The Ekaru Technology Advisor  Vol 8-3  June 2008

Welcome to this month's issue! The Technology Advisor provides technology advice, strategy, tips and trends to help you manage and grow your business!

Backup - Is your data safe?
Hard drives fail. If you think about it, it's sort of a miracle that they work at all! Hard drives typically spin at 7200 to 15000 RPM depending on the drive, and operate under very tight physical tolerances. Think about it - all your critical business information is sitting on a thin magnetic disk spinning REALLY fast. Even if your data survives life on the hard drive, several other things could also go wrong: your laptop could be lost or stolen, your office could have a break-in, your systems can be damaged by fire or water, or you may simply delete a file by accident. Your data, left unprotected, is not very safe at all!

If your hard drive needs to be sent out to a lab for recovery, be prepared to spend a LOT of money and that is IF your data is recoverable - it might not be. Be prepared to spend at least $2,000 and it could go way up depending on complexity and turn around time.

It's absolutely critical to have a reliable backup.

There are a few important things to consider:

• What information is critical to your business - this typically includes documents, email, and line of business application data?
• What compliance regulations do you need to adhere to?
• What are you doing to ensure your critical irreplaceable data is recoverable?
• How fast do you need to be up and running again after a disaster?

Why Tape Backups don't cut it anymore - If you have a server in your business, and it's been around for a while, chances are you rely on tapes to backup your data. We are now recommending that businesses move away from tape backup and consider other alternatives. Tape backups just don't cut it any more.

• No random access to data - data is stored sequentially, so recovery is time consuming.
• Tapes wear out - they need to be replaced on a regular schedule
• Someone needs to change the tapes and take a copy off site for secure storage.
• The reports vary widely, but a significant percent of tapes cannot be recovered (reports up to 30%)
• Typical backup schedule is only once per day

Data vs Image: Another serious limitation of tape is that it's just a backup of your data. If you have a full system failure, you still need to rebuild all your systems.

A reliable data back up is absolutely essential, but you may need to take it one step further if recovery time is important. An imaged based backup is essentially a copy of your entire system - data, software, and settings. Keeping a full image of your critical systems will save considerable time and effort to get up and running again after a disaster because you won't need to go through the lengthy process of re-installing all your software and customizing settings.

One step further - Business Continuity - Your data is irreplaceable. If you have a strong backup, you'll be able to get your data back. Another very important consideration is how fast can you be up and running again. Increasingly, our clients are asking us for failover server capability. In this case, an imaged-based backup is deployed, with the ability to operate in "Virtual Server" mode if the original server fails. This is a temporary measure while a new server comes on line. At that time, a "hardware independent restore" enables rapid deployment, drastically reducing down time and cost in the event of a catastrophe. For businesses with a very high cost for downtime, this is an excellent solution.

Don't get bogged down in the technology details. Instead, think about backup and disaster recovery as a business issue, and the right solution for your business will become clear.

"Spoofed" eMail
We've received a lot of questions about this, so here's the scoop. Have you ever received a "return to sender" message for email that you never sent or have you ever received spam from yourself? Sounds strange if this has never occurred to you, but it's actually a widespread problem on the Internet right now. The reason for this is that it's very easy for spammers to put any random address in the "from" field of an email. We have received some panicked calls from people thinking their email has been has been hacked into, or that they had virus or worm that was causing their system to send emails out (known as a "zombie"). What's really happening is that your email address was "spoofed". Your email address was used randomly because it's "out there" on the Internet - on a web site, on line discussion, or possibly because it's in the address book of another system that was infected with a virus. Typically, users receive a flood of these messages, and then they go away.

If you use SPAM filter, you may be frustrated that the spam filter isn't catching these messages. The problem is that they appear to be real by following the proper format of a "real" message, and if they were filtered, your real bounced messages would be filtered as well. If you're sending a proposal to an important client, and there is a typo in the address, you wouldn't be immediately notified that it didn't get there, which could be a BIG problem. Therefore, we typically advise clients to wait it out.

One solution that will help is to institute a SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record for your domain. This makes it harder for spammers to spoof your address. Follow this link to a good article that explains all this: Life After Spoof.

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   Enjoy Summer!

Sincerely,
Team Ekaru

Introductory Technology Assessment Over 250 local small businesses have chosen Ekaru to manage their computers and networks. We offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation to get started. We'll visit your office, review your network, and make recommendations. Call us at 978-692-4200 or email us to schedule a no-obligation assessment. If you know someone who could benefit from this offer, simply forward this email to them. Thank You!

           
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