & automatic online data backup

Denver, Colorado, 21st January 2009: Computer software company Diamondback Data is introducing a new way for their customers to back up their PC hard drive automatically and safely. With reports that a hard drive crashes every 15 seconds due to virus corruption, hardware failure, and other disasters, businesses and home PC users are fast realizing that data backup is of paramount importance.

The Diamondback Data offering is different from many competitors who offer their customers confusing ‘pricing plans.’ Diamondback Data’s software allows unlimited data backup capacity for each user and automatically backs up every day or twice weekly depending on the version in use. The software is very efficient in processing, as well as distinguishing between files that have been created or altered since the most recent backup. Instead of ‘replacing’ each and every backed up file (which can take hours or days depending on the speed of the user’s Internet connection) the process is a lot cleaner and quicker than other options.

In a rapidly changing environment of software and hardware, Diamondback Data is carving their niche with small and micro-sized businesses, and home users. Demand for data backup is on the rise and few will argue against the importance of backing up. The question becomes, what makes one backup provider better or more effective than another?

Company CEO Brian Byrne says “Success is certainly based on providing a quality product at a reasonable cost. Diamondback Data provides that, but I also subscribe to the belief that success can be achieved in the service, attitude, delivery of our product, and the client’s satisfaction when they retrieve otherwise lost data with a click of a button.” The company offers unlimited backup storage capacity to each and every client for home and business users while giving each customer access to Diamondback Data’s live technical support when and if necessary. Byrne says, “The data backup industry is growing rapidly to meet the needs of home users and the small and micro-sized businesses that are seeking new ways to cut costs, yet still be effective in backing up their data. In a very large and fragmented marketplace Diamondback Data is not trying to be all things to all users like some of our competition. We have a focus on small business owners and home users who need backup education and are seeking ways to minimize their costs. I speak to businesses all over my local market and I’m shocked at how much they pay for backup. It is even more shocking how many businesses have no back up procedure whatsoever. This bodes well for the future of online remote data backup and for Diamondback Data to carve out our niche.”

The company takes their customer’s data seriously and the data center is one that is well known for its security. Customer data is stored in a facility designed to withstand disaster. Built on seismically braced raised floors using RAID 5 server configurations and redundant power and bandwidth architecture, the data center and backup procedure is state of the art. The physical location provides for temperature and air quality sensors, 24 hour live customer service, surveillance and fire suppression. Additionally, customers can be confident their data is unrecognizable to anyone other than the user due to a high level of encryption.

To use the software customers simply create their accounts online and enjoy a 15 day free trial. If a customer should decide not to use the software they can simply cancel their account within the 15 days and not be charged anything. Their backed up information will be purged from the data center. The software easily downloads directly to the users PC. If a user does have questions or requires technical support, the Diamondback Data Helpdesk is staffed with expert technicians.
_______________________________________

Contact: Brian Byrne
Company Name: Diamondback Data
Category: Computer software/services
Region: Denver, CO
Telephone: 303-506-2698
E-mail: brian (at.) diamondbackdata.com
Website: www.diamondbackdata.com