Your business data is a veritable goldmine of information, and if that information fell into the hands of a cybercriminal you could lose everything. Your customers’ data would be compromised and their trust in you would be gone, plus you could find that your bank accounts have been hacked into and money stolen. With data breaches having exposed billions of records in recent years, there’s a lot to consider.
When you have such valuable data within your business, it makes sense to keep it protected, just as you would if this was real gold. You wouldn’t leave that available for anyone to take, and you shouldn’t leave your data unprotected for cybercriminals to do the same.
This is why outsourcing the protection of this most important element of your business to a data center is your best option. But how do data centers guarantee that they can protect your business from data loss? Read on to find out.
What Are the Threats to Data?
Before we can look at how data centers can protect your business from data loss, we need to know what kind of threats might be problematic within your business. In this way, you’ll start to understand why standard protection such as firewalls and antivirus software might not be enough to keep your data safe.
One of the biggest issues when it comes to protecting your data and data loss is theft. Even the smallest of businesses will have plenty of information within them that a hacker would love to get their virtual hands on, including banking details and your customers’ personal information (ideal for identity theft).
No matter what size business you are or what products and services you sell, there will be someone out there who will want to hack into your system. This needs to be prevented; using a data center will give you the protection you need.
Natural disasters are another major problem within business. A flood or a fire, for example, can destroy your data if it’s kept solely on a physical server within your office or warehouse and if there are no backups (or no recent backups) trying to build the business back up again is going to be difficult to say the least. Floods alone cause an estimated $2 billion of damage every year, and some of that will be data loss.
Downtime. It’s necessary in some cases, accidental in others, but no matter what the cause, it’s dangerous when it comes to your security. If you have too much downtime (or any downtime, come to that) then cybercriminals can seize the opportunity to sneak in and steal what they want.
In order to prevent these problems from destroying your business, you need to employ data backup services via a third-party data center. But just how does this help? Here are the reasons.
Physical Security
A good data center will have strong physical security measures in place to ensure the safety of your data and to protect against data loss which can clearly be devastating. These security measures include the fact that every door has a security lock installed, the use of gates and cameras, servers being installed in fully locked cabinets, and the most up-to-date biometric tools for access.
There should also be constant monitoring of the temperature within the server rooms, ensuring that nothing overheats, which is another problem that many businesses find they have to face.
Patching
If updating your systems has ever been something you’ve put off, you could have been allowing many different data breaches to occur. Keeping your software up to date, ensuring that any and all new patches are installed, is vital for your data’s security. Although this can be a chore when you have many other tasks to complete, a data center can manage patches for you.
Greater Uptime
Greater uptime means there are fewer chances for problems to occur, and fewer chances for hackers to gain access. Data centers that are well managed can reduce downtime, utilizing a multi-homed internet connection so that even if one channel goes down, the rest are still active. Working with just a single-homed internet connection is a risk you shouldn’t be willing to take.
Conclusion
Data centers can mitigate several threats that face your data. Investing in storing your data in a trusted third-party center can protect you from the damages of data breaches, natural disasters, downtime, and more. It’s wise for businesses of all sizes and industries to consider the benefits of keeping your data in a data center rather than onsite.