Safeguarding Company Data

The greatest threat to businesses today is an alarming lack of preparedness for a computer system disaster.

With today’s businesses increasingly dependant on computer systems to help streamline their operations, a breakdown in technology or security that leads to a data loss can cost a jan/san distributor its customers, revenue and even its business. Thus, successful data safeguarding constitutes some often overlooked, yet simple precautionary measures.

Back It Up

Engulfed in the day-to-day grind of their company’s operations, jan/san distributors may find it extremely painful and costly if they choose to ignore proper computer data backup procedures.

A worse case scenario for a company is when its computer network crashes and all of the data that is built up on its servers becomes irretrievable. Sadly, the situation happens to many business owners, when often times it can be easily prevented via data backup on tape.

Tape backup gives companies the ability to copy the contents of all or a designated amount of data from its usual storage device to a tape cartridge, so in the event of a hard disk crash or comparable failure, the data will not be permanently lost. Tape backup can be done manually, or, with appropriate software, be programmed to run automatically.

Today’s tape backup systems allow distributors to back up large amounts of storage for archiving and disaster recovery purposes. So, distributors can back up their customer purchasing histories, pricing, invoices, product information and in-house data that resides on their computer network. Tape backup also allows distributors to restore data that has been backed up to hard disk storage devices when needed, says Mike Norton, IS Administrator at Ship-Pac, Kalamazoo, Mich.

“So, in the event data gets damaged or lost either through problems with the software or people deleting files, we would have a way of getting our system back up and running again,” Norton explains.

But many companies don’t take the extra steps to ensure their backups are working correctly. The only way to ensure backups are working correctly is to test them no less than every six months, says Steve Epner, founder of St. Louis-based Brown Smith Wallace Consulting Group and innovator in residence at Saint Louis University, St. Louis.

“Make sure that there is really something there,” says Epner. “Make sure that you can recover a file on a different machine that you’re working on because if you can’t do that, your backup is not valuable.”

In the event something does go wrong and a backup is needed to recover past data, Epner recommends distributors immediately take the oldest backup tape and secure it because when something goes wrong, it may be a virus or it may be a malfunctioning piece of equipment.

“If you use all of your backup tapes, you could end up destroying them,” says Epner. “Which is why you should never have just one backup tape.”

Epner suggests distributors run backup tapes for each working day.

“So if something goes wrong on Monday and the system crashes, and say you go to last week Friday’s tape and that doesn’t work either, immediately stop, don’t immediately put Thursday’s, Wednesday’s and Tuesday’s tapes in because whatever caused Monday’s and Friday’s tapes to go bad could start to destroy all your other tapes,” he says.

If it comes to this point, Epner says it’s in a company’s best interest to call in a systems expert to look at bringing the system up on a different machine because a company can’t afford to lose all of its backups.

What’s even more important when running backups is to label them accordingly.

“Label everything,” Epner says. “Know when the backup was and when it was taken, so when it needs to be recovered, you have the capability of doing that.”

Epner also highly recommends that distributors take the backup tapes off site and store them in a safe place to avoid the chance of being destroyed in an accident or being stolen. Most banks or organizations have safety deposit boxes where a company can keep their backups safe.

Password Protection

Safeguarding company data also involves setting up roadblocks, both for in-house employees and possible outside threats. This is best achieved by password protecting the company’s network and business applications.

“We have password security for the network as well as the business system itself,” says Norton. “Both the network and the business software application have permission assigned to them based on the user’s job function. So, for instance, the accounting people are the only people who can access accounting files on the network as well as the accounting functionality within the business software.”

Norton says businesses often make too many easily preventable mistakes when it comes to network security. These blunders include not changing default administrator or guest passwords that are in the network or business software at the time of installation; not isolating job functions with permissions on network and business software passwords; sharing administrator passwords with more than a select few people; and most shockingly, letting employees keep passwords on sticky notes by their computers.

Another common disastrous outcome can occur if a company’s information technology staff doesn’t immediately terminate network access to ex-employees, especially those who left on bad terms.

“In many cases, the most dangerous threat to data is a disgruntled ex-employee and not necessarily an outsider saboteur,” says Epner. “So when it’s time, and it happens, that you have to let somebody go, what you need to do is make sure that you have the procedures in house to take away their passwords and their access and if you don’t do that, the ex-employee could be your worse nightmare.”

Best practice to protect outsiders from accessing a company’s network is to force employees to change passwords on a monthly basis.

“If everybody has the same password and it never changes, that’s just as good as not having a password,” says Epner.

Thus, Epner suggests companies train their employees to come up with passwords that have at least one number, one capitol letter and one lower case letter.

Laptops

Experts also stress that security shouldn’t stop in the office. With distributors equipping their salespeople with mobile tech tools, laptop security is something that should be taken seriously.

With the possibility of company data and customer data ripe for exposure in the event of a laptop being stolen, distributors must ensure that salespeople password protect and encrypt their laptops. Distributors nowadays can go the extra mile by adding thumbprint readers to laptops for added security. Security manufacturers have also recently released proximity alarms for laptops.

“It attaches to the laptop and a second piece attaches to your briefcase,” says Epner. “So if someone grabs your laptop and they get more than 20 feet away from your briefcase, an alarm starts to go off.”

Experts also recommend salespeople transfer data from their laptops to portable USB memory sticks. However, salespeople also get careless in the protection of these finger-sized storage devices. Instead of securing them in their pocket, they are keeping it in the same place as their laptop, and if their laptop gets stolen, they lose both sources that contained data.

“The only way a backup works is if you keep it separate from the main system,” says Epner.

In the end, distributors who take the extra time and set aside additional revenue for these simple precautionary measures can go a long way in successfully safeguarding company data.