Informative

Six Steps to Better Data Backup and Quicker Recovery

Think Quicker Recovery Time, Not Quicker Backups While incremental backups are much faster than executing a full-backup, they also prolong recovery time. In the event of data loss, a full restore will require loading the most recent full backup and then each incremental backup tape. Having too many incremental backup tapes not only adds time to this restoration process, but it also increases the probability of not recovering all of your data. A tape could be lost, unintentionally skipped over, or contain corrupted data. Be sure to focus on optimizing the restore time to ensure faster data recovery. A quicker recovery time should be the main objective, not the need for a quicker backup process. Maintain Sufficient Backup History Within the blink of an eye, current data files can become corrupted and inaccessible. This will necessitate the loading of an earlier data backup that is clean of corruption. Many smaller companies make the mistake of failing to keep a sufficient backup history. How long is recommended? Often it depends on the business and any legal requirements. While some businesses may be fine with a year of backups, others may need 7+ years for regulatory purposes. Be Sure to Backup Essential Data AND Applications Some businesses don’t feel the need to backup all data, but be sure essential databases, documents and records are backed up frequently. Don’t overlook applications that are critical to day-to-day business operations either. Many companies fail to backup applications, only to realize when it’s too late that they don’t have access to the original installation disks when they’re trying to recover from data loss or an outage. Have Off-Site or an Online Backup Some businesses backup data simply by moving essential files to tapes or external hard drives that are then stored somewhere onsite. But if they’re kept onsite, what happens if a fire, flood or other natural disaster takes out not just your server but your backup tapes and drives? Onsite backups can also be susceptible to theft. Having secure off-site, or even online backup, is simply the smart thing to do to ensure quick recovery when trouble comes to town. Fix Broken Access Controls on Your File Server Many businesses have folders with confidential data residing on a file server with overly permissive access controls. Why take the risk of having a disgruntled – even former – employee access and misuse this data when access can be limited to only those in the company who need it? Be Sure to Test Restores It happens time and time again. Business owners think they have a data backup plan in place. Tapes are changed diligently each day and everything appears to be backed up and good to go. However, it turns out the backups haven’t been working for months, sometimes even years, right at the very moment they’re needed. Either the backups had become corrupt and useless or large segments of data were not being backed up. This happens often. Don’t let it happen to you. Need help with your backups? Schedule a free network assessment or read more about our backup and disaster recovery service.

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Seven ‘Must Haves’ for Your Small Business Website

Informative / Pennyrile Technologies

Your website represents your business and so building and maintaining it need to be of primary concern to you as a business owner. We often find business owners struggling with their websites saying things like: “My website looks great, but I am not able to convert” or “I invested so much into creating my website, but I don’t get many hits.” These things are very common pains faced by businesses, especially small business. If you aren’t sure where to start your site improvement project, this post will get you rolling in the right direction with seven key areas you need to pay attention to when it comes to your website. Content –Make sure your site has a significant amount of content and that the content is relevant and meaningful. Having the right amount of good content adds value and appeals to your target audience. Don’t fill the site with jargon and keywords just for the sake of it, lack of relevant content won’t help you improve your conversion rate. Testimonials –Nothing has more impact on your prospects than them hearing about your product/service from their peers. So make sure your site showcases testimonials from your satisfied customers. Social Media Icons –Social Media, when done correctly, it is a great medium to enhance your brand presence online. Get on popular social media networks and invite your website visitors to join you there – that way they will hear more about you from your fans at the social network. Contact Information –Tell your web visitors how to get in touch with you. They shouldn’t have to search the entire site before knowing how to contact you. Provide your contact information/contact form very clearly for them to use. Tracking –Incorporate a web-site tracker that helps you track the leads that come in from your website. You can use services such as Google Analytics that are free and provide you basic details such as number of hits, location, time spent on pages, etc. Loading Time –Web visitors today have little patience and lots of choices. So, it is important that your site loads quickly, otherwise they move on to the next search result. SEO –Search engine optimization is a key factor in determining the ROI of your website. Make sure your site is optimized for search engines so that it shows up when your prospects search for you.

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Mitigate Costly New Technology Risks for Continued Stability and Profitability

Informative / Pennyrile Technologies

Partnering with a managed service provider (MSP) is one new approach being used by many companies like yours. Experienced MSPs have access to newer tools that reduce costs by automating many routine in-house labor intensive processes. Break-fix is labor intensive, and labor is one of the most expensive operating costs within your IT infrastructure. The new innovative tools that can be provided by MSPs generate real productivity increases and mitigate the risk of network failure, downtime and data loss from human error. MSP Services MSPs deliver a trusted foundation for your team and your customers. Some of the services and tasks offered include: Remote Desktop Management and Support Predictable Management of Critical Patches and Software Updates Fractional Resource Availability of Best-In-Class Expertise – scaled to your needs Implementing and Testing Backup and Disaster Recovery Processes Performance of Inventory and Audits of Computer/Network/Software Enforcement of Network/Security Policy Monitoring of Network/Operating System and Alerts Updating Anti-Virus Software and Detecting Spyware Erase any misconception that managed service providers are nothing more than “outsourced” tech help priced to displace your in-house IT technician or team. The new MSP has defined new methodologies and technology partnerships to offer valuable preventative services that proactively locate and eliminate threats before a bigger problem arises. MSPs today put considerable effort into understanding the operational and business needs of SMBs to develop and deliver a set of specific services that align technology with the SMB’s business objectives. This is the reason you hear managed services often referred to as “partners.” A present day MSP offers quantifiable economic value, greater ROI and decreased total cost of operation by streamlining costs and eliminating unnecessary lost productivity, revenue, and avoidable on-site IT consultant fees, in addition to eliminating the need for costly hardware/software repairs or replacement.

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Is your Business Safe from Virtual Threats?

Informative / Pennyrile Technologies

Did you know that 50% of small business owners think their businesses are too small to be targeted by the thieves of the virtual world? Contrary to popular belief, 72% of hacker attacks often happen to smaller firms – firms with less than 100 employees! So how prepared is your SMB? Here’s a checklist to help you find out how vulnerable you are to these attacks. 1. Do you have Antivirus protection? – An antivirus software program can protect you from threats that originate from emails such as phishing and virus attacks. However, the most striking fact is that 61% of small businesses don’t install any antivirus software! If you are one of them, then it’s time to change! 2. How sturdy is your Firewall? – A good firewall system protects your computers from the variety of threats that exist in the virtual world. Examples include harmful cookies, viruses, worms and other such malicious programs used by hackers. 3. Do you use a Spam filter? – Using a simple spam filter for your emails keeps junk out of your inbox. The bonus to having a good spam filter is that your employees save time, as they are not distracted by irrelevant emails, but the major perk here is that the potential virus and phishing threats are lessened as spam emails are unlikely to be opened. 4. Do you do backup your data regularly? – Agreed – backups don’t really protect your data, but they are the only way to recover it if data loss does happen. So, be sure you have a regular and reliable backup plan in place – and it is actually being deployed. Data loss can prove very costly—especially to SMBs, sometimes even resulting in them having to close down. Prevention is certainly better than a cure in such cases.

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How Does IT Downtime Affect Your Business

How Much Does IT Downtime Really Cost Your Business?

Informative / Pennyrile Technologies

We live in a digital world and if you don’t take the right steps, it can seriously impact your company. The importance of having a backup system in place cannot be stressed enough. When it comes to business networking there are many things you need to look after such as hardware, software and security. One thing that often gets overlooked is ensuring that you have adequate levels of redundancy in your business to prevent IT downtime. Many small business owners think IT downtime only costs them a few productive hours, but there’s a lot more at stake when your systems go down. Customer satisfaction and loss of brand integrity are just two of the key losses apart from the more evident costs such as lost productivity and a temporary dip in sales. Here’s a few other ways downtime can hurt your business: IT Downtime Causes Customer Loss If you own a business, then you know how important it is to keep your customers happy. However, sometimes, things go wrong. For example, you might have a power outage, and this could cause problems for both your employees and your clients. If you don’t take steps to prevent these kinds of situations from happening, then you’re likely to lose money and customers. Today’s buyer lacks patience. They are used to getting everything at the click of a mouse, at the tap of a finger. Suppose they are looking for the kind of products/services that you offer and your site doesn’t load or is unavailable, even if temporarily, you are likely to lose them to a competitor permanently. Damage to Brand Reputation Customers are now using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and blogs to vent their bad brand experiences. Imagine an irate customer who doesn’t know if their card was charged on your site, or not, due to a server error. If it’s your bad day, they will probably be using Facebook or Twitter to share their bad experience, and it could be viewed by hundreds of people, causing irreparable harm to your brand image. Customers who have bad experiences are two to three times more likely to leave a negative review than customers who had a positive experience and leave a review. This is all the more reason to make sure your systems have backups in in place to prevent IT downtime for your business. IT Downtime Causes Loss of Productivity When your systems don’t work, this can have a direct impact on your employees’ productivity. Consider a research firm of 200 employees where they primarily rely on internet connectivity to access the knowledge base. If the server hosting the knowledge base is down or the Internet goes down, there’s a total loss of at least 1600 work hours for just one business day. It’s important to have backup Internet and servers for your business to prevent this kind of downtime. With a backup or fail-over Internet line, you no longer have to worry about IT downtime if the primary Internet line goes down. Backup servers are equally important, ensuring your employees can continue to work if one goes down. Overtime, Repair and Recovery, Compensatory costs In the above case, imagine the overtime wages the business would have to incur if they were to make up for the work loss they faced owing to IT downtime. In addition, there’s always the cost of repair—the money the business would have to shell out to fix the issue that caused the downtime and get the server up and running again. In some cases, businesses would have to incur additional costs to make customers happy. These could include giving away the product for free or at a discount, or using priority shipping to make up for a delayed order. Possible Lawsuits Businesses could also be at the receiving end of lawsuits. For example, a downtime that has an impact on production, service level agreements with customers, or delivery and finances of the customer could invite litigation against your business. Marketing Efforts Rendered Useless Consider your business is running a pay-per-click advertisement that shows up for the right keywords on Google, or an extensive e-mail campaign that your business engages in. However, when the prospect clicks on the link, all they see is an error message that your website isn’t available. Isn’t that a waste of your marketing budget? Making sure your website is available for customers 24/7 is extremely important in this digital age. Website availability is just another example of IT downtime that could harm your business. The Bottom Line It only takes one natural disaster, one technical snag, or just one power outage to cripple or put you out of business, both virtually and in reality. It’s probably time to think about how you can mitigate the threat of IT downtime and whether your Managed Service Provider can act as an effective and efficient ally in this battle for you. See how Managed Services and IT Support can help you today.

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Five Things To Preserve Your Network and Systems

Informative / Pennyrile Technologies

Small & medium-sized businesses (SMBs) today are under attack from malware, ransomware, external threats and data breaches. But with the lack of sophistication around most SMBs security stance, the prospect of remaining unaffected by attacks is bleak. Here are five things SMBs can do to help preserve their networks and systems. While this list does not completely cover all aspects of protecting a network, these are great first steps. If you need assistance, a managed service provider (MSP) like Pennyrile Technologies can help. A managed service provider delivers services, such as network, application, infrastructure and security, via ongoing and regular support and active administration on customers’ premises, in their MSP’s data center (hosting), or in a third-party data center. Backup Files Every Day As catastrophic as data loss is, the number of businesses that still are not backing up the computers and servers on their network is unbelievable. According to the Symantec Small to Medium Size Businesses (SMB) data, only 23% of SMBs are backing up their data on a daily basis and fewer than 50% are backing up data weekly. Any number of events can result in data loss, so the importance of frequently backing up your network cannot be overstated. Losing any amount of data can compromise your personal identity, lead to downtime for your business and employees, and even bankrupt your entire company. Ensure Backup Procedures Are Checked Regularly Many times business owners think that they have a backup system in place only to find out after it’s too late that it hasn’t been working properly. It may seem like your files are being backed up daily, however, the backup could have become corrupt or it is not backing up huge chunks of critical data. Check your backup procedures regularly to ensure they are working properly in order to be sure that ALL of your data can be recovered. In the age of BYOD (Bring-Your-Own-Devices) it is also important to frequently backup data on your employee’s personal laptops, iPads or Blackberrys, so make sure you have a procedure in place to check those backups as well. Make Sure Updated Virus Protection and Firewalls Are Always Enabled Far too many companies either have no virus protection, expired virus software licenses, or disabled virus programs that aren’t running at all. This makes their business technology vulnerable to virus attacks from emails, spam, data downloads, and un-reputable websites. Further, because of inadequate firewall protection about 40% of small to medium businesses will have their network accessed by a hacker. Chances are, when these businesses are attacked they will be entirely unaware it is happening. In order to protect your valuable data and assets, ensure your virus protection is adequate, up-to-date and functioning properly and that your firewall is intact. Finally, don’t forget to update security patches and change passwords when an employee leaves in order to deter hacking attempts. Monitor Server Drives Dangerously full server drives can bring their own set of problems – ranging from program and server crashes to sluggish email delivery. Proactive monitoring and maintenance of your servers can spare your business a lot of problems down the road. And don’t just monitor to see if the drives are full, but also monitor for hard drive failures, or predicted failures to help avoid data loss. Replacing drives with predicted failures can save your business time and money by avoiding extended downtime. Regularly Check Critical Built-In Logs Very few problems with technology emerge suddenly. These problems typically progress over time and evolve into more serious problems. Frequently review your critical built-in log files to help identify the problem before it has gotten out of control and wreaks havoc on your business infrastructure.

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Data Loss Can Cause You to Shut Down

Informative / Pennyrile Technologies

Small and medium sized businesses today are relying more than ever on IT systems to efficiently run their business, support customers and optimize productivity. These systems house sensitive digital data ranging from employee and customer information, to internal emails, documents and financial records, sales orders and transaction histories. This is in addition to applications and programs critical to daily business functions and customer service. While corporate-level data losses and insider theft are well publicized, many smaller businesses have also become casualties of data loss and theft. Following a significant data loss, it is estimated that a small-to-medium sized business can lose up to 25% in daily revenue by the end of the first week. Projected lost daily revenue increases to 40% one month into a major data loss. According to The National Archives & Records Administration in Washington, 93% of companies that have experienced data loss, coupled with prolonged downtime for ten or more days, have filed for bankruptcy within twelve months of the incident while 50% wasted no time and filed for bankruptcy immediately. Finally, 43% of companies with no data recovery and business continuity plan actually go out of business following a major data loss. Still, a survey conducted by Symantec SMB revealed that fewer than half of SMBs surveyed backup their data each week. Only 23% of those surveyed said they backup data every day and have a business continuity plan in place. Businesses play on a much bigger playing field than they did two decades ago. Any disruptive technological event – even the smallest of incidents – can have an amplified impact on day-to-day business and profitability. Being proactive with data recovery solutions, and having emergency response procedures in place prior to a disruption or data disaster, is the only way to minimize downtime and soften the impact o

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Six Steps to Better Data Backup and Quicker Recovery

Seven ‘Must Haves’ for Your Small Business Website

Mitigate Costly New Technology Risks for Continued Stability and Profitability

Is your Business Safe from Virtual Threats?

How Much Does IT Downtime Really Cost Your Business?

Five Things To Preserve Your Network and Systems

Data Loss Can Cause You to Shut Down

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