For almost any business, information is critical: documents, contacts, contracts, correspondence, accounts, and so on. Modern technologies help not only to manage business-critical data, but also to lose it in the blink of an eye. For most companies, losing access to data means the suspension of all business processes, inevitably leading to lost profit, damage to reputation, and recovery costs.<\/p>\n
Rest assured, there is no shortage of data loss scenarios out there waiting to happen \u2014 and almost none of them has anything to do with the quality of your equipment. Here are just a few.<\/p>\n
An employee might click a malicious file downloaded from the Internet or an attachment in an e-mail sent by cybercriminals. Doing so doesn\u2019t just encrypt data on the local machine; ransomware has a nasty habit of corrupting everything that the victim\u2019s computer communicates with (connected network drives, external media, etc.). In theory, paying the resulting ransom demand will return your data. In practice, there\u2019s no guarantee.<\/p>\n
Last year, a simple ransomware infection paralyzed the IT systems of the city administration of Baltimore, Maryland<\/a>, which, deciding not to pay up, suffered $18 million worth of damage.<\/p>\n SMBs often store (sometimes all) business-critical information on the CEO\u2019s hard drive. And it\u2019s a rare and lucky instance if this is a desktop in the office. But modern business is all about mobility, so it\u2019s more likely that this drive sits inside a laptop and travels with the CEO to meetings and on business trips. That means it can easily be stolen \u2014 from a hotel room, a taxi, you name it.<\/p>\n In hot weather, the load on any computer hardware increases, often pushing cooling systems to the limit. Not all manufacturers provide separate ventilation for hard drives, and some even design laptops such that the air flows from external cooling pads do not reach the storage media. That can lead to hard drive failure due to simple overheating. Owners of furry pets are in a special risk category. As the proud owner of several cats, I can testify that my laptop fan has to be cleaned at least once a year or else it\u2019ll overheat, even in the winter.<\/p>\n Conflicts at work are hardly uncommon. A colleague who disagrees with a management decision might resign and delete critical information. And the fewer backups there are, the more likely that the sabotage attempt will succeed.<\/p>\nDevice theft<\/h2>\n
Overheating<\/h2>\n
Workplace revenge<\/h2>\n
How to store business-critical information<\/h2>\n