Do You Have the Capacity for Data Recovery of Critical Systems?

Data recovery is a vital part of any disaster recovery plan, and it’s especially important if your computer systems have been compromised by an outside agent. When your machines are attacked by a hacker, you may or may not see all of the effects immediately. Often, attackers make subtle alterations to your data or leave behind files that allow them entry to your servers even after you’ve detected the security breach. Your data recovery capability is essential to recovering from an attack, and it should include both your own ability to recover data from a backup and a professional data recovery company such as Fields Data Recovery to do complete restoration and recovery if your own methods fail to completely recover your files.

Ensuring Your Data Recovery Capability

There are a number of things your company can do to ensure that you can recover from a computer attack or a virus. Some of these are probably familiar to you, but every day, data recovery companies work on hard drives belonging to companies who have neglected some vital part of their data security plan.

Schedule Automatic Backups of All Essential Data

Most of your systems should be backed up to an outside disk or storage medium at least once a week. Any systems or files that change frequently, such as banking records and employment records, should be backed up more frequently.

Your backup plans should include the operating system, all of your application software and all the data on your machines. While you don’t have to include all three systems in the same backup procedure, all three systems should be backed up at least once a week. That ensures that you’ll have recent files from which you can restore your entire system if it’s compromised in some way.

It’s not enough to just set up a backup system and let it run, either. Every data recovery company can tell you horror stories about companies that thought they were religiously backing up all of their files – until they needed those backup files for data restoration. That’s when they found out that something had gone wrong with their system and they actually had no backups from which to do a quick restore. Test your backups and your restore disks frequently to make sure that you can actually restore your data from them – and establish a relationship with a company like Fields Data Recovery just in case you need them in the future.

Make sure that all of your key personnel are trained on the backup and data restoration processes. At the very least, every person in your company should be aware of what to do if they run into data problems, even if that thing is to immediately notify the IT department. Your IT department should have at least one alternative person who understands how to do a restoration if your system is compromised in case your IT security head is not available.

All of your backup tapes, hard drives and other backup media should be stored in a safe, offsite location that you can easily access in an emergency. The last thing you need is for your backup tapes and files to be destroyed in the same mishap that compromises your operating systems.

If all else fails, a professional data recovery company can almost always reconstruct much of your system and restore your files to usable condition. The best solution, however, is to set up your backups and disaster recovery process to not need them at all.