Disaster Planning & Recovery
When you decide to go with Nicolet Tech as your IT services provider in general or specifically to prepare your organization for the worst through a disaster planning and recovery implementation, we tailor your solution to your business. While software and various other technological solutions may address your business needs, general consumer solutions can lead to increased costs and decreased efficiency and applicability to your business.
Nicolet Tech takes the time to assess your unique system and the potential sources of threat or disaster that place your important data and systems at risk. From there, we identify what software, hardware, or a combination thereof will work best to meet the unique needs of your business.
Effectively planning against disaster is something that every business should do to protect its bottom line. However, what disaster planning looks like will differ completely from business-to-business. We encourage you to even conduct your own research if you’d like and consider what a simple Google search says about preparing your business for disaster.
This might lead to a few questions that we’d be happy to answer during a consultation to identify how our IT services and solutions can support the ongoing success of your business, regardless of an unplanned disaster.
Data Breaches Happen on System Computers, and Even Over Email
Understanding the nature of security measures your business should implement requires recognizing the many sources of threats that face businesses and financial information in the modern world.
While we cannot guarantee that a drive-by scanner will not steal your credit information when you fill your gas tank, we can implement safeguards so a hacker sitting in a van outside cannot breach your system through your Wi-Fi signal.
The prospective threats to sensitive data abound in the modern environment, and with Nicolet Tech by your side on disaster planning, we can mitigate the risk.
Internal Monitoring and Security Measures
While a hurricane or a computer virus can bring your entire system crashing down, an employee with an interest in stealing can bring your entire business crashing down. Sources of risk to modern companies can be both external and internal.
In the past, retail stores would often plan employee theft into their financial plan, with a certain amount of internal theft not only anticipated but, in a sense, expected.
While in the past, such employee theft might involve taking a few bottles of soda without paying during a shift, modern employee theft can include the misappropriation of intellectual property of the business or customer data theft.
To protect against internal threats that could be disastrous to the success and future of your business, Nicolet Tech can establish internal safeguards that control who accesses what data and tracks which employee accesses which data. Some information that your company requires to operate is confidential and provides value to your organization.
If distributed to your competitors, such information can lead to the demise of your competitive advantage and potentially your entire business. Insulating access to the important information of your business is essential to ensuring a safe and streamlined flow of operations.
Outside of controlling what information employees can access, you might also worry about tracking and observing what data and information your employees exchange during operations.
When an employee works on company property, they use your business’s assets to conduct their job, and you have a right to know how they use your business’s resources. Internal safeguards will give your company security. Through tracking measures, you can determine your employees’ productivity levels and whether their activities align with your goals for them.
We Offer Equipment Repair and Restoration
Planning for disaster or recovering from one may require that some of the damage undergoes repair before the system is back up and running again.
Before beginning any individual repairs, Nicolet Tech will assess the damage done and which system functions suffered impacts. From there, we will present a system restoration plan through which we will repair whatever hardware sustained damage and is repairable. We can suggest replacements for whatever is not repairable. Our goal is to get your system and business back to pre-disaster status as soon as possible, so your profitability and your bottom line have a minimal impact from the disaster.
While some IT service providers might use any disaster as an excuse to sell a client on an entirely new system with all new hardware to maximize their profits on the sale, our concern is longer-term. With a properly functioning system that suits the unique needs of your business, you will not only be better prepared for disaster but also able to recover from it faster. Nicolet Tech can restore, repair, and upgrade your system as necessary, with the best interests of your business in mind.
Data Retrieval from Destroyed Hardware is Sometimes Possible
If all the sensitive information of your business rested in the hard drive of a single destroyed laptop, and you had not yet contracted with Nicolet Tech to establish a functional data storage system for your business, you may worry that you destroyed your data and your business.
When you forget to put your laptop bag in the car before driving off, and your laptop meets the road at high speeds, it may look like all is lost. This is not necessarily so, and before you trash your laptop and think about closing your company, reach out to us at Nicolet Tech.
We have specialized technicians capable of retrieving data from seemingly impossible situations. While we cannot guarantee we’ll recover your important data from your destroyed computer, we can give you the best possible chance of retrieving your data.
Don’t Let Disaster Put You Out of Business
Work with us to curate a disaster and recovery plan so you can be prepared and minimize setbacks.
The Importance of Planning Ahead
In the modern environment, where we have computerized and digitized almost everything from banking to business deals to even ordering a cupcake when technology goes down, it could take your business down with it. Your business could face threats by disaster should its systems be compromised, how such threats can damage your business and your customers, and how you can protect against them.
One of the experienced IT professionals from Nicolet Tech is here to answer any questions you might have about how to shield your business from an IT disaster or how to recover from it.
Data Breaches Can Lead to Theft of Personal and Financial Information
Imagine that we own a cupcake shop one that sells six flavors of cupcakes on-site in three physical stores and over the internet across the country. To run a company that sells to consumers both locally at a store and online across the country, you need technology to coordinate inventory and production, sales, then the logistics associated with charging, packing, and shipping mail orders. Your business will have a list of customers and transactions, and if you hope to receive payment, their financial information to process the transaction.
Viruses and Hackers Can Steal Your Business’ and Your Customers’ Financial Data
A malicious program from a hacker that breaches your system places all of this information at risk. A malicious program is a program that is often called a virus that pretends to be a normal program but is, in fact, something like a Trojan Horse.
In the Trojan Horse mythological story, soldiers who wanted to get past a well-guarded gate assembled a large wooden horse they presented as a gift to the gatekeepers, who took it inside. Once inside, soldiers emerged from within the horse, opened the gates, and attacked the town.
A virus is no different. It pretends to be a program you want and invites you behind the gate into your computer system, and once inside, the enemy soldiers emerge and begin attacking your system. The purpose of the attacks generally is to steal the financial information of your customers for identity theft or other similarly damaging purposes.
When a malicious program compromises your system, you might not know for some time. Some malicious programs get into systems at first to track them and to learn as much information as possible.
The hacker may prefer to maintain a presence in your system for years, collecting information on your clients and stealing their identities and as much money as possible over those years. Other hackers might break into your system and shut down your business simply because it entertains them.
The only way to ensure that your system is safe is to erect safeguards against break-ins and assess the system from time to time to ensure that no lingering threats hide inside.
Natural Disasters Can Likewise Impact Your Data Security
You will store your data in a physical location, even if it is in the cloud, which we’ll discuss below.
If your cupcake business has all of its files on the only computer hard drive in your retail establishment, and the building burns down, you could lose everything.
All orders that were pending at some point in the packing and shipping process will be lost and spoiled. All future orders placed that provided income you were counting on to balance your books will evaporate. Any data you had saved on existing customers to support future advertising and marketing measures is likewise gone.
How do you protect against losing the data of your business if your computer gets destroyed? Store that information elsewhere. You can rent data storage servers from companies that keep data in secured locations with climate-controlled rooms for the computing systems that store the information.
Often, these companies will have more than one physical location for their servers so that the information stored therein is not at risk if one physical location gets destroyed. However, when you store your data in any physical location, it is at risk of physical destruction, and server companies might have their various locations all in one area that a single weather event could impact. If physical storage is not safe enough, there is the cloud.
The Cloud Floats Above Environmental Risks and Worries
To avoid getting too deep into technical jargon, we’ll explain the cloud simply as a virtual database or server that essentially exists high in the air, above all environmental risks on the ground. By using the computing power of a great many individual systems spread across the planet, the cloud is an online storage location that is capable of supporting data and storage independent of any single or many physical locations.
Storing your data in the cloud makes it accessible from anywhere that can access the cloud, ranging from your business office to your smartphone. Storing your data in the cloud puts it at your fingertips regardless of where you are and can help to ensure that your business is not at risk of losing everything due to a weather disaster.
IT Planning and Management Is the Best Guard Against Disaster
The most effective way to protect your data and computer-integrated business operations is to work with an IT services provider like Nicolet Tech.
Every business has a unique situation and set of circumstances, and the way to best protect the data and operations of a business will vary. A professional from Nicolet Tech can customize a solution that does exactly what your business needs. To learn more about how Nicolet Tech can customize a solution to keep your business safe from disaster, consult us today!