Processing data is what all businesses do. Protecting data is what smart businesses do. Smart businesses understand that if they lose their data they lose their business.

If you are considering taking steps to ensure the integrity and safety of your important computer data you may be concerned about the security involved when dealing with such a task. When considering a third party such as an online secure data backup solution there are a few things to consider:

For starters, it is critical that your data be secure not only while in the possession of a third party but also while in transit to them.

Most modern online secure data backup providers make there services available via the Internet and will provide you with the necessary software to back up a predefined set of your critical data, which is then encrypted (typically up to 448 bit), before it is transferred over a high speed connection to a secure data storage facility. By securing your data before transferring it over the Internet, you can be assured that your sensitive data (such as financial reports, company memos, and client databases) are safe from prying eyes.

How Secure is Your Encryption?

For ultra-critical, or highly sensitive applications, the data may be transferred over a completely encrypted channel (also known as an encrypted “tunnel” or virtual private network). If you will be backing up sensitive data that demands the utmost of privacy be sure to inquire about the level of encryption offered by the online secure data backup you are considering.

Where is Your Data Stored?

When considering a remote data backup vendor you should also take into consideration the facilities in which your sensitive data will be physically stored. In addition to encryption technology other things to be on the lookout for are fully secure facilities, biometric security systems, facility lockout policies, and human security. Depending on the level of security you need there are many levels of protection for your data that can be provided by remote data backup companies.

Be sure to do your research and investigate the track record and reputation of the online data backup company you are considering doing business with and never hesitate to ask questions when it comes to ensuring the security of your mission critical confidential data.

© 2010, edocsmike. eDocsMike – Business Results Systems, Inc. – All rights reserved.

In this day and age we are faced with more and more electronic receipts, contracts, bills, etc as the paper ones continue to be phased out.  However, what about that garage full of old documents you’ve been collecting for the past twenty years?

As we start to integrate electronic personal information and hard copy personal information, here are 8 important things you should know.

This list isn’t intended to be the final and definitive list. There are lots of other creative ideas that should be considered as well. This is also not intended to be a “perfect” list — but for many, trying to create a “perfect” system will forever keep you from creating a workable system.

1 — Know What You Need to Keep and Why.

Whether you are thinking about paper or electronic personal records, most people tend to save more than they need to. So the first step in developing a personal information plan is to identify what needs to be saved in the first place. In the business world, these kinds of plans are usually called retention schedules.

Here are some of the basic assumptions you should use when it comes to thinking about what needs to be saved.

Very basically anything that you currently have, and paid a lot of money for (home, car, large appliances), you should still have the mortgage, receipt, etc.  Health documents–same deal.  Bank statements or credit card statements, however, you can toss after a year.  So go ahead and throw out that bank statement you’ve had since 1982.

2 — Get Rid of as Much Paper as You Can.

With information about retention schedules in hand, head to those paper files cluttering up your office and basement. Go through all your paper files with an eye toward your new retention schedules. Get rid of EVERYTHING YOU DO NOT NEED.   Whether this means sending the paper off to a professional shredding company, or sitting in front of your own personal shredder for hours upon hours feeding paper into the “instant confetti maker,” it’s important to destroy unneeded documents that could be compromising to your personal security.

3 — Decide What to Do With the Paper That Remains.

Now that you have the paper down to something more manageable, think about whether it is worth digitizing everything (a fancy word for scanning) or just leaving it as is. In the business world, this is often called backfile conversion. Organizations frequently get so caught up with trying to do something about the past that they never get on with managing the future.

So decide how you want to approach this question of backfile conversion. What you actually decide is probably less important than actually making a decision.

You should also decide at this point whether there are some core paper documents that would be better off stored off-site, say in a safe deposit box (and likely scanned as well).

4 — Clean out your digital garage.

You may have cleaned the dozens of boxes that were cluttering up your garage for years, but if your computer and email inbox have become the new “storage bin” then you need to do some spring cleaning.  Going through your email inbox to organize mail and delete items that are no longer necessary will not only improve your email systems capacity and speed of operation, but it will also make your digital workspace easier to navigate through.  This same philosophy should be applied to all your personal records.  Keep your external hard drive up to date and discard old outdated documents.

5 — Create a plan to organize your personal electronic information.

So, your file cabinets in your home office are now mostly empty. What next?

An important factor to think about when digitizing documents is organization.  This means creating folders on your computer and filing documents in a way that you are actually able to navigate through it. To start with, simple is better than complex. Just keep saying this over and over again.

For example, you might start with folders structured around the document types mentioned in point 1 above. The point here is that for a simple home filing system, your folder structure should match your retention requirements. This will eventually allow you to get rid of information by date once it is no longer needed. This might mean top-level folder with names like…

• Accident Reports/Claims
• Bank Statements
• Checks (canceled)
• Contracts (expired)
• Contracts (current)
• etc.

6 — Invest in a personal scanner with an automatic document feeder.

Just do it. If you don’t, waiting around for a flatbed scanner will drive you crazy. Thinking of it as a small investment in a paperless world.

A nice side benefit of a scanner with an ADF is that you can amaze your friends by scanning old photos at like 10 per minute. You can be popular with your friends by loaning your super cool ADF scanner to them when they are creating photobooks for their relatives to celebrate some special occasion.
Once you have your scanner in place and your basic file system in place, make a commitment to scan every piece of paper that comes in as soon as it comes in. Commit also to making an immediate searchable PDF of every electronic piece of information that comes in that needs to be saved.

7 — Don’t neglect network security.

Now that you are digitizing your personal information, take another look at those pesky wifi settings. Is access passworded? Again, be honest. Most people don’t bother. You can tell by just taking your laptop out into the neighborhood and walking around and watching the available wifi networks change. Note how few of them are secure.

8 — Invest in off-site back-up.

Backing up to an external hard drive sitting next to your computer is all well and good for protecting against hardware crashes, but does nothing to protect you if the house burns down or the pipes leak or…

Off-site encrypted back-up is usually available for a small monthly fee. It operates in the background. You don’t even need to think about it.

* Editor’s Note - This post originally published at  “8 Things,” authored by John Mancini, President and CEO of AIIM International.

© 2010, edocsmike. eDocsMike – Business Results Systems, Inc. – All rights reserved.

Data destruction should be a key factor in every business, but lack of knowledge about how to properly secure digital information is one of the greatest limitations preventing small business owners from enforcing a data security program.

One commonly-held belief about data security is the idea that once you highlight a file and hit the “delete” key, the file you’re erasing is no longer retrievable. While deleted files are hard to recover, data forensics experts warn it is not entirely impossible for a technologically-adept computer user to find and use your deleted files.

Pen and paper used to be the only method of recording business transactions, adding an entirely new opportunity for data thieves to exploit. Computer data, while more convenient and easier to work with, is just as vulnerable to information thievery as paper-based records. The only difference between paper and electronic data is hard copy records vs. “virtual” bytes and bits stored on a hard drive or server.

Data Destruction Tools

It doesn’t matter how much or how little confidential or censored information is stored within a business. It is the company’s obligation to ensure this information is disposed of  in a manner that prevents anyone from reconstructing it.

There are many different data destruction tools and methods which can be used to destroy sensitive data. Since this data may include personal details or confidential information about your business, take care in selecting your data management method.

Total Destruction

Data destruction is one very secure technique. This is where information is physically destroyed using melting, crushing, shredding and/or drilling tools. This is a very secure method because obviously, the data storage device cannot be re-used or sold.

Data sanitization is another technique commonly used. This method removes data from storage devices such as floppy discs and hard drives and overwrites them. Since the data is completely reformatted, your data is unreadable. But the sanitation technique is not the strongest, as traces of the overwrite are always visible to data forensics professionals.

On-Site Data Destruction

Many companies offer an on-site data destruction service. This means they can destroy sensitive data without removing the media from your facility. On-site data destruction services allow companies to witness their confidential and censored data being destroyed by a commercial-grade shredding device.

Having on-site data destruction service gives business owners additional piece of mind, since storage systems never leave your facility, possibly becoming the property of information thieves.

© 2010, edocsmike. eDocsMike – Business Results Systems, Inc. – All rights reserved.

Computer crashes are unavoidable. Neglecting to properly protect your data isn't.

Computers are prone to crashing. It’s a fact of life we can’t avoid. Case in point: if you know anything about computers, the term ‘system restore’ probably strikes fear in even the toughest computing veteran.

When something goes wrong with your computer, and there is absolutely no way to fix it, you sometimes have to do a full system restore to get it up and running again. The problem with this is that this means everything on your computer will be wiped out and your computer will be as it was when you bought it: Empty. If you haven’t saved your data properly, a system restore will wipe it all out. Yikes!

That Mystery Disc

Most computers come with a disc for a system restore, so make sure you keep yours in a safe place when you bring your computer home. If you’re lucky, you will never need to use this CD, but you can’t count on things running smoothly one hundred percent of the time. With the flow of digital information accelerating faster everyday, the chance of downloading a virus is very real. Even the most sophisticated virus scanning software struggles to catch up with hackers, social networks and software vulnerabilities.

If your computer downloads a virus, a system restore might be the only thing that brings your PC back to life. even worse: You have to reinstall your operating system entirely. Restoring or reinstalling operating systems don’t come without a steep price, however. Any documents, pictures, mp3s, videos etc. that were on the hard drive will be gone forever. Unless you have an online data backup.

This is why it is critical to always back up your work, your photos, and anything else you can’t stand to lose. When you do a system restore, you can put your important documents and your family photos back where they belong on your computer. This can be a tedious and time consuming task, but it is far better than losing everything.

Here are a few other expert tips for keeping your computer files safe and sound:

Save as you go. Sometimes a computer crashes without warning, and there’s almost nothing you can do about it.  Save as you go, and make sure to back up all important files on a regular basis – just so you can avoid the nightmare of doing a full restore.

Call your computer’s manufacturer for help first. They may have a solution you can try before you wipe everything out with a full restore. Remember to keep your virus protection up to date because many times, if a virus has paralyzed your computer, your tech support service may not be able to help you.

Use an external hard drive for backups. Keeping backups of your files on an external hard drive in your home or office  is also good idea, but never use an external drive in place of an online backup service.  External hard drives can give you a false sense of data security considering it’s just as vulnerable to viruses and crashes. Backing up your data off-site is economical and easy to use.

© 2010, edocsmike. eDocsMike – Business Results Systems, Inc. – All rights reserved.

Regardless of how you back up your computer, you should always ensure you are backing up a secure database without downloading a virus that could corrupt or harm your information. Some of these risks reside in the Internet browser you use and how it’s set up. Browser settings are commonly overlooked by most Internet users, but there are undeniable risks to trusting your software (and as a result, the data housed on your computer) is secure.

Check and delete cookies: All popular browsers let users view and delete cookies installed on their computer. Methods vary by browser.

© 2010, edocsmike. eDocsMike – Business Results Systems, Inc. – All rights reserved.

Data backups can create major headaches for businesses that don't configure their systems with privacy in mind.

Since business documents and their content drive the decisions and generate the transactions that take place in every business, it’s critical for managers and their workers to ensure their documents are backed up and secure.

© 2010, edocsmike. eDocsMike – Business Results Systems, Inc. – All rights reserved.

Los Angeles City officials are awaiting the launch of a new cloud-based computing platform, provided by Google. City officials hope to save millions in software licensing fees being paid to Google rival Microsoft.

For several years, Microsoft has been leaking information out about their so-called cloud initiatives. As the dominant player in the computer software industry, Microsoft rightfully decided to take ownership of the then-fledgling cloud-based storage space before competitors like Google could get a chance.

While most major hardware and software companies see a huge silver lining in the cloud — in the form of money to be made form of data-heavy businesses that need access to server space, but don’t have room or capital to invest in their own — the problem with the cloud comes down to another kind of lining; privacy.

Microsoft engineers have been working for months to add functionality to their cloud offerings, but have had some setbacks by a few of their vendor partners; a few of which jumped into the cloud while Microsoft wasn’t looking. The U.S. economy may be crawling back to a place of normalcy, but the cloud is getting overcrowded. Data consumption by companies throughout the United States never slowed down while the recession claimed jobs and business growth.

L.A.  – A Test Case for Online Data Storage

In the same manner that social media experts struggle with ways to monetize their web sites, one of the reasons why Microsoft and its peers haven’t formally launched cloud storage services can be chalked up to the growing competitiveness of online data storage in the consumer marketplace has led to some major pricing volatility. After all, when the average home computer user is invited to store their photos, music and documents online for just a couple of bucks a month by their cable company,  some  businesses owners question why it costs significantly more to add a cloud to their company.

The resulting market confusion is driving prices down at a time when cloud storage firms can’t afford to take the hit. Now Enter Google.

The city of Los Angeles contracted with the search engine giant to provide cloud-based e-mail, data storage and applications services for all its public agencies. Under the as-yet-to-be-launched scenario, L.A. government workers would log into a secure Google account to access their e-mail and use Google Docs, freeing up large volumes of data storage space for the city. Since Google Apps are housed in the cloud, the cash-strapped city looks to save millions in licensing fees and IT infrastructure they are paying to Microsoft.

Old Rivals, New Market

Set to have gone live last week, the L.A. county Google platform suffered a setback when the L.A. Police Department pushed back on the launch, citing concerns about the encryption level of its emergency services data. Google is quickly addressing the city’s concerns with a “Google for Government” suite, specifically tailored to the city’s concerns — and presumably those of other governments looking to jump into the cloud.

Not to be outdone, Microsoft may very well be sitting outside of Google’s cloud, learning from its mistakes before going after other lucrative government cloud projects. Either way, the two rivals will probably end up creating a thunderstorm of proposals for cloud projects after the L.A. project takes off.

Privacy Can’t Be Totally Regulated – But Neither Can People

The other probable reason the cloud hasn’t taken off is a sheer lack of confidence in the cloud’s ability to keep sensitive data secure and only accessible by those who are authorized to see it. How many of us have suffered a sudden server outage only to lose data we were working on?

Blame Facebook, Twitter or the countless other social media sites that have suffered major privacy breaches, but the fact of the matter is, no matter how you configure your business network for privacy, no data is absolutely secure 24/7. Not even the people who manage it.

Consider what happened a few days ago when the Pentagon learned that its entire Afghanistan war playbook had been uploaded to Wikileaks.com, a Web site that is exclusively dedicated to releasing information to the public that’s not meant for public consumption. Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst charged this month with leaking classified information, is being reported by the Associated Press as the source of the breach.

Manning, a 22 year-old, is said to have sent repeated e-mail communications to a reporter with WIRED magazine when he became disillusioned with the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. The breach, an obvious major embarrassment to Pentagon officials, only emphasizes to businesses looking to migrate to a cloud-based data storage process that data breaches can’t always be attributed to the computer servers it’s housed in.

© 2010, edocsmike. eDocsMike – Business Results Systems, Inc. – All rights reserved.

Avoid a catastrophic hard drive failure and virus intrusions from portable data storage devices- back-up online.

To most small business owners, hard drive data recovery causes fear and panic; Fear that they have lost an all-essential document or those precious family photos —  and panic after they recognize how much it might cost to pay a firm to have the information retrieved, if it’s recoverable at all.

With more and more online data back-up options available these days, it’s a lot less difficult than to recover files from a problematic drive. While it is achievable for you to back up your files yourself, your best bet for protecting your business data is to seek the advice of a file recovery expert.

Viruses and Hard Drives

Have you ever had the need to recover crucial files or emails that have been corrupted or deleted because of viruses or trojan attacks? Pretty much everyone who uses the Web has been a victim of viruses or had a protection breach of some sort inside their computer. These can be caused by a malfunctioning virus scanning system or failure of the hard disk.

The types of data disappointments that can occur typically fall into two categories — physical failures and logical failures. Physical failures include spindle motor failure, a reader head crash, or circuit board failure. Any unusual scratching noises you encounter while using your computer could well be a sign of this. Logical disappointments on the other hand, occur when the data you wish to obtain is physically “healthy,” but inaccessible. Common leads to of logical data failures are human error, software package error or virus.

Solutions for All-In-One Data Protection

It must be noted that in all circumstances of computer generates failures, your greatest hope of recovering your data is to immediately power the computer down to prevent further damage. If your computer hard drive starts to fail, the moving parts inside the drive itself will continue to shred your data unless you immediately cut the power source. In the end, you may not be able to retrieve everything, but shutting off your computer will usually prevent a complete loss.

In the case of a logical failure, you will find several computer software packages that you can turn to.

The very most common category of disk drive data back-up and recovery software is the free, public domain variety, typically available online. These programs can be great value and for light, non-business-critical computer users. But businesses need more protection.

Portable Drives Crash Too

Small business owners need a single application to manage a large volume of constantly changing data. Here’s why an entrepreneur should rely on a commercial data back-up provider to ensure your data can be housed on a server large enough to process your information: A common mistake is to assume that a portable storage device is protected from viruses or failure. But because portable storage drives are connected to your computer, they too can destroy your data.

Want To Learn More?

For more information on how to protect your business-critical data with a commercial back-up service, visit www.accuratedatastorage.com.

© 2010, edocsmike. eDocsMike – Business Results Systems, Inc. – All rights reserved.

Deploying a data storage strategy for growing businesses is less expensive with the right partner.

With the rise of so-called “cloud computing,” many businesses are deploying a data back-up plan that’s heavily dependent on virtual data storage. But more often than not, business owners rely on advice that can have devastating consequences for your critical business documents. Migrating your data to the cloud takes careful planning.

Just like any other small business lesson, it’s best to learn from your peers’ mistakes and their successes.

With cost recovery in mind, here’s a small business case study in cloud data back-up, compliments of Computer World magazine writer Patrick Thibodeau.

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When debt collection agency Deca Financial Services LLC was formed last year, it had a choice of two IT paths: It could buy its own servers and software licenses and hire an administrator, at a total of cost of about $700,000, or it could turn to a cloud provider — an option that would cost about $60,000 in the first year.

At first, James Hefty, director of operations at the Fishers, Ind.-based company, didn’t believe the cloud was an option, since Deca had to ensure the security of its systems and data, comply with various financial regulations and be prepared for situations such as client audits.

But their hosted service provider said it could address all of Deca’s security concerns, meet agreed-upon service levels and satisfy its disaster recovery needs. “We very quickly realized with a little bit of analysis that everyone benefits from it,” Hefty said.

Deca has its own network, router, firewall and server in an environment featuring Hewlett-Packard Co. blades and VMware Inc. virtualization technology.

Brian Wolff, vice president of sales and co-founder of BlueLock, said Deca is getting cloud services even though it has some dedicated IT resources because the hosted offering can scale on demand and is virtual and fault-tolerant.

As a new company, Deca had the option of choosing between the cloud and on-site IT resources. Large established companies, on the other hand, are unlikely to make wholesale shifts to the cloud, but they are setting budgets that are geared toward spending money on hosted on-demand IT services rather than making capital investments in on-site IT systems, said analysts.

“We have never had the ability to run hardware on a software operating model,” said Robert Whiteley, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. But now that IT managers have the ability to buy hardware as an operational expense, they are budgeting for it, he said.

IT managers have typically devoted about 70% of their infrastructure budgets to ongoing operations and maintenance, with the balance for innovation.

But a Forrester survey of some 2,600 companies of all sizes found that IT managers intend to reduce IT operations and support spending to 50%. The innovation share of the budget will remain at 30%, but the balance will go to expansion of capacity to support business growth.

Whiteley said companies are, for example, making plans to buy cloud-based storage services that can scale to meet business expansion needs.

The Hackett Group Inc., an Atlanta-based advisory firm, has seen the need for a variable IT budgeting approach in its own surveys. Companies want the ability to maintain IT cost with revenue changes, which is making on-demand sourcing critical.

Honorio Padrón, an analyst at Hackett, said users want as much variability as possibility — and they want pricing that’s based on daily usage and consumption.

“We believe that the highly unsettled conditions that characterize the economic climate today will never fully abate,” Padrón said in a Hackett report he co-authored. “Therefore scalable, pay-for-use systems are favored over inflexible, fixed-cost, capital-intensive technology.”

As a start-up, Deca had an advantage over other financial services companies because it didn’t have legacy systems to worry about. There are more than 4,000 third-party debt collection companies in the U.S., and most of them are small.

The Association of Credit and Collection Professionals says 80% of its member companies have 13 or fewer employees, but 80% of the people who work in the industry have jobs at larger companies. The industry employs more than 300,000 people.

But even the larger companies in that industry will likely begin to show more interest in cloud services, said Rodney Nelsestuen, an analyst at Tower Group Inc. He said he expects to see an uptick in interest in the cloud in the next 18 months, as large IT services providers begin to tailor their offerings for the financial industry.

“The internal IT shops are going to be under increasing pressure to reduce size,” Nelsestuen said.

The benefits of moving your data to a server you don’t actually own are numerous, especially in an uncertain economy. Entry level business servers cost thousands of dollars — an investment that would be better deployed to human resources or other operational needs that feed your growing business.

© 2010, edocsmike. eDocsMike – Business Results Systems, Inc. – All rights reserved.

Your day to day business is stressful enough without adding worry about the security and permanence of your data.

The list of what ifs is very long. What if a natural disaster strikes? What if user error causes your systems to loose data? What if your equipment is stolen or damaged? And on, and on and on.

Your data is the life blood of your business. Keep it safe with an off-site data backup.

Prevention is always better than a cure and the best way to prevent data loss is to maintain a backup system.

You could back up your data yourself on to removable media, i.e. CD/DVD, Zip, tape or several other formats. However this can turn out to be a very expensive solution in terms of the time it takes to produce and maintain these back up solutions.

The best solution all around for most businesses is to maintain an off-site back up. With off site backup, data is sent electronically via a remote back up service, also called electronic vaulting or e-vaulting. Sending backups off-site ensures that a copy of pertinent data is maintained at all times in a remote location. This also ensures systems and servers can be reloaded with the latest data in the event of a natural disaster, accidental error, or system crash. These systems are typically encrypted, making this a convenient, secure and cost effective solution to the problem of data loss.

When you are searching for a data back up company, it’s important that you look for a company that follows the guidelines of the National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) that mandate the protection of data.

One of the major data back up companies online is Accurate Data Storage. They provide secure, reliable and affordable on-line data backup storage that is available to the end user 24 hours a day 7 days a week. They provide you with software to connect to their remote back up servers as well as assist you in setting up a back up schedule and choosing the amount of back up storage space that is best for your business. Accurate Data Storage uses a 128 bit encryption to protect your files during the transfer. Your data is then stored in a password-protected vault at a World Class, disaster-proof data center, protected by biometric locks, full-time security professionals and long-life diesel generators.

Regardless of which remote data back up company you choose, keep in mind that your business relies on the safety and security of your data. Make sure to ask questions about NIST compliance and the features of the site where the data servers are located. You’re business data is too important to risk being improperly backed up or stored in a location that is less than secure.

© 2010, admin. eDocsMike – Business Results Systems, Inc. – All rights reserved.