No business ever wants to suffer a data loss disaster, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not coming for you at some point during your operations. You have to be careful and take calculated steps to minimize the impact of such an incident. In particular, you want to avoid losing these three types of data, for it could make recovery all but impossible if you don’t.
Financial Records and Tax Information
It’s fun to make money with business, but it’s less fun keeping track of it all.
Your business needs to maintain financial records if it wants to stay profitable. This involves keeping track of expenses such as payroll, hardware and software purchases, operational costs, and so on. If you don’t have these details, then filing your taxes becomes a lot more challenging, and the government is not going to accept a cyberattack or a natural disaster as an excuse for not being able to file.
Therefore, it makes absolute sense that you should prioritize maintenance of your financial records with a data backup.
Employee Information (Personal, Financial, and Health Insurance)
How much valuable data does your business store… particularly in your human resources department?
Employees submit a lot of data to your business just to remain on the payroll, including dates of birth, Social Security numbers, bank routing information, and other important data. A hacker can make great use of this either through their own hacking attacks or selling the data on the black market to the highest bidder. This is one reason why scams and phishing attacks target businesses; they know the value of the data, and your status as a small business doesn’t diminish that value.
Ensure that all data stored for your business is securely backed up and compliant with all relevant regulations.
Client Contact and Financial Records
Your customers trust you with a lot of data—including financial information and contact information.
If your business loses even a little bit of its client data due to a hardware failure or hacking attack, it could be catastrophic. You might end up losing track of services or payments, potential leads or current clients, and financial records that help you get paid for the work you do. It’s frustrating (and silly) to rebuild your client records from the ground up, so take measures to ensure this isn’t necessary.
Furthermore, financial records that are protected and governed by regulations such as PCI mandate that your customer records are backed up, so make sure you’re meeting these requirements… or else.
This is just the beginning, though. We haven’t even mentioned other crucial data, like vendor contact information, stakeholder information, and intellectual property. Your business can lose so much, so make sure that you take measures to protect its data at all costs.
Compudata knows how to protect the important assets your business holds dear. To learn more about how to properly back up and protect your data, contact us at 1-855-405-8889.