Author Archive
Cloud Backup Services
Posted by: | CommentsWhether it is global warming, nuclear disasters, el Nino, ozone depletion or other causes most people agree the weather is becoming more and more volatile. Hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunami’s, floods, etc. are occurring in regions typically not affected by such occurrences.
All of this can create serious problems for a company’s computer infrastructure even if it is not directly affected by a disaster. North America’s aging power grid is heavily taxed and even relatively minor weather events can cause power surges, brownouts and outages that will cause computer networks to crash, resulting in information loss.
Many companies have decided not to have their information backup in their geographic area, and are turning to cloud disaster recovery, and backup strategies to mitigate the risk of computer infrastructure failure. When choosing a Cloud service provider make sure they have the security, power, and internet redundancies to ensure the absolute safety and retrieve ability of your companies information.
Click to learn more about our Cloud Backup services in Canada.
Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance: Records Retention
Posted by: | CommentsSection 802 of Sarbanes-Oxley requires public companies and their public accounting firms to maintain all audit or review work papers for a period of five years from the end of the fiscal period in which the audit or review was concluded. This includes electronic records which are created, sent, or received in connection with an audit or review. As external auditors rely to a certain extent on the work of internal audit, it would imply that internal audit records must also comply with Section 802. Read More→
Sarbanes Oxley Compliance
Posted by: | CommentsWithin the 69 provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, (aka; SOX compliance Canada), and its hundreds of subparagraphs, there is a new requirement to store or retain documents: “… registered public auditing firms must retain the working papers they use during an audit for 5 years”. A corporation must create and document its internal financial control procedures and keep them freely available for employees and auditors. Corporations must store and retain Read More→
Offsite Backup: Is Offsite Data Backup Really Necessary?
Posted by: | CommentsCompanies are often willing to spend enormous amounts of money to resolve information loss, once it has occurred. But in many cases no amount of money will resolve the problem.
It is sad but true, but companies often have spent more on their Christmas party than on their backup and business continuity strategy. We literally charge companies 10’s of thousands of dollars to try to recover information from crashed or corrupted hard drives and in many cases we still cannot recover all of their information. In the backup world an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure. A reliable offsite backup solution is the answer.
At Computer Storage Services we provide companies with onsite backup solutions and should something fail we have an offsite data backup solution in place. The fact is, onsite backups do fail; hard drives crash, viruses can attack your computers, software can become corrupt, and the list goes on.
Many companies think they do not require offsite remote backup because their servers store information on a RAID (redundant array of independent disks) platform. With a raid 5 or greater platform if any single hard drive fails there is no information loss as the total sum of the information is on the other 4 hard drives. In theory this is absolutely correct however in practice IT managers know if you have one drive failure on the same system you are likely to have more very soon or even in some cases at the same time.
We believe that online offsite backup is something that every company should have.
Computer Storage Services, free consultation 1-888-368-1088 x11
Information Storage; Offsite Backup; Are You Really Protected!
Posted by: | CommentsInformation Storage:
Is information storage a priority in your company? Are you really protected well with your Offsite Backup solution?
Management within companies typically do not take an active role to ensure their information is secure. They assume that the I.T. Department has that base covered, even though the I.T. Department may be under-budgeted, under-staffed, and not given the proper permissions to make information storage a priority.
Management may feel their mandate is to encourage and in some cases demand the IT department does more for less. The results can be disastrous. Following Managements mandate the IT department may base their hardware purchasing decisions on price. For example when purchasing hard drives usually the backbone of most companies information storage, manufacturers sell different qualities of drives based on anticipated usage. Purchasing less expensive drives initially may save money but can lead to unexpected crashes later costing the company thousands more in down time and recovery costs.
Management can also over estimate the reliability of their technology. For example many companies think they do not require offsite backup because their servers store information on a RAID (redundant array of independent disks) platform. With a raid 5 or greater platform if any single hard drive fails there is no information loss as the total sum of the information is on the other 4 hard drives. In theory this is absolutely correct however in practice IT managers know if you have one drive failure on the same system you are likely to have more very soon or even in some cases at the same time.
Companies often over estimate the reliability of their onsite backup and most do not have an effective off site backup. Disgruntled employees, lost passwords, software that can’t be found, power glitches, and temperature changes are just a few of the things that can cause serious information loss.
Companies often do not realize how vulnerable they are to human errors, staff changes, negligence intended or otherwise and company espionage. Management is often ill prepared for IT personnel changes, and not even aware of what passwords are, who has them, who can change them, how much information individuals have access to on and offsite. Most IT managers are not information back up specialists and may not be aware of what best practices should be implemented.
Computer Storage Services can provide analysis your current systems and procedures to help ensure effective information security and retrieval.
To learn more about how Computer Storage Services can help you with a reliable, cost effective onsite backup and cloud backup solution, custom designed for your specific needs, please give us a call at; 1-888-368-1088.
Cloud Back up and Server Restores The game changer for business continuity!!
Posted by: | CommentsAs technology evolves cloud back up can be an integral part of your disaster recovery and business continuity plans. Anyone who has experienced the recovery 
of a server or servers knows that recovering the information is only half the battle. Reinstalling the programs, permissions, updates, etc can be as time consuming and more difficult than restoring the actual information files. Often the original software can’t be found, and poor record keeping can make restoring permissions challenging.
Computer Storage Services is providing a solution for companies using our Cloud backup services.
With the premium service program we take a snapshot of your server or servers and load that snapshot onto servers at one of our back up facilities. Should you have a server crash we have a complete image of the server and can quickly restore your information to that server, usually within one hour. Access to the offsite restored server is provided through a preinstalled vpn (virtual private network) which is provided as part of our service. Total access to the cloud server can often be achieved within two hours of the onsite server going down.
The cost per server is typically between .50 to 1.00 per gb/month . For more information contact Ian MacDonald 1-888-368-1088 x 11
Cloud Backup, The Good the Bad & the Ugly
Posted by: | CommentsIn my 10 plus years of providing online backup services the one thing I have found is that our industry has not done a very good job of managing customers expectations or in plain English, “tell the truth”. I often hear advertisements for online backup companies stating their service is the be all and end all, as a information backup solution and its very inexpensive.
The truth is online or cloud backup in most cases is a important component of the solution, not the whole solution. The major reason being is that any major file restore of more than 30 gb (often less) cannot be done in a timely manner over the internet. To restore a 30 gb plus drive over the internet typically takes many days or even weeks. If a server crashes this time frame is simply unacceptable for a company to be able to restore its information.
The solution is additional onsite redundant storage that should be provided and managed by online service provider. This of course adds to the cost however it is critically important for timely effective information backup.
With many online (cloud ) information backup companies it can take days to have a service ticket addressed to even start a online restore process, so Buyer Beware of Low Cost Cloud Backup Services.