Hackers and viruses aren’t they only calamities that small business operators must consider when employing a data backup and recovery system. In the real world, a stolen notebook or a crashed hard drive can do more immediate damage to a small business, than any external threat.
Are you prepared to reproduce a key presentation if your notebook goes missing from the airport on you way to the client’s office? Can you replace essential contact information if a sales representative’s hard drive locks up?
That’s part of the problem with most take backup systems. For the most part, tape backup regimens are only as good as the human being and the equipment behind them. Important data can be lost, just when you need it the most, because with a tape backup system, everything has to work flawlessly every step of the way, every time a backup is completed.
Iron Mountain and Connected entered into a partnership this week that allows the company known for its server backup solutions to expand its Electronic Vaulting offering to include Connected’s small business computer backup and recovery solution. As a result of the deal, Iron Mountain is providing small businesses with comprehensive data backup and recovery solutions beyond network servers to protect individual PCs. The beauty of deal is that Iron Mountain is offering a rock-solid, non-tape backup and recovery system for about $15 per PC per month.
Why It Works
Harry Ebbighausen, president of Iron Mountain’s Off-Site Data Protection division, said businesses operators forget that as much as 60 percent of their data is stored on employees’ desktop and laptop PCs
“Data protection is often the missing link to full recovery in the event of a disaster,” Ebbighausen said. “Iron Mountain is committed to providing its customers with a comprehensive, managed service for protecting critical business data, so we’re very pleased to partner with Connected to expand our Electronic Vaulting service offering.”
Dave Kubick, Connected’s director of business development, said that when all else fails and businesses aren’t able to deflect a virus or prevent an unforeseen hardware failure, they need to get back to a place and time before the damage was done.
“The best way to do access key information is to back up data off line, off- site and out of reach,” Kubick said. “Off site to keep information in a secure facility in the event of a natural or man-made disaster, off line because a virus or other secure network breach can destroy business data in seconds, and out of reach, away from a disgruntled employee’s sabotage.”
How It Works
Iron Mountain’s Electronic Vaulting services for PC data significantly reduces the challenges associated with tape backup systems, because there are no expenses incurred from adding personnel resources or infrastructure costs to your backup and recovery system.
The PC data backup and recover solution from Iron Mountain and Connected is Web-based — once the system administrator sets the parameters, the service automatically backs up and compresses data for transport over the Internet, then stores it off site in a secure Iron Mountain vault. For an added measure of digital security, data is heavily encrypted prior to transmission and also stored in an encrypted format. Industry standard 112-bit encryption is in place from the point of the initial secure file transmission until the data is restored to a PC.
Designated administrators can monitor any individual PC’s account usage, which is handy because there’s a limit of 10GB of backup storage available for each individual PC. Temporary files are not part of the deal, so unnecessary data such as Internet cache, streaming media and the like are automatically excluded from the backup process. Most individual PCs contain about 4GB to 6BG of unique data — the service is not intended for servers or extensive multimedia systems.
Critical data can be quickly restored, if necessary file-by-file, through a simple browser-like user interface. In the case of a massive failure, CDs are shipped overnight to recover data for an entire PC.
Lori Cotton, Iron Mountain’s director of product marketing, said the solution works because the element of human error is removed from the backup and recovery system.
“Backup policies are followed consistently, without manual intervention,” Cotton said. “Small businesses owners ultimately benefit from having peace of mind, knowing that their sales forecasts and business plans are secured out of sight, but always in reach.”
Product Wrap Up
Specifically built for businesses with five to 100 computers — be it desktops or laptops or both — customer support is free over the Web and by e-mail to the system administrator and individual users. Pay-as-you-go telephone support is also available. Around-the-clock access and availability of a full system backup and retrieval process is accomplished through Heal and iRoam programming.
Iron Mountain and Connected’s small business Electronic Vaulting solution ensures the safety, integrity, and availability of essential data should disaster strike. Businesses that subscribe to the new PC Electronic Vaulting service gain the benefits of having PC data securely backed up off site, off line and out of reach at a remote Iron Mountain vault. That is — until you need it.
