We have all come to take our computers for granted, especially at work. We assume that our creative endeavours, that report we’ve agonised over for weeks, and that big new client proposal will all be there just where we left them when we logged off yesterday.

We also assume that the company accounts will be working perfectly too, telling us who the company owes money to, and who owes money to the company, as well as processing VAT, tax and of course paying the wages at the end of the month. We count on the number crunchers to use our data to track trends, monitor performance and spot new opportunities.

The nightmare scenario

But imagine if you walked into work tomorrow and the data you depend on simply wasn’t there. Imagine if a virus had wiped or locked your servers, just like the Cryptolocker virus. Or worse still, imagine if a fire had destroyed your offices and taken your server and all your computers with it, along with that external hard drive back-up you always assumed would save the day.

If this happened, could your business survive? Could you continue to trade? And how much would it cost you to get all that data back and restored to your system so that it runs like it did yesterday?

There so many unforeseen consequences of data loss, and most of these are not apparent until after a data loss event occurs. As Joni Mitchell once sang: “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone.”

Loss of business

Whether you’re an ad agency, which has lost its latest creative work, or an online retailer, who has lost all of your most recent orders, a sudden data loss can cripple your company, stopping it in its tracks.

Even if you have hard disc back-ups, these can take days to restore, assuming you still have the machines to restore them to, and that they have been kept up to date.

If you chose a Cloud Backup provider, however, you can get access to your data straight away, from any web enabled device or computer. What’s more, because the best of these services are focussed on just this scenario, you’ll find the restore times are remarkably fast, getting your company up and running quicker. Some companies will even ship out an encrypted hard disk with restore data on it, to get your company back on its feet fast.

Security Issues and Identity Theft

A loss of data can also pose serious security risks, both for your own staff and for your customers, especially if you take payments online or hold back account details. If hackers use malware or viruses to steal your data, then they can very easily commit identity theft and fraud. This will not only cost money for the companies and individuals who are targeted, but can also have a devastating effect on your company’s reputation, as Talk Talk discovered when they were hacked last year. The 256bit AES encryption used by Cloud Back-Up providers significantly reduces the risk to your data, both during transmission and when in storage.

Permanent data loss

It is said that in most cases, the best you can hope for is to recover about two thirds of your data, around 65%, following a malicious attack. That means a third of your customer account data, a third of your intellectual property and a third of your operational data could be gone for good. Depending which data is lost; this could be critical, or even fatal to your business.

The long wait to find out how much data you can get back, and what you have lost, can be an incredibly stressful time for all concerned, playing havoc with customer confidence and with your share price.

Don’t risk it

When the risks are so high, it seems crazy to rely on local hard disc back-ups, or even worse to trust to luck. With so many things that can go wrong, from server failure to security breaches, from fire to flood, it really is a matter of when, rather than if you will need to turn to data recovery.

If your business is going to survive, then a robust business continuity plan is essential, and Cloud Back-Up could be the solution you need.

The Cloud-based answer

Cloud Back-Up Services can’t stop these things from happening, but they can guarantee that your data is protected if they do, giving you and your customer’s peace of mind. By automatically backing-up your data over the internet, to secure, mirrored servers, Cloud back-up ensures that you get a rapid restore of vital company information as quickly as possible, so your business can get back to work fast, however using free online backup solutions isn’t always the safest option.

“We understand how business-critical our clients’ data is”, explains Rob Stevenson of BackupVault. “So we do everything we can to restore that data, fast, with full throttle bandwidths that can cut restore times from days or even weeks, to a matter of hours.”

So don’t wait for the day when it’s gone to appreciate, and protect, what you’ve got. Choose Cloud back-Up today and make sure your business can continue under any circumstances.