Backup Fanatic
How to Ensure Business Continuity
by Delivering Continuous Protection,
Secured Storage, Data Compliance,
and Instant Data Recovery
Domenic DiSario
Backup Fanatic
141031-001
Published by:
90-Minute Books
Newinformation Inc
302 Martinique Drive
Winter Haven, FL 33884
www.90minutebooks.com
Copyright 2015, Domenic DiSario
Published in the United States of America
ISBN-13: 978-1502816955
ISBN-10: 1502816954
No parts of this publication may be reproduced without correct attribution to the author and the domain www.backupfanatic.com.
Dedication
To my wife Debra
And
The Team
Other books
By
Domenic DiSario
Technology as a 2nd Language
Meditations for Geeks (late 2015)
Heres Whats Inside
Prologue
February 15, 2015
Its 10 AM Sunday morning.
Sitting in our comfortable family room drinking a cup of coffee as my wife plays ballie with the dogs in the background, there are a couple of things of note:
- I feel very fortunate that we still have power (so far) after another foot of snow last night and this morning. Weve totaled about 7 feet of snow in the last 3 weeks.
- The dogs, who are both Border Collies, have a major case of cabin fever (me too).
Over the last few weeks there have been some extraordinary events as a result of this historic weather.
- The MBTA is closed again. This is unprecedented and causing lots of grief as people are unable to get to work.
- Although the Governor keeps encouraging people to work from home, some people just dont have that capability. Even though it seems unbelievable, not everyone has high speed Internet access, and, even more incredibly, some companies do not allow people to work from home. And even if they do, these corporate systems are only configured to allow a percentage (sometimes small) of their workforce to access corporate IT resources. We have received numerous calls over the last few weeks from companies looking for a better way and a more robust remote access strategy.
Of course, some folks cant work from home due to the nature of their work but they still need to check their work email on their mobile devices before they get in the car for the longest commute imaginable or as they sit freezing on the public transportation platform.
- Snowiest month on record in Boston! Between February 1, 2015 and February 15, 2015 almost 60 of snow fell. The previous record? 43.3 inches (Jan 2005). And were only 2+ weeks in!
From Boston Business Journal
This book was written months before the snow of this winter and I have said many times that it does not take an earthquake, fire, hurricane or even a flood to grind many businesses to a halt.
A simple lack of access to the workplace is many times enough to bring a business to its knees. We are all susceptible one way or another.
From The Boston Globe
Introduction
Backup Fanatic
Boston, MA
March 2015
Being in the business world for so long, I have seen too many tragic stories of organizations mishandling their all-important data. I have seen everything from major businesses losing their entire client database to my next-door neighbor who lost her precious photos of her grandchildren.
We live in a data-driven society linked to our electronics. The ramification of losing all or even a portion of your data is enormous. I wanted to create awareness of how we ignore the inevitable data loss problem and how we must protect our data, both personally and professionally, from events that will cost your organization time and money.
It is no longer just about protecting data from a bad hard drive or a serious power surge, because now there is absolutely no flexibility in the time a business can take to get back to normal operations. Only a handful of businesses can tolerate even a day without email!
The threats go beyond physical damage to data as well. Harmful computer viruses are more sophisticated than ever and can wipe an entire database in a matter of hours. Employee errors or bad acts can literally shut down your operations, destroy your reputation and cause you to lose your job.
How prepared is your organization right now? As the world becomes more and more dependent on having the right data available, you have to be diligent in your approach to protecting one of your organizations most precious resources the all-important data and access to it on which your companys existence depends.
What follows is a transcript, along with supplemental material, in which I share with you the threats and challenges to your data integrity and availability of your IT resources and what you can and should be doing about those threats.
I hope this book is both educational and transformative. I want to teach you a bit about data security and change the way you think about your business continuity in the face of a disaster or lack of access. By the last page, youll find yourself becoming a backup fanatic as well.
Take Good Care,
Domenic DiSario
Backup Fanatic!
Susan: Good afternoon, this is Susan Austin, and I am excited to be here with backup fanatic Domenic DiSario. Domenic is going to be sharing with us his thoughts and ideas on how businesses can avoid disaster by having a solid plan in place should the unthinkable happen. Welcome, Domenic.
Domenic: Thanks, Susan. Good to talk with you again.
Susan: Why do you call yourself a backup fanatic?
Domenic: Well, I have been in the IT Support business for a long time and have seen so many sad stories come down the pipe. Data backup is a very, very important part of any companys IT planning and, these days, any personal planning, because we really are a data-driven, data-dependent society.
What is curious is that we are dependent on our electronics, yet we approach backup naively, expecting devices to be 100% reliable, 100% of the time.
I mean, if you think about it, the half-inch thumb drive in my pocket holds 500 times more data than was on the first hard drive of the first PC I built. The ramifications of that are enormous, and we need to consider the end results of losing it. There could be regulated data on the drive. There could be my QuickBooks file with business records, my photos, my wifes genealogy research or scanned house records and they all matter and are impossible to replace from original paper sources since no one prints a paper copy of an electronic file anymore. (nor should they).
In essence, backup, business continuity, and disaster recovery are critical in our lives and for some of us who work in a regulated environment are legally mandated. Added to this mix are mobile devices where the personal and the professional demarcation is gone forever.
The Distinction between Business
Continuity and Just Having a
Backup in Place
Susan: What are the distinctions between business continuity and a backup?
Domenic: With a backup, I am simply making a copy of a file or directory and in some cases, an application, whatever the case may be, and storing it somewhere else.
Data is typically backed up. The applications typically are not because they are tightly integrated into the various operating systems. So if I backed up my Microsoft Excel, I could not restore it. It would not work, so it would be useless to back up most applications. These days the application provider requires a download of the application since they dont provide backup CDs anymore.
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