The Business Case for Online Backup
Katrina hit legal firms in Louisiana hard. Almost half of the bar's practicing members are displaced. About 5,000 bar members were in New Orleans Parish and another 3,000 members were in Jefferson and St. Bernard Parishes. All of them are out of operation.
A traditional backup solution is no longer adequate for ensuring business continuity. In a little over a decade, professional offices have been knocked out by the Los Angeles earthquake, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on Washington DC and New York, and now the winds and floods of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
In each of these catastrophes countless firms lost mission-critical data on destroyed computers, tape, CDs, DVDs, and removable hard drives. Most lost data that was backed up onsite, while others also lost data stored offsite locally. Less sweeping events, such as fire, mudslides, or equipment theft can have a similar impact on a firm.
Online services and do-it-yourself Internet backup systems make it possible to move and store vast amounts of data confidentially and economically outside the region of an office location. In addition, a completely automated solution minimizes or eliminates the threat that common human errors will defeat compromised system.
Online Backup Is Affordable and Secure
Connected Data Protector and IBackup provide online backup services at a highly affordable rate. For a monthly fee, the customer pays for a fixed amount of storage. Each vendor's pricing structure is similar. Additional storage requirements are available at a premium.
The primary selling feature of the Connected Data Protector service is ease of use. Once per day the installed software automatically selects all new or changed files in specified locations. They are automatically encrypted and transmitted to two geographically separate data centers. Administrators can check the status of a backup and manually initiate random backups. An important limiting factor of this service it that it is not intended for file servers. A company can get around this limitation by using a third-party utility to copy files from server folders to local PC folders on a scheduled basis.
The iBackup service is designed to work with PC hard disks, and file and database servers. Users also have the option to encrypt files using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Without the "key" or passphrase created by the user, no one can open these files. In addition, iBackup allows customers to back up hard disk images. This allows an organization to restore all data and installed software to a new, empty hard disk.
Market leader's EVault and LiveVault boast broad client bases in excess of 5,000. With this proven track record comes a substantial price hike for their mid-market services. The added cost is also due to superior levels of support and professional services.
The pricing thresholds and the cost per month for each vendor are as follows:
Recommendations
1. Make online backup a priority. The catastrophic impact of Katrina on business continuity means "I didn't know offsite backup was necessary" is no longer an excuse. There is no time to wait.
2. Find out the amount of data that needs to be backed up. The files a firm chooses to back up will vary from practice to practice. A good rule of thumb is: When in doubt, include it.
3. Consider the privacy of your data. Does the firm want exclusive access to its information or does it trust the service provider to unlock the data if the key is misplaced or lost?
4. Make sure Service Level Agreements (SLAs) ensure rapid data recovery. It is essential that an SLA clearly outline how long it will take the customer to get its data back from the service provider. This is especially critical in situations like Hurricane Katrina when service providers must provide numerous customers with data recovery simultaneously.
Bottom Line
An in-house, fixed media backup solution is important, but no longer adequate to protect mission-critical data. Losing this information to a random catastrophe is career limiting. Back up vital information to the Internet to shield the firm from disasters that can reach onsite and offsite backups.
