|
Step2
Step
3
Keep
Your Data Safe
Implementing a regular backup procedure is a
simple way to help safeguard critical business data. Setting permissions and
using encryption will also help. Much of the misfortune that small businesses
experience can be blamed on outside forces—a poor economy, a natural disaster, a
decision by a key employee to leave. It’s no surprise that those who survive the
down times are typically those who minimized their risks by taking basic
precautions. One of the most basic precautions of all is protecting critical
business data.
Just imagine walking into your office one
morning and discovering that all your sales records, customer contact
information, and order history had disappeared. How long would it take you to
recover? How much disruption and delay would occur? What would it cost you?
Data loss can and does happen. It can result
from hardware failure, flood, fire, security breach, or just an accidental
deletion of an important file. Whatever the cause, taking precautions to reduce
the impact is like an insurance policy, enabling your business to get back up
and running quickly.
Basic Steps You Can Take
There are numerous ways to help safeguard your
critical business data, but these three methods will get you started. Implement
a procedure to back up critical data Backing up data means making a copy of it
on another medium. For example, you might burn all your important files onto a
CD-ROM, a second hard drive, or a shared folder on your network. There are two
basic kinds of backups: a full backup and an incremental backup. A full backup
makes a complete copy of the selected data onto another medium. An incremental
backup backs up just the data that has been added or changed since the last full
backup. You should also keep copies of backups at a secure offsite location.
A full backup augmented by incremental backups
is generally quicker and takes less storage space. You might consider a policy
of running a full backup on a weekly basis, followed by daily incremental
backups. However, when you want to restore data after a crash, this method will
take longer because you first have to restore the full backup, then each
incremental backup. If such a process is a concern, another option is to run a
full backup nightly; just automate it to run after-hours Test your backups
frequently by actually restoring data to a test location. In this way, you can:
• Ensure backup media and backed-up data are
in good shape.
• Identify problems in the restoration process.
• Provide a level of confidence that will be
useful during an actual crisis.
Establish permissions
Both your desktop and server operating systems
can provide protection against data loss resulting from employee activities.With Windows XP and Windows 2000—as well as
Microsoft Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2003, Windows Server 2003, and
Windows 2000 Server—it is possible to assign users different permission levels
based on their roles and responsibilities within your organization.
Rather than giving all users Administrator
access—which is not a best practice for maintaining a secure
environment—institute a “least privilege” policy by configuring your servers to
give individual users access to specific programs only and specifically defining
user privileges.
Encrypt sensitive data
Encrypting data means that you convert it into
a form that disguises the data. Encryption is used to ensure the confidentiality
and integrity of the data when the data is stored or moved across a network.
Only authorized users who have the tools to decrypt encrypted files can access
these files. Encryption complements other access control methods and provides an
added level of protection for securing data on computers that may be vulnerable
to theft, such as mobile computers or files shared on a network. Windows XP and
Small Business Server 2003 support Encrypting File System (EFS) to encrypt files
and folders. Together, these three practices should provide the level of
protection most businesses require to keep their data safe.
Top
|
