No sound business large or small can afford to loose their data or the ability to use their computing assets without a potentially heavy reputational, opportunity or financial loss.  Usually in the event of a disaster you lose a bit of all three.  The recent panic about on and off line security of data is testament to the risks and consequences.  Though it seems worrying about security is fashionable and protecting from disaster is not and therefore often forgotten.  However I would urge you both are just as catastrophic and perhaps disaster is more likely these days! 

More and more people are now realising just how much protecting against disasters applies equally to individuals as well as businesses.  Could you do without access to your bank account, reference to that critical email correspondence, access to your home budgeting finance software or spreadsheets. At the very least it’s hugely inconvenient at worst it could lead to heavy financial losses or liability.

For the purposes of very small businesses or home users protecting and managing disaster scenarios really merges the three industrial IT fields of Disaster Recovery, High Availability and Backup.  Using best practice from industry and modern desktop PC’s with sophisticated hardware and software it’s amazing just how much we can do.  Protecting against disaster essentially comes with two key strategies:

Surprisingly some of these industrial IT tools and techniques are now available to the home user or professional.  High quality desktop computers all now come with RAID providing redundant disk drive support.  So how come you have never heard of any this or many of the other techniques?  Not many PC vendors can be bothered making it available as an option, configuring and supporting it or understanding how to do it right.  For the average risk adverse PC vendor this just open’s up a can of worms that seems like more cost or risk of cost on the wafer thin bottom line.  So they just cross their fingers and hope you don’t ask about it…

Practical things you can do to reduce your exposure

The following is a five step list of inexpensive things you can do to protect yourself from disaster and minimise the impact in the event it happens, roughly in priority order:

Security

Not really in the list as it’s a whole topic in itself (and its covered by another article) is general security and virus protection.  Many tools on the market today are way over the top for what you need.  You want something basic and unobtrusive so that it gets the job done but doesn’t interfere or hog the performance of your machine.  In my opinion many of the small niche security software suppliers and not the big market players are the better tools in this regard.  You should be able to get something completely FREE that does all you need.

Standby machines

Another option to consider is what the industry would call a ‘warm standby’ machine.  Have another similar if not identical machine ready to take over your critical work if your main machine dies.  Using an image backup or a hot swap disk from the dead machine to the new you can be back up and running in minutes.  With the low cost of commodity machines these days you could quite inexpensively have a reduced power [cheaper] machine ready to take over the vital work in an emergency.

Conclusion

All the ideas I’ve described in this article are all best practice that industry has been doing for business for years.  Now modern PC hardware and software within the reach of the domestic and home professional opens up some powerful options to make any pain due to hardware failures or data corruption completely unnecessary.  Do yourself a favour and get it done for your own data no matter much you think it will never happen to you, you will sleep more easily.

These days it is a must to have a good, reliable virus protection program. There happens to be a many good free virus protection software packages out on the internet today. The only way to protect our pc today is using software that acts like a antidote to the disease. By using this software you can take preventive measures of stopping the disease before it infects the system.

Removable media such as cds, floppy disks, usb keys that are infected and used in another system can carry the virus and infect the other machine. If you computer is infected with a virus you will need to remove the virus as soon as possible otherwise it can infect the system completely and spread to others. If a computer is infected by a computer virus the computer needs to be scanned by virus scanning software. When surfing the internet most likely you been infected with a Trojan, virus, or some type of spyware, according to many virus detection agencies, the unprotected PC is infected on average within 20 minutes of normal internet usage. Many systems get infected every day, you must take safety measures or your system might get infected, and the virus might corrupt your data on your system. A Computer Worm is a self replicating program, the first worm to gain wide attention was the Morris Worm this infected a large number of computers and earned its writer 400 hours of community service and over $10000 in fines. When a virus infects you computer it can replicate itself, use up system resources, allow a user remote access, record keystrokes to the infected computer, it also has the ability to destroy personal data.

You must take precautions because when you download it may contain spyware, adware or viruses, spyware and adware can collect personal data, record your browsing habits and no more about you. Ad and Spyware are programs that are automatically installed on your computer.

When your computer is infected with a virus they are designed to alter your normal computer functions and spyware infections are used to spy on you, one way they do this is by recording your personal information. Many times adware, viruses and spyware find what is called a “back door” to install and replicated itself you in your computer.

Downloading may sometimes cause error on the system or the entire computer system may crash. Many spyware or viruses are downloaded when downloading software and music. Many viruses can lay dormant without you knowing this, since you don’t know it is there it can attack at any moment when least expect it, it could attack when typing a report and downloading important. Whether you have learned your lesson from a past experience or not, try not to download unwanted files or open email messages sent to you by people you don’t know. Many people do all of this without any real understanding of just how vulnerable they are each time they are on the internet. Try to take precautions, find reputable software and install it to protect your system. There is free software on the web that will protect your system.