How to Effectively Deal with Data Loss?
By Tom
Through the uproar of technology advancement, immense opportunities are now provided. This innovation not just brings convenient and efficient results but also bridged the gap between one another. Everyone’s life became simplified and productive. This advancement in technology is constantly changing and developing. There is no doubt, that the evolution of technology has a lot to unleash soon.
Furthermore, the changes in this modern world became part of everyday living. Technology advancement elevated the lifestyle we used to and exploit every possibility it can offer. A lot of burdens are now lifted and offered ways to make it simple. These wide range of benefits that technology has to offer saves time and energy for every individual. Notably, regardless of the age and state of a person, technology plays a significant role in everyone.
Data Recovery at Present Times
With so many advantages and comfort brought by technology advancement, people keep on developing valuable devices and software. Due to excessive involvement and creative mind of people, Data Recovery has been invented. This innovation possesses benefits in every aspect of people’s life. The usage of these devices or software eliminated the difficulties brought by inevitable data failures. Perhaps, various industries are now upgrading their services and offerings without worrying about data security threats.
Data recovery defines to a process of retrieving inaccessible data or files. In the corporate world, the number of data failures is continuously rising. This situation is somewhat natural and manageable. Through the extensive help of data recovery, nothing is to worry about. To further understand the importance of data recovery, let us explore the caused why this situation is happening. Let us also take a look at what these data recovery tools are and what this tool can do for you?
Data Failures: Caused and Effect
Before technology advancement and the ranging benefits of it to our society, data failures became more popular. A day to day business management is challenging, especially in operating and protecting confidential files. According to a published journal, there are numerous companies without a data disaster plan. Thus, companies may experience difficulties that may weaken the financial status of the business. In this situation, the company can shut down its operation in no time.
Moreover, data failures are usually happening for two reasons. First, this is a natural situation. In any organization or entity, data failures are considered inevitable. However, the probability of data loss due to natural disasters has a lower risk than any reason. Data recovery is the fastest and easiest way to prevent such events. Moreover, digital device users continue to look for ways on how they can protect and secure their valuable data.
What is Data Loss?
Regardless of the size and nature of a business, data loss is considered a severe problem. Data or Files is the most precious asset of a business, and losing it means big trouble. This technical problem occurs when the data is accidentally deleted, or something causes it to happen. Data Loss may have a long-lasting impact on the business itself, but there are ways to resolve it.
Data loss refers to a situation wherein data or files may be accidentally deleted, or data is unavailable. Furthermore, this technical issue may be unintentionally or intentionally circumstance. According to a published journal, a total of 94 % of companies experience severe data loss. And all of which didn’t recover from the situation. Despite the problems that data loss may bring to any industry, there is an adequate solution.
Various factors can cause data loss. Being aware of each factor can be beneficial because it could explain how to resolve it. Let us dive deeper into the causes and effects of data loss:
- Malicious Malware or Virus
Malware refers to a device or application designed to damage or caused problems to any computer system. For a business organization, malicious malware attacks or viruses are great indicators of the deletion of data. This factor may weaken the operation of a day to day business transaction. Malware Attack could occur through email-based or corrupted links that tempt people to click.
Furthermore, once this malware has been installed in the computer system, these programs may threaten the organizations’ or entities ‘ privacy. Unfortunately, an individual or application developer has a bad intention, but being aware of this circumstance is beneficial. This way, a business organization could undergo appropriate action and keep their system malware-free. Prevention is always better than cure. Malware attacked may be difficult to remove; however, having a reliable and appropriate antivirus software would be a great solution. Having a regular antivirus scan catch the virus and eliminate it immediately.
- Human Error
There will be times that unforeseen circumstances arise. Due to negligence, people unintentionally deleted files or data. Without realizing it, this situation already affects the flow of works. Human error factors include hard drive formatting, spills liquids to the devices, or software corruption. However, this should not be a problem. Proper training for employees is undeniably a great help.
Proper training plays a significant role in preventing human error. Each employee needs to understand how data processing within your company works and why this is important. This simple act could save your company a lot. Human errors could be minimized and manageable through the knowledge that each of them should have. It is also worth noting. A smooth workflow could be attained if everything is well-organized. Confidential documents and information must be pile up accordingly. Most importantly, to ensure the protection of this information, each employee must play their part.
- Data Corruption
Data corruption refers to an error that occurred in the computer system. This usually happens during writing, reading, transmission, or processing data or files. Data corruption could lead to unintended changes to the original data. There are factors why uncertain circumstances like this happened. It includes improper shut down of the device or due to power outage.
Moreover, this situation may cause a problem for the whole business transaction. Data corruption may lead to inaccessible data, and sometimes it results in losing valuable data. Any business or entity needs to implement preventive measures. Follow guidelines on how to shut down the device properly to ensure a smooth workflow and prevent any harmful circumstances.
- Hacking
Hacking refers to an act that breaks into a computer system to steal information or destroy it. This became one of the common problems in any organization or entity. According to a published journal, there are four million data breached, may it be accidentally deleted or stolen.
How to prevent data loss before natural disasters hit your area?
Frequent data loss and its impact on the daily transaction can be mitigated through preventive measures. Data recovery has a lot to offer. It is indeed helpful to the day-to-day operations of such a business organization or entity. It is worth noting to discovered and understand what data recovery can do for you. Now, let’s unleash how this software or device works for the betterment of daily tasks and operations.
We are not so sure of what will happen tomorrow or the next day. It might be a sunny day today, but who knows when it will rain later? The fact that there is uncertainty regarding natural occurrences might lead to secure your valuable and important data.
Inevitable circumstances are one of the incidents that database users are preparing for. Some of them include natural calamities like earthquakes, unpredictable events like fires and power loss, or any kind of data loss occurrences.
An organization’s valuable data is at a high risk of security. It is also vulnerable to data loss if proper data maintenance is not fully observed. Business organizations can’t take to have data loss. It might affect the credibility of their database once it was damaged or lost.
Regular Data Backups
Performing data backup is as simple as having multiple copies of your original data. You can save them on different hard drives, devices, or locations. It also implies that you are saving your critical data like emails and payrolls. If you have a duplicate copy of your data, it ensures the safety of your data. It is helpful when times of data loss, you can easily recover your data from different storage devices. There are several ways on how you can have regular data backups.
- Local and Onsite Data Backup. This is the most basic approach used by small organizations to back up their important data. It consists of copying the data to a separate device, known as the server. It is located in the same place where all other computer systems are located. It is very economical and easy to perform. However, the downside of this method is when natural calamities occur. Some of these occurrences are natural disasters, weather phenomena, and unexpected accidents. Together with the backup data, all of them would be lost.
- Offsite Backup through Hardware. It is close to likely the same as the first method. In contrast, the critical data is copied to a removable storage device that can be ejected safely and stored in a different place away from the local office. In this way, you can prevent data loss from the effect of natural calamities. However, its disadvantage resides in the use of another device. It would be an additional task for you to copy the data to another storage device and facing another set of data risks.
- Offsite Backup using Cloud only. This method is far away different from the first two methods. It consists of copying data to a cloud-based storage facility rather than saving it onsite. You can schedule your data backups on the cloud with regular intervals automatically. You can also avoid the troubles of memorizing the date and time to retrieve the backups. The good thing about this process is the management of data backups. The copies that are 30 or 40 days older are automatically deleted to create more space for new backup copies. Most of the cloud providers have additional security options such as encryption, password management, and data recovery when data loss occurs.
- Mixed Onsite and Offsite Data Backups. This method is the use of both onsite and offsite data backup procedures. The offsite cloud storage data backup makes sure that the data is safe and secured against any natural incidents. On the other hand, onsite cloud storage data backup maintains a copy of the data within the locations in which you can easily restore it. It is a good way to save many snapshots of the data on various locations. However, it may take a longer time, cost, and storage capacity to consider.
Encryption of Data
Data backup does not simply stop on storing data onsite or even on the cloud-based storage. Either of these two methods, the main concern of data storage is safety and security. If you have a reliable data encryption solution, it can ensure data security against theft or cyberattack. A business organization should follow strict encryption in order to transfer the instructions smoothly down to other members or users.
Firewalls and Various Damage Prevention Tools
It is a critical decision to have a robust firewall or any type of antivirus software to protect your computer system or databases. Firewall software can ensure the safety of your data against any outbound connections that might harm your valuable data. It also increases the alarm security if there is any data packet attacking the computer system. Therefore, it would be considered as blacklisted IPs.
Intrusion Detection Systems or IDS can give you timely notifications. On the other hand, the Intrusion Prevention System or IPS, can automatically take action to prohibit any malicious activities from occurring. These are examples of advanced security solutions for your valuable data. Automated preventive methods determine a major difference between an attempt to have a data breach and the actual data loss. It will enable you to choose the better method for preventing data threats on your system.
Laptop or Storage Device Protections
One of the most common issues to happen to lose your data physically is due to laptop or storage device thefts. It can happen outdoors, office, schools, shops, restaurants, or transport stations. In order to lessen the chances of data loss, enable device tracking, remote device lock, and remote data wipe.
If you want to prevent losing your data from laptops or mobile phones due to liquid spillage, you should have a regular backup copy at the main location. Additional security measures such as multi-factor authentication can contribute to the prevention of unauthorized access to your device in any event of cyber-attacks.
Data loss prevention is a critical action for an organization
The most valuable asset that a business can hold is their database or data system. Their data reflects the transactions, connections, and communications they have with their customers and business partners. Moreover, because of its confidentiality and credibility, it needs to be protected. Business owners integrate the use of various data security measures. It is to strengthen their security towards threats and damages.
Bank account details, card information, passwords, and other personal information are some of the critical data that businesses or organizations hold. The use of advanced technologies can determine why and how a natural calamity might occur. But the exact date and event that it will happen are not that accurate. That is why data storage is very important, for it might endanger your files because of natural occurrences.
The Limitations of Data Recovery
Just like any other creations in this world, data recovery is not perfect. It also has flaws and downsides, which you should take note of. If you are working on massive data recovery, it might be an expensive action to start on. You have to consult for professional assistance to work on your hard drive with an equipped facility.
Data recovery specialists utilize proper instruments to get information as possible as they can from your hard disk drive. However, it is a time-consuming method and might not be helpful if you want to have your data recovered immediately. You might have to look for alternative data recovery methods that can provide you the restored data that you need. You can have data recovery software that you can manage on your own to enable your data to get back.
Data recovery is a great help for business organizations or any type of database group. It makes the data to be retrieved somehow and be utilized, just like how it used to be as the original form. Data loss is unpredictable. Even you did several data preventions and security. There will always be a time that it will occur.
In today’s modern world, digital devices are very much in demand. Many people use these devices to cope with the fast-changing society. This is to meet the needs and preferences the various industries require. On this note, digital data and information should be safely kept and protected to ensure the data’s stability and credibility.