One of the things on my holiday wish list is that entrepreneurs and small business owners safeguard their companies’ data through valid backups and be assured they can successfully restore data in the event of an emergency, theft, or accident. For the record, that is two things.

Many, many people tell me they want to make sure their data is safe but they do not have time or resources to do so.  This is especially the case when it does not always seem to contribute to the bottom line. However, as a friend of mine is so fond of saying, “you cannot NOT afford to make it happen.”

I know this is not the sexist of topics but take a second to think about losing all of your business data. What would you do?  How would you recover? Could you recover?  Would you recover?

This is overwhelming to think about, is it not? Let us briefly outline a solution and break it into small steps.  Here are a few tips to get started:

• Give yourself a date for putting plan in place
• State the goal for wanting to put backup and restore processes in place
• Identify what machine(s) and/or  network(s) to backup
• Determine when you want to schedule backups

In each of these steps there are several other steps that are needed but creating the plan is crucial. CRUCIAL.

Anyone who has worked with computers for a while knows it is not a matter of if you will lose data, but a matter of when you will lose it.  The best thing is to be prepared when the time comes.

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(Note:  This is not a new or an exciting topic, but it’s one of those things that has to be done.)

Business Continuity is the area of focus this week for The Tech Salon.   For small- to mid-sized businesses it is crucial to the survival of the business.  Yet many small- to mid- sized and SOHOs (small-office, home office) businesses operate without data backups and recovery plans.

Over the years, I have talked to many business owners and know that many business backup their data  but they do not have a data recovery plan or process and do not know if they can recover in the event of an emergency.  As one of my Facebook friends commented last week “small biz owners may not understand that ‘recovery‘ or restore is a process.”  So, I am here to tell you that recovery is a process and you need to know if you can recovery your data.

According to Wikipedia, business continuity is the  ” activity performed by an organization to ensure that critical business functions will be available to customers, suppliers, regulators, and other entities that must have access to those functions. These activities include many daily chores such as project management, system backups, change control, and help desk. Business Continuity is not something implemented at the time of a disaster; Business Continuity refers to those activities performed daily to maintain service, consistency, and recoverability.”

The take away is that you have to plan to recover your data if something bad happens.  You have to backup, then you have to run tests periodically to see if you can recover your data.  End of story.

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