The Virginia Council of CEOs counts on Scot to keep their organization running smoothly and time everything perfectly. These 130 local CEOs rarely find the time to break away from running their businesses even when it means hearing the best business advice from nationally-acclaimed speakers and leaders. They count on Scot to get plan everything right and deliver exactly on time. It almost didn’t happen last week.
Keith McFarland, author of Breakthrough Company, had been selected to speak on how the best companies emerge from the entrepreneur stage and grow. Ninety of the VACEOs members were on their way to the Williamsburg Lodge for a two day retreat under the careful administration of Scot. For the next few days, his laptop would be critical during this off site, annual event. The CEOs were counting on Scot to make sure they were getting the most from the business networking and growth stage learning from the speaker. He never would have guessed fate would snatch his laptop from him at the worst possible time.
Taking a meeting in downtown Richmond, Scot parked his car and left his laptop behind. He would be back shortly and our city center is not known as a high crime zone. Imagine his dismay when he returned and found his car burglarized and his laptop gone. Not only did it contain all the information about the upcoming, once-a-year event and the VACEOs contacts and documents, but there was also some amount of sensitive information on the hard disk.
Luckily for Scot and the 120 life-long learners in the VACEOS, he had engaged Sklar Technology to manage all the I.T. for the VA Council of CEOs. Randy Sklar, the president of Sklar Technology, was happy to take on Scot as a customer, not just because the council is such a valuable resource to the local business community, but also because Randy is a member and gains so much from this CEO support organization.
When Scot called Randy to explain that his laptop had been stolen, Randy reassured him and put his technical team to work. The very next morning they were reloading the entire contents of Scot’s laptop from the most recent backup. Scot had purchased a replacement machine and within 24 hours it was loaded with all the info he needed to continue the annual VACEOs retreat without trouble. Since Sklar Technology was using an advanced backup and management product on Scot’s laptop, they were also able to dial in to it when the thieves plugged it into the Internet, grabbing the few files that were too new to be in the last backup and erasing those files with sensitive information.
So, if you're running a business and you count on computers to store important information for you, these basic steps can prevent your business from suffering after a theft, disaster or security breach:
- Make sure you have a modern strategy for backing up the data on your computers. Not just your servers, but any computer or laptop or phone that has information you can’t do business without.
- Train and remind your staff regularly that it is important to save business data to places that are backed up regularly and to be extra careful where they save sensitive information.
- Test your backup plans twice a year. Make sure you know what steps it takes to recover from theft, disaster or crashes and prove to yourself that you are safe. It is far better to find that there is a gap in your coverage during a test than to discover you’re vulnerable after you’ve lost a server or a laptop.
- If you don’t have the I.T. staff to keep up with the latest products, best practices and technologies, look for managed I.T. services who can afford to keep their staff up to date and rely on them instead. You’ll end up with more time to concentrate on your business while you rely on well-trained and well-experienced outsourced I.T. staff to concentrate on your valuable computers and data.
- Don’t forget that laptops, netbooks, cellphones, iPhones, PDAs, and smartphones carry more and more data every day. You are including them, intentionally or not, in your business every time you use them, so you have to include them in your backup and security strategy, too.
Posts
