Business Continuity Archives - NuTech Services LLC

Sep, 2022

Boost Your Business’ Confidence with Iron-Clad IT

Businesses have a lot of troubles to manage, one of which is their technology breaking down and interrupting their operations. You have options to ensure these circumstances do not influence your operations to the degree they once may have. Let’s discuss some of the ways you can address malfunctioning IT before it impacts your productivity.

Technology Should Work for You, Not Against You

Technology malfunctions are not uncommon in the business world, and one poll goes so far as to suggest that the average United States office worker wastes around 20 minutes a day with some technology issue or another. Much of that time could be associated with social media, the Internet, and phones, while some of it can be attributed to their technology not working correctly.

To make sure your staff isn’t dealing with issues related to their technology, you should work to make sure your IT is managed in a proactive and appropriate way. You’ll need to monitor your systems so you can catch issues and inconsistencies before they become major problems.

Update and Manage Your Software

Your business lives and dies by its software solutions, and if you can’t access it, then you’ll have issues with operations. The problem is that businesses tend to use a lot of different software solutions, between 20 and 800 at a time, and most of them need to be patched and updated to stay effective and secure.

The reason for this is cybersecurity, as hackers and other threats are quick to leverage vulnerabilities to their advantage. If you don’t shore up defenses for your business in an appropriate way, you could be leaving a critical flaw unaddressed on your network. NuTech Services can use software management tools to help you with procurement, managing licenses, updates, patches, and so much more.

Redundancy is the Opposite of Waste (in Business)

Redundancy often has a negative connotation, i.e. doing the same thing over and over again, or having more than what you need. This is a good thing for businesses in most cases, as you want your data infrastructure and backup systems to be redundant. It means you are protected and that you are prepared to handle negative circumstances your organization might be thrust into.

With so many issues that could arise, not limited to cybercrime, component failure, natural disasters, and so much more, you need to be ready to tackle these issues as they occur. With a comprehensive data backup and recovery system in place, you can ensure operations are uninterrupted, or at least interrupted as little as possible, by potential technology issues you might face.

To learn more, contact us at 810.230.9455 today.

Jun, 2022

The Right Backup Practices Could Be What Saves Your Business

How seriously does your business take data backup and disaster recovery? You might not be able to predict the future or what might occur, but you can at least prepare for it to mitigate the damage it could potentially bring about. Today, we want to share some of the best practices you can implement to combat even the worst disaster scenarios your organization might encounter.

Use the 3-2-1 Method

The 3-2-1 rule focuses on the number of backups you have stored at any given time, as well as how they are stored and accessed in a pinch. This rule argues that you should maintain at least three copies of your data, two of which are on-site for easy access and one in a secure off-site data center, accessible through the cloud. You want so many copies of your data so that you aren’t completely ruined if one or more copies of it are corrupted or destroyed. You’ll always have a working copy of your data that you can rely on in a worst-case scenario.

Consider RPO and RTO

Two of the most important metrics to consider for your backup system are RPO and RTO, or recovery point objective and recovery time objective. RPO examines how much data you need to get your operations back to an acceptable level, whereas RTO concerns itself with how long it takes to get back to that point. If you can identify these metrics, you can optimize your chances of recovering from a disaster.

Utilize a BDR System

With a comprehensive BDR system in place, you will have access to all the tools you need to keep your operations running even under the worst possible circumstances. The traditional method of taking data backups using tapes was a manual nightmare that pales in comparison to the more modern and effective BDR systems which can be automated to save time and resources. You can take snapshots of your data for more frequent backups, ultimately resulting in less data loss and prioritizing business continuity. A good BDR system can also act as a temporary server in the event your infrastructure is damaged, minimizing downtime while you search for replacement hardware.

Get Us On Your Side!

If you want to ensure your business doesn’t suffer needlessly from data loss or downtime, NuTech Services can equip your organization with a high-quality backup and disaster recovery solution. We can protect your business from all of the issues that involve business continuity. To learn more, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.

Jan, 2022

Planning for the Worst is Key to Achieving the Best Outcome

Look, nobody likes picturing the worst-case scenario that could befall their business—even doing so might feel a bit like memorizing a divorce attorney’s number as you write your wedding vows. However, failing to have some strategy in place could very well lead to your business’ downfall. What does it take to properly plan and prepare for the possibility of a disaster, and the associated recovery you’ll have to undergo?

Begin By Establishing the Worst-Case Scenario

To begin, it is important to have an idea of what a disaster—any disaster—might look like for your business. Put some thought to it: what is the absolute worst thing that could realistically happen to your business? Might the office be flooded? Maybe some poor workmanship in the electricals sparks a fire, or the old, neglected building next door finally collapses and takes out part of your office, where you just so happened to keep your business’ servers?

Let’s amp up the trouble a bit and assume that whatever disaster struck (flood, fire, or falling building) left your office a total loss and, to make matters worse, took a key manager or other high-level employee with it. In addition to the personal loss, this would likely create some challenges for your business moving forward.

Whatever the Scale, You Need to Be Prepared to Deal with Disasters

Whether the loss is of a single spreadsheet or a key member of your business or your business’ physical location, you need to have the means to bounce back. For this, we always recommend that a business prepare a business continuity plan.

What is a Business Continuity Plan?

You should consider a business continuity plan to be your business’ saving grace in any disaster scenario. Its entire goal is to help ensure your company has a future, that you can resume operations if and when the chips are down.

To do so, your business continuity plan will need to cover a few different aspects of your company. There are your operational aspects, of course, including your technology and your other resources, as well as your human resources to consider.

All things considered, the baseline business continuity plan will cover:

Data required to facilitate operations
Technology needed to access that data
An office location or contingency plan for hosting operations
A chain of command in the event of a disaster
A strategy that is accessible to all employees involved in the restoration process

We Can Help You Get Started!

We’ll help you put together a strategy that will ensure that you can make it, regardless of the disaster your business faces, assisting you with the planning process and implementing the technology required to enact it. To get started, give us a call at 810.230.9455.

May, 2021

Building a Solid Continuity Strategy Pays Dividends

Business continuity is difficult to talk about for some business owners, specifically because no one likes to talk about the worst case scenario. What would you do if your business were to suddenly go through a disaster? Do you have a plan in place? If not, let’s talk about that. Here are some aspects of business continuity that you must consider. Remember; your company’s future depends on it!

The first step is to determine what we mean when we say “business continuity,” especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What is Business Continuity?

There is no shortage of things that can go wrong for a business. Natural disasters, power outages, fires, floods, hacking attacks, ransomware, and user error can all contribute to a significant disruption of operations if you’re unprepared for them. A business continuity plan is designed to help your organization work through any such disaster and keep downtime to a minimum. We want to emphasize that business continuity and disaster recovery are two different things; disaster recovery, or how your organization responds to a data loss incident, is but one part of a successful business continuity plan.

Components of a Business Continuity Strategy

Before we jump into what your priorities are for your business continuity strategy, it helps to perform what’s called a business impact analysis. This is a test that determines what the critical functions of your business are, where you take a close look at operations and make determinations about what is most important for getting back in business following a disaster. By having a clear understanding of your priorities regarding business continuity, you will optimize your chances of success should you ever find yourself implementing the plan.

While we could list off several aspects of business continuity here, suffice to say that most variables to consider for your plan will fall into one of the three categories below:

Digital resources: Data is critical to the operations of most businesses to at least some degree. Some organizations store it on-premises while others store it in the cloud. Regardless, having a way to maintain access and recover lost data in the event of a disaster will be paramount to your plan’s success.
Human resources: While the data might be one part of keeping your business afloat, the people who interpret and utilize that data also must be accounted for. A chain of command can help your organization even should the leader somehow become incapacitated or unable to perform in their role. Furthermore, you’ll need to maintain contact with clients and vendors to ensure they are fully aware of the situation.
Physical resources: Once you have safeguarded your data and your workers, you’ll need to figure out where they will work and how it will be housed. Physical resources include things like your office space, hardware solutions, and any other tools your employees might need to do their jobs. In the case of manufacturing, this might mean maintaining the supply chain for parts or products.

All things considered, your business continuity strategy should consider everyone needed to keep your business in proper working order, as well as all of the resources they require to do their jobs effectively and efficiently. We especially recommend that you have your business continuity plan in a location where it is accessible by anyone who might need it, along with a list of critical equipment, the locations of your data backups, and any needed contact information.

How Do You Reinforce Business Continuity?

Remember, your plan is only valuable if it is something that can be executed on. Consider how easy (or difficult) it will be for you to successfully implement your strategy. If you do a “mock” test of your plan, you might uncover what works, what doesn’t, and what needs to be improved upon. When you routinely test your strategy, you won’t be caught off guard. Here are some ideas to consider for when you test your business continuity plan:

Downtime: Does your plan meet the expected minimum of downtime? Does it keep costs down?
Implementation: Is your plan something that can be implemented at a moment’s notice?
Feedback: What do your staff think about the plan? Do they have any recommendations or ideas for improvement?

Let’s Get You Started

If this all feels a little overwhelming or panic-inducing, we urge you to contact NuTech Services. We can walk you through the process of setting up a business continuity plan, equip your organization with the tools needed to pull it off, and assist with the testing process. To learn more, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.

May, 2020

Keep Your Business Going with Strong Continuity Planning

Much is made about business continuity planning, but there is a knowledge deficit about what exactly business continuity planning entails. Today, we will talk about the basics of the business continuity plan (BCP) and how today’s most successful businesses go about reading their contingency plans.

A BCP is a plan that will be enacted in any situation that causes the business’ operation to be interrupted. This could be as simple as a deleted file, but it could also be enacted in situations where the health of the business is in grave danger. Having a comprehensive BCP in place helps eliminate the confusion that could further hurt your business when the going gets rough.

What Should Your Plan Include?

In most cases, people would consider that a BCP is for major, business-killing events. As we mentioned before, however, it’s just not so. The BCP has to be thought out, implemented, and tested regularly to ensure that when operations are interrupted, whether by broken hardware or terrorist attack, that there is a plan in place to get the business back up and running profitably as soon as possible. As a result every situation that could threaten your business’ operational integrity needs to be planned for, even if the downtime you experience is measured in minutes rather than hours or days.

Here are some important elements your business continuity plan should include:

Organizational lists – A list of names, addresses, and contact information of people who have access to the continuity plan. This includes making up primary and secondary contact lists for all affected areas of your business.
Staff responsibilities – Each primary and secondary contact will have a set of responsibilities that they need to carry out.
Any off-site recovery locations – You’ll need to include the address, equipment inventory, and any other relevant information.
Your action plan – This is an in-depth process for returning every element of your business to satisfactory functionality. You need plans for the first hour, the first day, the first week, and for long-term disruption.
Primary and alternate suppliers – This is a list of all your current and backup suppliers. Vendors typically play a big role in returning your business to normal.
Customer data – You’ll need a process to inform clients that have personal, financial, or other sensitive information stored with you. This plan will go a long way toward helping you retain your clientele once continuity is restored.
All relevant documentation and insurance policy information – Keeping accurate records will help the insurance process if a claim needs to be filed.
Technology inventory – What technology requirements does your company need in order to retain continuity? Here you will want to create contingencies for remote work, failover, and more.
Data redundancy – You will need to identify the details of your data backup system to ensure that all of your digital assets are backed up and can quickly be restored.

This may be a basic list of what every business should have in their BCP, businesses with more moving parts will definitely need to have more specific and overarching continuity plans. It is important that no matter how large or small your organization is, that you consistently revisit the plan to update it as necessary. Typically, if a business carries out a BCP autif twice every year, their plan will work the way it was intended to work. Keeping on top of important changes to your business will make this process much simpler and less time consuming.

Additionally, you will definitely want to test the new parts (and the ones that need it) as much as you can to get a good read on how your business would react if they were ever to enact their BCP in earnest. Ensuring your backup system is working as intended and making sure you have a complete inventory of your hardware and software needs are two critical aspects of a well-implemented plan.

Operational downtime can happen in any part of your business. It can happen as a result of faulty IT, interruptions in your supply chain, or situations where your human resources are unavailable. Call us today at 810.230.9455 to help you put together a business continuity plan that will keep you in the game even when the chips are down.

Apr, 2020

How is Your Business Going to React to a Crisis?

Everyone from Wall Street to Main Street is feeling the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak. As a result, many businesses have had to enact their disaster recovery strategy to ensure that their business remains on solid footing during this dark time.

As more and more people are dealing with the virus and its effects on commerce, supply chains are failing and distribution patterns are completely disrupted. This has had a devastating effect on the world economy. It isn’t like a hurricane or a flood, but an outbreak, like most other disasters, hit business’ suddenly and has led many to enact their disaster recovery strategies. Today, we are going to discuss how IT fits into disaster recovery.

At first, people didn’t pay much mind to Coronavirus. They went on with their business as normal, not realizing that this virus wasn’t like most other viruses. Most of the viruses that you could be exposed to have a vaccine. It didn’t take long before the world around us started to shut down and, with it, came regulations on how your business needs to function. What was looked on as kind of a joke three weeks ago, is now one of the deadliest disasters the world has seen in decades.

Chances are that your business has been directly affected by the COVID-19 outbreak and those that have a disaster recovery strategy have had to enact parts of it. How is your business prepared for situations like this? One thing is for sure, if your business didn’t plan for a situation where your workers can work remotely, you are likely feeling the sting much more than if you were prepared. Sure, you don’t have to like the idea of having a remote workforce, but the truth is that any business that can support remote workers, needs to have a contingency for situations like this.

Ensuring that your business can pivot to it makes a huge difference; and, it doesn’t have to be for when the whole world shuts down around you. If you live in a place that gets a lot of snow, you may want to enact your remote work policy to keep people out of harm’s way. Sometimes you may need your team to work more to get an important project out. Allowing them to work from home keeps them from spending longer-than-normal time at the office, and makes it a lot easier to help them handle the other issues in their life.

If your business needs help through this very trying time, call the IT professionals at NuTech Services at 810.230.9455. We can take you through the options you have right now and take you through our strategy of disaster recovery to ensure when you need to mobilize your remote workforce, that you are able to on demand.

Mar, 2020

Backup System is a Crucial Tool when Disaster Strikes

Each March 31st, we like to observe World Backup Day, where we educate people about the benefits of having a comprehensive backup plan in place. This year, with tens of thousands of people being affected by Coronavirus, business has ground to a halt in large portions of the world. Today, we are going to look at the business continuity strategy and how, in times like these, you’ll be glad you have your data backed up.

The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly thrown us all for a loop, with many businesses wisely choosing to close their office doors, either scaling back their operations or choosing to utilize a more mobile workforce. While this clearly qualifies as a disaster, it isn’t one that holds too many risks against your data; at least, not when compared to some others. This gives us a chance to consider how well-prepared we are for other disasters that could pose more of a threat to the information and files your operations depend on. For instance, how would you respond if something were to happen to your actual business infrastructure (and, by association, any data you had stored there)?

The standards accepted as best practice today say that the smart move is to preserve at least one copy of your data in an offsite location. That way, if something were to happen to your in-house servers, you know that there’s another copy safely stored away. If you have a BDR set up, this can then act as your temporary server to enable your team’s continued productivity (even while working remotely) until the servers can be replaced.

So while the timing of World Backup Day isn’t the best this year, its lessons remain just as important:

The 3-2-1 Backup Method – Using the 3-2-1 method means that you keep at least three copies of your data. Two copies can be stored onsite, while one is kept in an offsite data center or other cloud storage option.
Backup Your Backup – You will want to check all of your backups (and then check again) to ensure they were taken successfully. There are several reasons a backup could fail, so you should never assume they are working. Check them, double-check them, and then check them again after that. If you ever need your backup, you’ll be glad you made sure.
Protect Your Backup – All devices that contain your data need password protection at the very least, with added multi-factor authentication for extra benefit, including your backups. You should also protect your backup’s storage solution with an up-to-date antivirus/antimalware protocol.

For help in setting up your business with the protection that a data backup brings, with the added disaster recovery benefits you will need, reach out to us at 810.230.9455 today.

Jan, 2020

Business Continuity Includes Preparing for Death

It’s never an easy thing to talk about, but it does need to be talked about. If one of your key employees were to pass away, how would it affect your business? How do you prepare for this type of inevitability?

We talk about Business Continuity a lot. Usually when we discuss it, we’re talking about backing up your data or having a plan in place to bounce back after a major disaster were to happen.

For example, if a fire were to take out your server room, what steps have you taken to prepare for it, and how quickly can you be back up and running?

The answer should be something like this:
We have our data backed up to an internal device in the server room. We can always rely on that, provided that the backup device remains operational. In the event that the backup device suffers from the disaster, we also back up our data in the cloud. The restore is a little more complicated, but we can manage for a few days from the cloud-based backup while new infrastructure is installed onsite.

That’s a really solid answer, and that is something that we specialize in helping Michigan businesses achieve. However, that’s your backup strategy. That’s just a small part of your overall business continuity. That data backup is a real lifesaver when it comes to a physical disaster, but what happens when the disaster is a loss of life, or incapacitation, or even just a key individual suddenly walking out the door?

Let’s Look at a Scenario

Let’s say Bob is the business owner. He makes all of the decisions, he signs the contracts, he pays the bills. If Bob gets sick or suffers a stroke and becomes incapacitated, who takes over until he recovers? If Bob’s son works for the company, does the son have legal authority to take over?

We’re covering a lot of ground here, but technically, only the courts can intercede and make these types of decisions if it isn’t properly prepared for. You might run into a scenario where the court will choose someone to run the business temporarily while it is decided what to do next. This process can be slow, and the outcome might not be ideal.

If Bob establishes an Estate Plan, he can pick a successor to have legal authority to run the business. The Estate Plan should include a Revocable Living Trust and Powers of Attorney.

Let’s take a moment here to admit that we are not lawyers, and not offering professional legal advice, and that you should consult your lawyer before making any legal decisions.

On top of all of this, you’ll want the family of the incapacitated business owner to maintain its lifestyle while keeping the business chugging along.

Business Continuity is About Smooth Recovery

Just like how we always recommend a backup device that can restore data quickly without a lot of overhead, the rest of your business continuity plan should cover a broad enough range of emergencies to enable the business to stay afloat during the toughest tides.

That plan should include taking a significant person or role out of the loop and continuing to operate normally. That may require thorough documentation and training for other capable employees before something bad happens.

Does your business continuity plan, or Emergency Action Plan (EAP) clearly cover this? If you would like to have a deeper conversation about business continuity, please reach out to us at NuTech Services to set up a call.

Nov, 2019

To Save Your Business from Disaster, Backup is Crucial

Businesses generate and collect a huge amount of data – some of it, practically useless, and some, critical to your business and its operations. It is this latter group that makes it so important that you have a comprehensive backup plan ready to go.

While not all of your data may be equally valuable, data loss is a bad thing across the board. This is precisely why NuTech Services offers comprehensive data backup and disaster recovery solutions.

Backing up your data allows you to sidestep the potential catastrophes that would come with the loss of your most critical information. Here, we’ll review a few situations that could put this data at risk to demonstrate how crucial having a backup really is.

Situation: Actual Disaster Event

Just about every business on Earth could potentially be impacted by some kind of weather event. Some deal with hurricanes, some deal with high winds and tornadoes, others with earthquakes and floods… you get the picture. Unfortunately, whichever one impacts your business, there isn’t very much you can do in the moment – which is why it is important to prepare now, so you can reopen again after the fact. Many don’t prepare, and therefore, don’t reopen.

Acting proactively and maintaining a backup allows you to more quickly bounce back after disaster has struck, allowing your business a second chance.

Situation: Data Corruption or Theft

Cybersecurity is a huge topic today, as there are many, many threats out there designed to target businesses. Take ransomware, for example: all it takes for you to lose access to your files is for an employee to click on the wrong thing. Not good.

However, using a BDR (in conjunction with a comprehensive business continuity plan) to keep your files safely backed up enables you to quickly restore data from an onsite backup copy of your data, while keeping another copy offsite for redundant protections and simplified migrations. This keeps you safe from a variety of threats, including ransomware and many other forms of malware.

Situation: The Classic Office “Whoops!” Moment

The BDR is supremely useful in that it gives you an on-demand resource to pull your data from, on demand, as it is needed. This is particularly handy if a team is collaborating on a project, and somebody accidentally deletes something absolutely critical to the project. With a backup, your progress won’t be lost to bad luck.

A BDR allows you to breathe a little easier about your files and their security. To find out about adopting one for your business, reach out to NuTech Services today. Call 810.230.9455 to get started.

Nov, 2018

The Benefits of Data Backup Far Outweigh the Costs

Businesses don’t like to spend money on solutions they don’t need. You’d rather make sure you hit payroll, dish out Christmas bonuses, and have something left over to grow. With this in mind, a business that doesn’t properly back up their data might not get a chance to make payroll, dish out bonuses, or even keep their doors open. Data backup isn’t something to skimp on, because when the time comes, it can mean disaster for your business.

Imagine, for a moment, just how much you have to lose from a data loss incident. Your business depends on its data, and if it suddenly loses access to it, you could be in a position where downtime significantly impacts your bottom line. In situations like this, you have no time to waste. You have to get back in the game as soon as possible or you risk losing so much traction that it could be hard to keep the doors open.

With this in mind, you can’t possibly achieve this goal without data backup. You have to think of it in terms of a potential loss incident–essentially it is professional risk management. While it’s true you don’t want to make decisions based solely on the what-ifs, it’s hard not to justify it in this case. What it boils down to is this: if you don’t have data backup and suffer from a disaster, your business will, more likely than not, fail. Therefore, the best way to ensure the possibility of success is to implement data backup and prevent a potential loss incident from surfacing in the first place.

Basically, the sheer fact that you know you need to back up your data is enough to justify having a solid backup solution.

The point that we are trying to make is that we shouldn’t have to convince you to go all-in on your business’ data backup and disaster recovery solution. It should be common sense. After all, you’re trying to preserve your business and its future against the possibility that a disaster scenario cuts its life short. You have no reason not to invest in something that could potentially save your business. It doesn’t matter whether it’s from a natural disaster, user error, or hardware failure–there is always the chance that an unforeseen event could spell the end of your organization.

The right data backup solution can go a long way toward keeping your business afloat, even in a worst-case scenario. To find out more about BDR, reach out to NuTech Services at 810.230.9455.

Oct, 2018

The Right Data Recovery Strategy Is Important to Protect Your Business

Data recovery is a major consideration that every organization that depends on data has to plan for as a part of their business continuity strategy. Since there are so many ways that businesses can lose data, there needs to be a plan to recover data for any possible reason. Today, we will take a different look at operational data loss and talk about how your organization should consider strategizing data recovery.

Data Value in Business
The first thing that you need to know is that losing data is a very big deal. In fact, there is an entire field of study created to deal with this very issue. Called infonomics, this can put a dollar value on an organization’s data. While some organizations continuously deny that data has a tangible value, it is becoming more evident than ever that those organizations (typically insurance and accounting) have a vested interest in data’s value remaining intangible. Every other business can be sure that their data has monetary value.

With the acknowledgement that the analysis of organizational data can help businesses run a more efficient and profitable business, any standard enacted to properly evaluate this asset would be made to promote a strategy of organization-wide data security. If you need to justify spending capital on a data protection and redundancy strategy, you should be able to ascertain what the actual value your data has to your organization. A few ways you can value data include:

How much capital would it cost to replace lost data?
How much revenue is dependent on that data?
How much money could you make by selling or renting the data you have?
How much capital will you have to spend to protect this data?

However, you look at your organization’s data, it is an asset, and as those assets are compromised on your network, or removed from your network, you need to have a solution in place to get that data back.

Data Backup
The first step in any data recovery strategy is data backup. At NuTech Services, we believe that the best data backup strategy is to promote redundancy. In order to do so we promote a strategy that backs up data locally AND offsite. This presents options to make data recovery more efficient.

Our BDR service initially backs up your entire network. Since backing up an entire network will take a long time, and any downtime is extraordinarily costly, setting up a backup solution that protects the data you need without taking down the network at all, is important. Our BDR keeps data redundant on multiple hard drives and provides an organization with the much-desired data security it is looking for from a comprehensive solution.

Disaster Recovery
The first thing that has to be said is that the best data recovery strategy is one that never has to be used. However, data loss disasters can (and do) happen, leaving your business to pick up the pieces. The best way to do this is to have a dedicated disaster recovery platform in place that takes two crucial factors into account:

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) – The interval of time that might pass during a disruption before the amount of data lost exceeds the maximum threshold that your business can weather.
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) – The duration of time within which data or business process must be restored after a disruption before it can be considered a complete break in continuity.

By thoroughly managing your disaster recovery program, your organization is sure to be able to get its data back–and its business’ processes up and running–to ensure that your business is able to sustain operational integrity. For more information about how to get a data backup and disaster recovery working for your business, call NuTech Services today at 810.230.9455.

Oct, 2017

Do You Have a Data Backup In Place?

Take a moment to imagine the absolute worst disaster scenario for your business. Does it involve a catastrophic event destroying your office building? Does it include key staff being absent from the office for extended periods of time? Does it include your business suffering from data loss or security breaches?

Most businesses that fail to recover their data following a data loss scenario go out of business within a year of the incident. Furthermore, there are a lot of small businesses out there that don’t necessarily see the value in a proper data backup system. Most just assume that they will be able to survive a loss incident, or they feel that a data loss incident won’t happen to them. This is not the right mindset to have for a business owner–especially not one that has the future of their business at heart.

Instead, you need to imagine the worst-case scenario and ask if your business continuity plan includes a data backup solution to minimize damage and downtime. Here are three ways that a cloud-based Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution can help your business survive even the worst data loss incidents.

Multiple Backups Daily
Traditionally, businesses have relied on tape backup for most of their backup needs. Due to the increased strain on your network, tape backups need to be performed during off-hours, and only once a day. The problem with this is that you could potentially lose up to an entire day’s worth of data and progress. Cloud-based BDR takes multiple backups as often as every fifteen minutes, which allows for higher redundancy.

Cloud-Based Storage
There’s something to be said about the cloud and its ability to make data backup storage far easier. Thanks to the cloud, a BDR device can take and store multiple backups in secure, off-site locations for later access. After all, you can’t store your backups in the same location as the rest of your data. What if you were to experience a major disaster, like a flood or ransomware infection, which leads to the destruction of your in-house data infrastructure? When this time comes, you’ll be glad you’re storing data in the cloud and away from the site of the incident.

Reduced Downtime
When your business can quickly restore data in a moment’s notice, the amount of downtime suffered drastically falls. This helps your business stay active even under the worst circumstances. BDR can instantaneously restore your data to the network-attached device, allowing your organization to quickly get back in action following a downtime incident. The BDR device can even act as a temporary server while you make more permanent arrangements.

How does your business protect itself from data loss? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to reach out to us at 810.230.9455 if your business needs help with its technology.

Aug, 2017

Prepping For A Weather Event Needs To Happen In Your Business

Running a business requires the ability to stay in control, especially when others couldn’t. However, there are some situations–like major weather events–that simply will not be controlled. In cases like these, you need to make sure your business is prepared to withstand the worst. A business continuity plan can help you do so.

A business continuity plan is a comprehensive strategy that, when enacted, will allow business operations to continue despite some detrimental circumstance that would have otherwise derailed them. For example, a lightning strike killing the power to your office building, a flood leaving it inaccessible, or a hurricane wiping your place of business off the map–any of these events would severely hinder, if not halt, your ability to do business if you are not prepared.

In short, without a business continuity plan in place, you’re vulnerable to chance–a risk that no business owner should take if they can help it. That is why it is so important to have a plan before it’s needed.

The first step to creating a plan is to establish what that plan needs to address. To do this, you will need to identify where your greatest losses would be if disaster befell your business. What would the costs be if you were to suddenly lose all business function? How would the additional expenses of a disaster influence your cash flow? How long would it take you to recover? This is what is known as a Business Impact Analysis, and it can help you to prioritize your most pressing concerns to ensure they make it into the plan.

Your plan should address the following six considerations:

Establish the plan’s reach
Identify your key business areas
Establish which business functions are critical
Outline which business areas and functions are interdependent
Establish a limit to how much downtime each function can experience
Plan to continue operations

Once your plan is developed and documented, with responsibilities properly distributed, you need to train your staff and test the procedures that were just laid out.

Of course, you also need to be sure that your data is preserved, despite what may happen to your in-house equipment. A reliable backup solution is an integral part of any business continuity strategy. This backup should be incrementally updated throughout the day, and preferably, hosted in the cloud. At the very least, it needs to be in a disparate location than your original data, as a backup that is destroyed along with the original data will do you no good.

Unfortunately, we can’t control the weather. We can, however, control how we prepare for it. NuTech Services can help you put solutions in place to protect your business-essential data. Call 810.230.9455 for more.

Feb, 2017

4 Options for Backing Up Your Data. Which is Best?

It’s every business owner’s worst nightmare; they wake up to find out that their entire data infrastructure has been wiped out by some unexpected natural disaster or hacking attack. The only way to guarantee that your business’s future remains intact is to have some sort of data backup and recovery system, just in case of the worst.

However, if you’re unfamiliar with data backup solutions, you might not know where to start. We’ve outlined several options that your business has, as well as which ones are the superior choice.

Local Data Backup
Most organizations will immediately think of local data backup as their first option. While it’s a great way to avoid the risks of not having any data backup at all, keep in mind that it’s far from the ideal solution. Two types of local data backup solutions are magnetic tape and external hard drives. These allow you to keep a copy of your business’s data on-site in the event of a disaster, but it’s not a guarantee if you want to ensure the recovery of your data.

Imagine for a moment that your business was struck by a disaster so great that it eliminated pretty much everything that your organization had stored in your office. Fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, or floods all have this destructive capability. If this were to happen, your organization would be left without a trace of data to go off of. Furthermore, you also run the risk of malware infections, user error, or hardware failure when hosting your data backups on-site.

So… what’s the next best thing?

Cloud Backup
The next logical step would be to host your data off-site, and the cloud allows for just that. If your in-house infrastructure were to be rendered obsolete or incapacitated by some sort of disaster, you could restore your data quickly and efficiently through the use of a cloud backup and restoration process. Plus, you can forget about the potential user error that could arise from having to manually set and restore through tape backups.

Multiple Data Center Backups
Before going all-in on a cloud-based backup, you should ask them how many data centers that they use to store your data. Ultimately, you want your organization’s data to be stored in as many different locations as possible, as this improves the odds that your data can be located and restored. Basically, if the data can’t be found in one data center due to some sort of internal problem, you’ll know with certainty that at least one of them has it.

Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR)
For organizations that are serious about business continuity, an enterprise-level Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution is the best option to ensure the preservation of your mission-critical assets. BDR works by taking a backup of only files that have been changed since the last backup was taken, which allows it to take multiple backups throughout the workday instead of just one large backup after-hours. These backups are then stored in the cloud for future access.

BDR can also restore directly to a device, or to the BDR hardware itself, depending on just how bad the disaster is. This keeps downtime to a minimum and helps you get back in business as soon as possible following a disaster. If you have nothing to restore your data to, a backup device with all of your data can be sent to your office’s location overnight.

Are you ready to get started with BDR? To learn more, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.

Nov, 2016

Save Considerable Time By Automating Your Data Backup Process

Is your organization still relying on antiquated tape backup to keep your data safe? A more reliable, less time-consuming alternative known as image-based, or “snapshot” backup, could change the way that you look at disaster recovery. In fact, image-based backup has the potential to optimize your business’s data continuity.

Tape backup, though it used to be an industry standard, has simply fallen behind the times for modern businesses. Compared to modern data backup practices, tape falls short of the demands placed on a modern organization’s data infrastructure. They are resource-intensive and often need to be performed after-hours so as not to disturb normal workflow. Plus, since they’re so resource-intensive, tape backups are often only performed once–at the end of the day. This means that in a worst-case scenario you could lose up to 24 hours worth of information and productivity.

The Big Difference
Compared to tape backup, image-based backup is much more efficient and manageable. As its name suggests, image-based backup takes a snapshot of your organization’s data. These snapshots record changes to files that have been altered recently and apply these changes to a backup that’s stored on or off-site in a secure, compliant space. Since these backups only record changes made to files, they are smaller and less resource-intensive, which allows them to be taken multiple times a day–even as often as every 15 minutes.

Perhaps the greatest advantage that image-based backup offers is its autonomy. It’s less prone to user error, since your team doesn’t need to manually set and run the backups at the end of each work day. Granted, you still have to check the backups and make sure that they work properly.

Your business can’t afford to cut corners on backup and disaster recovery. If a problem happens down the road, disasters could render your business dysfunctional for extended periods of time. Even the most common of disasters, like a power outage or a hardware failure, could cause downtime and major data loss. Other disasters like floods, fires, collapsed power lines, and more can even damage the integrity of your company. Replacing hardware can damage your IT budget, and the resulting downtime could push your business into the red even further.

NuTech Services can arm your business with a quality backup and disaster recovery solution designed specifically for your needs. You can back up your data in several off-site locations, including a secure data center in the cloud. This data can then be deployed in a moment’s notice, right to the BDR device. The BDR device can be used as a replacement server while you work on finding a more permanent solution to your woes. This keeps downtime to a minimum and your operations pushing forward even in the face of disaster.

To learn more, reach out to us at 810.230.9455.

Oct, 2016

Do Memes Have a Place in the Professional Business Environment?

Whether we like it or not, memes have had a profound effect on how the world’s population views current events and popular culture. In part, this is thanks to the prevalence of the Internet, which has fostered these absurd images and provided them an outlet to flourish. Due to how viral they are, it would be foolish to dismiss them as inconsequential; in fact, when leveraged properly, memes can make a statement about your business and its specific brand.

The term “meme” is actually much different from what we’ve come to know over the past few years. Richard Dawkins, a British evolutionary biologist, coined the term in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Its official definition is “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.” It was originally meant to discuss the way that ideas and values are passed on and adopted by people within a society. The evolutionary idea of a meme is based on sporadic and random change, but the Internet meme spreads in a much different way. Basically, what happens is that an Internet meme “hijacks” the original intended purpose of an image or video, and changes it to mean something else.

In other words, the Internet meme takes something popular that was originally used somewhere else, and transforms it. Many memes use images from popular culture. Take, for example, the “Futurama Fry” meme. It uses a funny picture of the show’s protagonist in deep thought, and uses it to explain a situation filled with confusion or indecision.

Another classic example is the “Matrix Morpheus” meme, which places text over an image of Morpheus from The Matrix to describe a revelation. According to KnowYourMeme, this meme often “belittles futile or petty behavior.”

Some memes are often funny simply because they aren’t funny. For example, the “Anti-Joke Chicken” explicitly aims to find humor out of something that’s honestly not all that funny. The beginning text often tells the beginning of a joke, but instead of a hilarious punchline, it regresses into an obvious statement–usually something that makes logical sense, or something unexpected.

It’s funny because it’s not funny. Or, maybe it’s not funny at all. We’ll let you decide.

Making memes that you can use for your business is easy and free. In fact, it can even be fun, if you’re doing it right. There are plenty of meme generators online that you can use to make silly pictures. However, you should take these thoughts into consideration when making memes to either share on social media, or to send to your coworkers.

Stay Relevant to Your Goods or Services
If you want to use memes for your business, you need to first figure out what theme you want it to follow. It should be aligned with the services that you offer.

Use the Right Image
Once you’ve figured out the theme for your meme, you can proceed to find the right image for it. We recommend doing some research and looking at examples of previously existing memes, but be warned; the Internet has many memes, many of which may be offensive.

Keep the Audience in Mind
Your memes should appeal to your target audience, especially if that audience consists of young people that frequent the Internet.

Be Funny
At their very core, memes are meant to be funny and humorous. If they aren’t, you’re not doing it right.

Share it on Social Media
The point of a meme is to bring light-hearted attention to your brand and to be shared. You can do both by exposing it to many followers on social media.

For an example of how you might apply a meme to the real world, we’ve made this one using the “Disaster Girl” meme character:

Two notes: 1) Get your point across by finding a meme character that’s relevant to your goods and services, and 2) Use a combination of humor and a call to action to inspire action from the viewer. If you found this on your social media news feed, would you laugh at it? We hope so.

So, have we managed to pique your interest in Internet memes? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to subscribe to our blog. Also, leave your favorite memes; we like a good laugh.

Aug, 2016

Study: 95% of All Cyber Attacks are Financially Motivated

Businesses need to take security into account and make it a priority. In fact, security is so important that Verizon has compiled a report of the various types of attacks and data breaches that occurred in the past year. This is Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report, or DBIR, and it offers insights into how you can protect your business and secure your assets.

The DBIR has a method of outlining data breach types into nine separate categories. In particular, your business should focus on four of them. We’ll provide you with a basic outline of what the threat entails, as well as how your organization can protect itself from them.

Crimeware
The DBIR reports that crimeware is one of the most common trends in the business environment, citing that 39 percent of all attacks in 2015 involved ransomware. The DBIR’s definition of “crimeware” is quite large, and is used to refer to “any use of malware that doesn’t fall into a more specific pattern.” This lack of predictability makes crimeware rather dangerous, and only serves to show business owners just how many different types of threats exist that fall into this category.

The DBIR recommends that all workstations and servers be patched and maintained at all times, and that organizations have backup and disaster recovery solutions put into place to prepare for the worst. Additionally, it’s recommended that you monitor your systems for any changes to system configurations.

Web Application Attacks
E-commerce platforms are some of the most common targets, and it’s simple to understand why. In the DBIR, 95 percent of all web application attacks had some sort of financial motivation. These attacks are caused by successful phishing attempts to steal credentials and infiltrate networks. Additionally, content management system data breaches have become quite common, with some aiming to infiltrate and repurpose sites as phishing centers.

The DBIR suggests using two-factor authentication, and to promptly update and patch software as needed.

Cyber Espionage
Some criminals will primarily target intellectual property. These cyber-espionage tactics will stick to your typical methods of network breaches and utilize sophisticated means to meet their goals if simple tactics don’t work. Therefore, many of these attempts to steal sensitive data can be undermined by basic protection, like firewalls and antivirus, but these solutions shouldn’t be counted on to keep out more advanced threats.

Additionally, you need to take advantage of advanced security solutions, like remote monitoring and management, to ensure that your infrastructure’s configurations aren’t being tampered with, and implement a mobile device management solution to protect your organization’s mobile data infrastructure.

Miscellaneous Errors
This category consists mostly of mistakes of all kinds that leads to compromised security. Verizon reports that around 40 percent of miscellaneous errors are caused by server issues, and about 26 percent are caused by simple employee mistakes, like sending a message filled with sensitive data to the wrong person.

The DBIR suggests that business owners or technology professionals strengthen control over how sensitive data is distributed. Verizon suggests the thorough and proper disposal of any unneeded or irrelevant hardware, and we’d like to mention how employee education as a preventative measure. By ensuring that your team is informed of industry best practices and data management techniques, you’ll drastically cut down user errors.

The takeaway: Basically, the majority of security discrepancies were due to, with varying degrees, human error. This is natural, as hackers actively look to exploit the weaknesses of the human mind. Therefore, if the people that make your business tick are the weakest link in the chain of operations.

What can you do to safeguard your data? For starters, stay up-to-date on the various trends in security breaches, and always keep your systems prepared by installing patches and security updates. To learn more about cyber security and preventative technology solutions, reach out to NuTech Services at 810.230.9455.

Jun, 2016

How NOT to Maintain a Backup

A data loss incident is considered a major disaster scenario, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. All it takes is one moment to lose your business’s entire data infrastructure. We’ll walk you through a story that should serve as a cautionary tale, one that hopefully teaches you to adhere to data backup and disaster recovery best practices.

Marco Marsala, a hosting provider, posted on a server forum looking for advice on how to deal with a major issue he encountered while trying to delete a few files. He had utilized what’s called the “rm-rf” command with undefined variables, which wound up destroying all data on the system. Like any good hosting provider, he had backups of the files, but, like a dumb-dumb, he had the backups stored on the system that he accidentally wiped. What a mess.

This is actually a similar blunder to one that Pixar experienced, almost deleting Toy Story 2 prior to its release.

As a result of Marsala’s negligence, all of the data that his company had stored was destroyed. This included the data of 1,535 customers, whom he had built and hosted websites for. Without any backups stored off-site, he had no way to recover the data.

As you might expect, the responses that Marsala received from other users of the online forum were quite negative. Many completely dismissed the possibility that his company could recover from such a devastating failure, and others questioned his abilities as a hosting provider. One poster even went as far as recommending that Marsala seek legal counsel, rather than attempt to restore the data, predicting that Marsala was “going out of business.”

The conclusion: Marsala’s best chance of recovering from this major blow was to recruit help from a third-party data recovery firm. Fortunately for him, the company was able to recover his files, but that doesn’t change the fact that his simple mistake was a huge hit to his company’s finances. The company suffered from fees associated with the disaster recovery process, as well as reduced income from the loss of business suffered as a result of his negligence.

The lesson: neglecting to follow best practices got Marsala in some hot water, and his failure basically invited disaster to his doorstep. Following the accepted best practices of data recovery could have easily prevented the situation from escalating as quickly as it did. In fact, Marsala’s reason for distress (user error) is one of the most common reasons to use a backup and disaster recovery solution, a solution that stores your backups off-site on a separate system.

Storing your data off-site allows your organization to avoid the many causes of data loss, including user error, fires, electrical surges, hardware failure, theft, and so much more. This minimizes the risk of these events threatening your business’s operations.

How do you manage your business’s data backups? Are they stored off-site, and do you have a system in place to rapidly deploy them in the event of a major disaster? If you’re uncertain, reach out to NuTech Services at 810.230.9455.

Apr, 2016

3 Solid Ways to Approach Your Company’s Technology

Technology is always changing and evolving to suit the needs of modern society and business. Organizations that fully understand technology’s impact on business are always trying to make the most of their technology. Here are three ways that your company can better leverage its technological investments to meet your organization’s needs.

Think for the Future and Appreciate Your Technology
The most difficult challenge that your business has to deal with is admitting that you’re not thinking about the future of your IT infrastructure. This is especially true for business owners who aren’t specializing in tracking their technological assets. In many cases, business owners forsake their technology to focus on other aspects of running their organization, and operations can suffer because of it.

Even if you’re focused on ensuring that the administrative side of your business functions without a hitch, you’re still responsible for paying attention to your technology and making sure that it gets replaced in an orderly manner. If you don’t make sure that you’re proactively replacing your technology, you’ll one day find yourself surrounded by old IT equipment that’s practically impossible to manage in a productive manner. Todd Nashville explains to IT Knowledge Exchange:

Don’t get into a rut and get too comfortable. The IT field is forever changing and changing faster than ever before. It’s easier to stay current with technology than trying to play catch up after many years of being stagnant. That learning curve can be hard to overcome.

Have the Proper Equipment for Future IT Trends
Keeping up with the current IT trends is great and all, but only if you can predict your company’s own growth and IT requirements. If you can understand where your business will be in one, two, or even five years from now, you can make an educated decision concerning what technology you’ll need to accommodate these shifts in your business model before the future even arrives.

One good example of how to predict the future of your business will be to consider how many users and devices your business will need to manage five years from now. Even if you can make a guesstimate, you can plan to implement the technology needed for this growth today, while ensuring that the growth you experience won’t negatively impact your IT infrastructure. If you don’t take a proactive approach to this, you’ll find yourself forced to upgrade at the worst possible time, which could lead to wasted time and resources. NuTech Services offers IT consulting to companies just like yours in order to best prepare you for future growth and IT trends.

Keep Security On Your Mind
Technology grows more complex every day, but so do the security threats that undermine businesses utilizing it. You need to prepare for dangerous new security threats that will attempt to compromise your business’s security measures. If you don’t stay on top of these threats, you could be putting your business at risk.

Take for example one of the hottest IT trends for businesses, the Internet of Things. In order to take full advantage of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of new devices accessing your network, you’re first going to want to have in place every network security measure possible. Todd Nashville explains:

Without strong authentication, firewalls, and other measures, we are heading for a heap of trouble. The more devices we add, the more vulnerable we become. To support all the various types of devices, we should have some standards. Modifying our connections so each new device will work is a major obstacle.

To future-proof your IT infrastructure, give NuTech Services a call at 810.230.9455.

Jan, 2016

Business Continuity: Prepare For the Worst and Hope For the Best

There are few things more important than the continuity of your business. Your livelihood, and that of your employees, depends on the continued functionality of your organization. Therefore, it becomes necessary to do all that you can to ensure your business is protected from an unexpected downfall, due to data loss, natural disasters, and other means.

Business continuity, despite the fact that it’s hugely important, can often be neglected due to more pressing matters. For example, dealing with small issues that pop up periodically might feel more important than worrying about a huge data loss disaster. In cases like this, it’s always best to be prepared. You should approach business continuity from the viewpoint of Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” Your organization should be prepared to handle anything and everything that the universe throws at it.

Natural Disasters
We all know that floods, fires, and electrical storms are often beyond the control of human action. A freak tornado could strike and level your office at any time, or a bad storm could topple power lines and the impending power outage could cause damage to your technology. A natural disaster doesn’t have to destroy your office; all it has to do is cause enough damage to make getting back to normal operations difficult. This is the most common problem stemming from natural disasters.

You can reduce the pain of this by integrating some relatively common technology solutions, like an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). If your IT infrastructure is suddenly cut off from electricity, the UPS will send a signal to the server, telling it to shut down normally once all work and applications are properly finished and closed.

Succession Planning
This is perhaps the most neglected part of planning for business continuity. Many organizations have important staff members that have been around for what seems like forever, but it won’t always be this way. Making sure that critical personnel remain at the company can seem daunting, especially if you’ve never given a thought to what would happen if they left. When we say “leave,” we usually mean one of three things: 1) The employee quits, 2) The employee is severely ill and away from the office for an extended period of time, and 3) The employee dies.

We don’t want to sound morbid, but again, you should always prepare for the case when important people aren’t available anymore. Establishing a policy for succession beforehand can help to ensure that your organization is prepared for anything. Even something as simple as cross training can contribute to this goal.

Data Loss and Disaster Recovery
Data loss is a primary reason a business fails to continue operations, and as such, making sure that it’s mitigated is a primary function of any good business continuity plan. Organizations that fail to restore their data following a data loss disaster are likely to go out of business within a year, so you know that data loss is no joke.

Thankfully, it’s easy to integrate data backup with help from professionals like NuTech Services. Our data backup and disaster recovery service is designed to help small and medium-sized businesses avoid data loss and get back in the game as quickly as possible, following a data loss incident. Your data backups will be sent to secure, off-site data centers, where they can be quickly recovered in the event of a disaster. The BDR can temporarily act like a server to help your business continue functioning, even while you’re searching for new technology to replace the downed server.

Some folks might think we’re being paranoid, but honestly, preparing for the worst only means that you can move forward with confidence, knowing that even the worst possible circumstances can’t take your business down. If you’re ready to embrace business continuity, give NuTech Services a call at 810.230.9455.