Tag: Backup

Backup and Recovery for your Hybrid Environment in the Philippines

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Backup and Recovery for your Hybrid Environment in the Philippines
Backup and Recovery for your Hybrid Work Environment banner

Backing up data has always been something people or companies have ranked as a low priority need. However, when the need arises for backup and you and your company are not prepared, the result can be disastrous. Statistics show most small businesses do not recover from data loss and are forced to close while enterprises are estimated to lose $4,500 (or approximately PHP 200,000) per minute.

To make matters worse, data loss can now happen outside of the network perimeter. With the popularity of hybrid setups, users are now accessing data outside the network perimeter. Data is now being stored locally on their laptops or PCs out of convenience on their part. However, it also means you cannot control what happens to that data once it’s out of reach of your network control. This leaves your data vulnerable to loss if any unforeseen incident occurs such as ransomware attacks or hardware failures occur.

This where a cloud-based backup solution such as Datto Cloud Continuity can help.

Reliable Backup

Backup and Recovery for your Hybrid Work Environment reliable

With Datto Cloud Continuity, you are able to consistently backup your data no matter where your endpoint is. Whether you are moving between networks or turning off your device, Cloud Continuity pauses your progress in case of interruptions and automatically resumes once its connection is restored. This is especially helpful to users who are in a hybrid setup since users are switching between locations on a daily basis. Alerts are also generated in the case that your backup has failed to ensure that you can have a reliable backup once recovery is needed.

Simple and Easy Recovery

Backup and Recovery for your Hybrid Work Environment simple

Whether its from a ransomware attack, lost or stolen device, or accidental deletion of a file, Datto Cloud Continuity can help you recover in a timely manner. Cloud Continuity allows you to easily restore individual files and folders through its image-based backup. You are able to go through different versions of your backup to find the files that were accidentally deleted or even lost due to hardware failure or corruption.

Using the same image-based backup, you are able to choose a file version in which your files were outside the infected date. Datto also will keep your files separate and quarantined in the event that ransomware was detected to ensure recovery. Stolen or lost PCs can also be restored through Datto with all the data and configurations the user had. This helps minimize the productivity loss of your users and ensures they can get back to work immediately.

To learn more about Datto’s Cloud Continuity or other backup or BCDR solutions, please contact us at marketing@www.ctlink.com.ph and we will be happy to help you!

Protecting your Data: 4 Key Reasons on Why You Should Have a Backup Solution

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Protecting your Data: 4 Key Reasons on Why You Should Have a Backup Solution

Data is something all businesses would agree is their most important asset, this is why they take multiple steps to ensure its security. However, when it comes to data protection, most companies are lax in its measures in the Philippines. This is alarming as data loss is not as uncommon to businesses as most seem to believe. Below are a few common scenarios in which a Backup solution can immediately address:

User Error

One of the highest reason of data loss can be attributed to user mistakes or error. In multiple surveys, human error is at 25% of data loss. This could be from accidental deletion or even accidental overwrites. With a proper backup, you can always revert to it to find the data or even go through different versions of files.

Data Corruption

Files can become corrupted due to bugs or even malware without a moments notice. Backup solutions can help safeguard your data from this spontaneous data loss.

Hard Drive Failure

Just like data corruption, your hard drive can fail due to multiple reasons. With no proper backup in place, this can mean important data can be lost indefinitely.

Retention and Archiving

Some businesses need long data retention or historical archiving of files. This is to ensure proper auditing, or a need arises that the data must be pulled out for review. Backup solutions can be customized to solve these requirements.

Does BCDR = Backup?

There are multiple steps in creating a data protection strategy, the first step being to put a backup solution in place and the last step being to have a BCDR plan. This goes without saying, you should not jump in steps when you are implementing a data protection strategy.

BCDR strategy is not a replacement for a backup solution. The key difference between the two is how the recovery is done. Without the initial backup solution, how can you plan for a disaster recovery when the first step of protecting your data for day-to-day activities is not yet in place?

BCDR is reserved only for cases when disasters occur that would cause business operations to halt. An example of this would be from natural disasters such as fires that would cause your servers to become inoperable, and the entire database will need to be recovered.

While preparing for a disaster is important, ensuring that your data is protected from more common and recurring threats should come first. Short term goals should first be implemented to help achieve your long term goals in data protection.

To learn more about Backup solutions, you may send us a message via the form below!

Images are courtesy of Freepik (1, 2, 3, 4) and Vecteezy

Financial Services: Adding Business Continuity to your Bottom Line

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Financial Services: Adding Business Continuity to your Bottom Line

Financial firms have the task of making sure that their clients are making the most of their fiscal decisions.  From services such as accounting, hedge fund management, and stock investments, your clients put their trust in you to handle their funds and ensure confidentiality.  Once that trust is gone, you will most likely lose that client for life.  Therefore, maintaining that trust is important in the financial industry.  So how do you ensure that their data is safe?  Do you have plans just in case your clients are unable to retrieve information or make withdrawals?  How about if their identity was stolen and you were are unable to access their data that would help stop it?

Downtime is one of the causes that hampers the industries performance, and this does not just apply to downtime caused by natural disasters.  The other and more recent causes of downtime from data loss come in the form of cyber attacks and malware like ransomware.  These are the kind of situation that your company should try to avoid at all costs as this can not only ruin the trust from the said client, it could also affect your future prospects.

A False Sense of Security

While you may be taking some precautions, such as securing and backing up your sensitive data, sometimes that’s not enough. There is a common misconception that data is safe if backed up once a day, but this outdated practice is no longer sufficient for several reasons:

  • If you forget to perform the backup or the backup process fails, you’re not protected.
  • If you only back up your files once a day, you’re left vulnerable to the loss of an entire day’s work.
  • If you don’t properly validate your backup files, you could be in for an unpleasant surprise when you try to use those files to restore your company’s operations.
  • If you only back up your files on-site, you could lose them too, leaving you with no way to meet client requests.
  • If you only back up your raw data, rather than all your application and server configuration files, it could take several days to restore your practice —because you will also have to rebuild your servers, operating systems, applications, etc.

Below are a few best practices your company should follow to start the most basic of ways you can protect your data:

  • Outsource your company’s IT needs to an expert who has experience in the financial industry.
  • Don’t sacrifice quality to save money when purchasing hardware. It will benefit you (and your bottom line) to have strong technology in the long run.
  • Perform timely hardware and software updates, maintenance and backups.
  • Establish, review and maintain system security of all practice technology.

The Better Way: Business Continuity

Although best practices are good to follow, it won’t give you that extra layer of insurance that you would like to have when handling with a lot of confidential and important data.  This is where a Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) solution comes in to help you with your backup and disaster recovery.  It will help you protect your data whether it is on-prem or in the cloud and even help backup data in your SaaS applications.  While still being able to help you restore your data in case of unforeseen incidents.

When a business faces an incident in which their systems are majorly affected, whether it be natural disasters or a man-made, a strong BCDR solution can help you get back online in minutes.

When leveraging hybrid solutions as well, can ensure that your restore time will be quicker as using local storage exclusively can cause issues if the area it was stored was also affected by the disaster.

Going full cloud is also be slow as well due to bandwidth issues that will pop up as you try to bring back all the hundreds of GB back to your system. A hybrid model works to alleviate the vulnerabilities by implementing both processes to fill in the gaps. That’s intelligent business continuity.

To learn more you may contact us at 8893 9515 to learn more about BCDR solution or if you have any questions that you would like to clarify.

Cloud Backup vs. BCDR: The Difference Between the Two

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Cloud Backup vs. BCDR: The Difference Between the Two

When discussing whether business’ have a business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) in place, many would say that they have some in place but really only have Cloud Backup in place.  So, what is the difference between the two?  Cloud backup, simply put, is backing up your data to a remote cloud-based server which is accessible to many different and connected resources.

While BCDR is focused more on ensuring that your business will be able to continue after a disaster, whether it be natural or due to human error.  Business continuity focuses more on the continued activity or how fast your business can go back into operation after a disaster, while disaster recovery refers to the set of policies which are put in place to protect your business’ technology infrastructure.

You can separate backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity by the time it takes to restore and/or recover your data and get back to work.  BCDR plans can help you speed up recovery time from days and weeks to simply just minutes or hours.   Below are three main reasons why businesses should have a proper BCDR plan in place:

To prevent downtime and loss of revenue

Businesses usually can’t afford downtime as it can significantly affect profits, with a BCDR plan, you can minimize the downtime and loss of revenue you would incur.

To prevent data loss

A BCDR plan in place can help you prevent the loss of data to ensure that your business can still operate, a study once found the 87% of businesses that lost access to their data for more than a week would eventually close down a year later.

To protect the business reputation

With how consumers expect most business to accommodate them 24/7, it can damage the business reputation once long periods of downtime is experienced by consumers.  With a BCDR plan in place, you can help prevent these types of reputation losses from happening.

To learn more about BCDR solutions, you can refer to our product page here, or you can contact us directly at 893-9515 and we will be happy to help you!

Protect Your Critical Data with Known Folder Move!

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Protect Your Critical Data with Known Folder Move!

Data is usually rank #1 when asked of users in importance of their endpoints.  So, it is always somewhat strange that when asked if they keep a back up of their files, the answer is usually no.  Data is usually taken for granted by end-users, sometimes event saving them in improper places such as their desktop rather than specific folders.  So, when the time comes that an unforeseen event causes the user to lose their data is when they try all means to retrieve it when all it took was a few clicks to ensure their data was safe.

Knowing this, Microsoft has taken its one drive saving functions event further with Known Folder Move (KFM).  Below is Microsoft’s description of KFM:

Known folders are global pointers in Windows representing a location on the user’s drive. They help users to organize their most important files and access them across different applications. KFM helps you move your docs, desktop, and pictures into OneDrive. Even the Screenshots and Camera Roll folders are included when the Picture folder has opted into KFM.

KFM can help users back up their data by seamlessly integrating into the most commonly used folders (Desktop, Documents, and Pictures) or by using assigned folders set by the end user.  There are now indicators that will tell you whether your folders are in sync with OneDrive or if the data is only in the PC.

Cloud icon represents data is saved on the cloud, while the green check mark means the data can be found on both the PC and OneDrive.

Another feature that will greatly help businesses encourage their users to protect their data with OneDrive would be the feature to “set up protection for important folders”.  With this feature, users will receive a pop-up window reminding them to set up their protected folders which will be synced to OneDrive, if users decide to do it at another time, the pop-up window comes back at a later period but as a smaller window compared to the first one.  This is to ensure that the reminders are not intrusive or distracting to the end user.

To learn more about KFM and OneDrive, you may contact us at 893-9515 and we will be happy to help you with any of your inquiries!

Unitrends backup and recovery products is a “game changer” against Ransomware

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Unitrends backup and recovery products is a “game changer” against Ransomware

With the threat of ransomware on the rise, organizations have been further increasing their IT security to makes sure that they are prepared for it. However, no matter how well you prepare you can never guarantee that no threats will ever pass through. This is where backup solutions such as Unitrends come in. Updates such as ransomware detection for both Unitrends Recovery Series physical appliances and Unitrends Backup virtual appliances can help determine the probability that ransomware is operating within your server workstation or desktop. They even alert you when it does detect ransomware so you may immediately restore your files from your last legitimate recovery point.

The Unitrends backup ‘game changer’

Richard Malewicz, CIO of Livingston County, Mich., has been a user of Unitrends Recovery RC936S and Unitrends Cloud since January 2016, and he called the ransomware detection a “game changer.”

“[Unitrends has] brought forth a functionality and capability to the data backup market in such a particular way where it did not exist previously,” Malewicz wrote in an email interview.

“It’s often said that a data backup system is the last line of defense in a ransomware attack, but in actuality, a traditional backup system isn’t defensive at all. When you restore data from a backup system after a ransomware attack, it’s an indication the enterprise’s cyberdefenses have failed. It is merely a risk management contingency operation at that point.”

An estimation of around 4,000 ransomware attacks on average per day in 2016 (by the U.S. government), a big jump from 2015 where 1,000 attacks per day were estimated on average.

“[Ransomware detection] will be a feature that continues to evolve and improve with the product,” Brady said.

To learn more about Unitrends, visit our product page Here!