Did you hear the one about the freight company who can’t deliver because of a ransomware attack? What about the housing developers on standby due to lost data? Whatever the circumstance, I’m sure you’ve heard more than one horror story about data loss.
As an IT professional, with more than 25 years in the business of data storage and security, I hear stories like this, and other eye-openers at least once a week. In my position as Technical Director of Vitanium, I help people with data storage, backup and security on a daily basis. The issue I see most is that people tend to come to us when it’s too late and the disaster has already happened, needing urgent help to recover data and get back to work because they’re losing money.
We’re always happy to help businesses get back on track as quickly as possible, but what I’d love to see is businesses taking data security seriously and protecting themselves before disaster strikes. After all, one of your most valuable assets is your IT system and the data it contains.
Could it happen to you?
I’d like to tell you a story about a company, one that could be yours, and how the unthinkable happened to them:
Imagine Air Freight Solutions, a hypothetical UK freight company that is the victim of a ransomware attack. Suddenly they find their systems frozen, meaning they can’t identify loads, match cargo to transport, take new orders or update clients on their deliveries. In short, with their systems down, they can’t operate.
The company is well-established and has IT infrastructure and cloud backups in place, although they’ve never considered Recovery Point Objectives (RPO’s) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO’s) as a part of their data protection strategy. The result? They are losing time, money, and potentially clients the longer their systems are down. They’ve also been contacted by the hackers and asked to provide a large ransom sum in exchange for returning the data.
What do they do?
At this point they call Vitanium, and we act quickly. We prepare for all of the backed-up data in the cloud to be sent to the customer manually. The next day their IT manager has to rebuild the servers from scratch, before restoring all the data quickly from the backup. Luckily, during the downtime Vitanium’s email filtering and continuity service allows the company to send and receive emails as normal.
Phew!
Now they are up and running, Vitanium recommends setting up Veeam on site to protect data and allow data recovery from any level, reducing their Recovery Point Objective and (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) to a matter of minutes (meaning if their systems go down again, they’ll be up and running without losing huge amounts of time and money).
We also provide them with Veeam Cloud Connect to handle offsite backups, consult on the configuration for Veeam, perform the initial setup and are on hand to monitor backups from then on – complete protection.
Air Freight Solutions don’t pay the hackers and get straight back to work.
Wait. That’s not such a bad story, is it? That depends on how much it cost the company between the moment of data loss to the moment of being back online; idle staff and transport, frustrated customers, failed deliveries, compensation, it all adds up. Wouldn’t you prefer a different ending?
Remember those choose your own adventure books, where you could go back and make another decision to avoid disaster? Well, let’s pretend we can do that. Back to the beginning:
Imagine Air Freight Solutions, a hypothetical UK freight company that ran a Health Check on their data with Vitanium then followed our recommendations to secure their systems against data loss, malicious attacks, physical damage, and user error. They deliver freight across the world without interruptions. Their Recovery Point Objective and (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) are set to recover within minutes, meaning they sleep soundly knowing they’ve done everything they can to secure their data. The End.
Which story would you prefer for your business?
If you’re sensibly opting for the happier ending, you’ll be interested in the free, no-obligation Health Check we’re offering at the moment.
What’s involved in a Vitanium Health Check?
- We’ll send you a simple, online questionnaire to fill in about your setup.
- Then we’ll give you a call and ask some key questions about your data and security. You may not know all the answers, and that’s ok, we’re here to identify any gaps.
- Finally, you’ll receive a free, no-obligation report from us with a summary of your current situation, and clear recommendations about what you could do to better protect yourself.
- If you want to talk to us about the report, or ask us to help you secure your data, we’ll be happy to help.
I’ve been working in the tech industry for over 25 years, and at Vitanium I manage the infrastructure and technical support to keep customers’ data safe and available. So, I can tell you from genuine (and sometimes frustrating) experience that most companies don’t realise how valuable their data and IT systems are until there’s a problem. Don’t be one of them.
Take advantage of Vitanium’s free, no-obligation Health Check and find out how you can better secure your data. Find out more→