Online Backup by 77Backup

For a small, growing or even medium sized business a disaster can be caused by a hurricane or a tornado, by a fire, or simply by a wrong keystroke. One study shows that 50 percent of data loss is caused by user error. But no matter how it is caused, a loss of data, or access to data for any kind of extended period, inevitably means a loss of revenue, a loss of productivity, a loss of reputation, and increased costs.

Disasters that threaten a business can happen anywhere at any time.

Some rather startling statistics that are generally accepted in the data recovery field and reported by the University of North Carolina’s Information Technology Service:

Scary isn’t it ? The worst thing is that reliable backup is not a complex or expensive thing to do…

Extracts from a study by HP and SCORE called : “Impact on U.S. Small Business of Natural & Man-Made Disasters” A compilation of public and private sector intelligence. (complete study in pdf)

Everything for this Gulf Coast Business was Washed Away by Katrina Makeup and wardrobe consultant, Adrienne Moncrief Hemphill has a similar story. She ran a small but thriving custom-label makeup business out of her Bay St. Louis, Mississippi home that was demolished by Hurricane Katrina. Essentially her most valuable possession was her mailing list of her some 500 customers she kept on her computer.

She lost everything in the storm, her catalogs, her Web site, her inventory of products and most disastrous of all, her mailing list.
She was able to relocate to Jackson, Mississippi where she faced the prospect of essentially starting her business over again from scratch.

“I sat down with a woman who worked with me and we tried to recreate my customer list from memory,”

“Eventually we were able to remember about 150 of the 500 customers I had. I was then able to get my web site back up and running and between the web site, a book I had written that has been on sale locally and various stories I have had in the local newspapers regarding my consulting business, over now a two year period maybe another 200 of my former customers have found me – I didn’t find them. So now I have back about 350 of the five hundred customers I had the day Katrina hit.”

But she admits, it has not been easy. But she has learned a valuable lesson. Today all the data on her computer is backed up at a remote location.

Extract from a US gov site that I find quite useful : onguardonline.gov
about basic tips for computer security. Most of them sound like basic, but a little reminder is always useful

1 – Protect your personal information. It’s valuable.
We all heard about people who got their identity stolen…

2 – Know who you’re dealing with.

Sharing files can mean also sharing viruses…

3 – Use security software that updates automatically.

Keep your security software active and current: at a minimum, your computer should have anti-virus and anti-spyware software, and a firewall.

4 – Keep your operating system and Web browser up-to-date, and learn about their security features.

5 – Keep your passwords safe, secure, and strong.

A password is like underwear, change it often and don’t share it with your friends

6 – Back up important files.

This is where 77backup can help you… Up to date files, crypted and backuped in a safe place (actually more than one safe place) .

7 – Learn what to do in an e-mergency.

If you suspect malware is lurking on your computer, stop shopping, banking, and other online activities that involve user names, passwords, or other sensitive information. Malware could be sending your personal information to identity thieves. And get help if you need…

One of the comments that we receive from users is that Altexa Backup is sometimes…well…not strikingly fast during a backup run.

Without going into too much detail, the software gas to spend a fair bit of time talking to the backup server, to get a file backed-up. It’s this conversation which slows everything down.

So this week, we made some fairly sweeping changes to our database backend. These should have been transparent for all our users. Again, we’ll not go into too much detail regarding the changes themselves….that is a part of the Altexa Backup system you’ll never see, and the only people to get really excited about it are our IT guys, but…

The result is fairly spectacular. Without changing any of the software you see on your PC, we have managed to more than double the backup speed, especially when a lot of small files are in the backup set.

As always, we’ll be making more changes gradually over the next few months…and we’ll keep you posted here.