The Top Causes of Disaster in Businesses

• Disaster from Technical Risks: Data corruption, power failure, media degradation, system errors and updates, etc.
• Computer Viruses & Worms: Viruses often surface before virus protection software updates can catch them, corrupting your files, hard drive, programs and operating systems.
• Hard drive Failure: These mechanical magnetic storage devices are extremely susceptible to failure. Head crashes, circuit board shorts, electrostatic shocks, power surges, overheating, etc. can all leave you with no other option but to send your hard drive to very expensive data recovery professionals if you don't have a recent backup.
• PC Power Failure: Power surges, sags and failures can damage hard drives and corrupt Windows systems, databases and other programs and services that need to be shut down safely. Surge protectors, UPS, and backup generators can be expensive and don't always protect you. Offsite data backups helps you quickly recover data and roll back to a working system state.
• Backup Media Degradation: Backup media (tape, DVD, CD, Jaz, Zip or floppy) is notoriously failure-prone. Backup media are vulnerable to damage by the environment (heat, sunlight, humidity, liquids, dust) and human mishandling (scratching, bending and dropping). They can be easily lost or stolen. Magnetic backup media can also be damaged by electromagnetic fields emitted by TVs, monitors, speakers and other electronic devices.
• Protection from Human Risks: Accidental changes or deletions, theft (especially laptops), disgruntled employees, hackers, etc.
• Protection from Natural Risks: Fire, flood, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, lightning, solar flares, which strike unexpectedly and can destroy all of your data. Unless you store your backups offsite nightly, you may be forced to start from scratch.
• Protection from Laptop Risks: Stolen, lost, damaged, failures, Wi-Fi vulnerability

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.