Most businesses today, no matter how big or how small and regardless of industry, rely on their computers to survive. Whether your New Jersey business needs dozens of machines to handle hundreds of orders or one solitary computer to balance the books, chances are you can’t afford to lose that data. Hard drives are the most common culprit when it comes to lost data (which can usually be prevented with redundant drives or remote data backup), but a failed hard drive isn’t the only computer disaster business owners have to prepare for.

Here are 3 other computer disasters that a disaster prevention plan could help your business survive:

Computer Viruses

Even with virus protection software, Internet firewalls and other forms of network security, it’s hard to create an environment that is 100% secure.  Viruses can corrupt your files, hard drive, programs and operating systems before your protection software even recognizes there is a threat.

Backup Media Degradation

It’s important to have at least one working backup of all your business data, but backup media options like DVDs, CDs, and Zip drive are notoriously failure-prone. Not only can they easily be lost or stolen, they are also at the mercy of the environment. Extreme temperatures, water & humidity, direct sunlight and dust can all destroy your backup media. You also have to consider the fact that they accidentally can be dropped, scratched or bent by your employees.

Power Failure

Power surges and failures can damage hard drives and corrupt systems and programs that need to be shut down safely. Power protection hardware, like an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) or surge protector can handle most power failures, but even they aren’t failsafe.

Here are some noteworthy (and alarming) numbers about disaster recovery that New Jersey business owners should be aware of:

It takes approximately

• 19 days and $17,000 to recreate just 20 MB of lost sales/marketing data
• 21 days and $19,000 to recreate just 20 MB of lost accounting data
• 42 days and $98,000 to recreate just 20 MB of lost engineering data

Can your business really afford to spend that much money and time to recover such a small amount of data? Even the best data recovery service providers might not be able to save everything if the damage is too severe.

A disaster prevention plan will often include routine, secure, off-site backups so that no matter what happens to the computers, hard drives and other storage media in your office, your data is still safe. These off-site backups are usually automatic and can be scheduled as needed, even as frequently as every few minutes. Should something happen to your system, your IT services provider is able to restart your system from the last backup, minimizing the amount of data lost.

Click here to learn more about 24×7 disaster recovery services from Integrated Computer Services.