To state it mildly, this is a time of economic uncertainty. Just given the normal course of business, it can be hard enough for a company to show a profit at the end of the year; internal cost overruns erode that profit and may do away with it completely. Anything a corporation can do to ensure a cost-effective operation is vital.
Since the vast majority of a company’s business is performed by computer, as since nearly all of its records are maintained by computer, data protection is mandatory. Loss of data not only means the loss of a file or files, it also means the loss of time to retrieve them from backup, or in the worst case scenario (if the file was created in-between backups, for example) a frantic, time-consuming and costly re-creation of the data. It can also mean leads going cold or a client lost to a competitor in the interim.
The first order of data protection is a good, reliable backup scheme. All data should be backed up on a regular basis and be retrievable if needed, as quickly as possible. There are many different backup solutions available ranging from the basic to the advanced, and a company should chose the solution that best suits their particular needs for the recovery of lost data in case of emergency.
But what about data lost between backups? One example is a file created in-between backups that, as a consequence, never got backed up. Another is a file that has been substantially modified since the last backup; restoration of that file from backup would still mean a great amount of work to bring it back to its “current” state once it is recovered.
As IT personnel know, an all-too-common helpdesk call is, “I accidentally deleted my file! That report is due in 2 hours! Help!” If the user saved the file on his or her local machine, the file can be recovered from the Windows Recycle Bin. But saving such work on local drives is uncommon; most of the time it is saved on a server across a network. In such a case, the file cannot be recovered through the Windows Recycle Bin. The only solution is the lengthy search through backups or, in the worst case, complete reconstruction of the data from scratch.
So in addition to backups, another “in-between” level of data protection is needed to make data protection complete. Such a data protection solution replaces the Windows Recycle Bin with one of its own, allowing the recovery of a file even if it was deleted across a network. Instead of the hours of lost time and consequent loss of money involved in finding a re-creating a file, it can be instantly restored with the click of a mouse.
