Common Threats to your Organization’s Data

Digital data has become one of the most important aspects of business functionality. From client files to financial records, almost everything pertaining to day-to-day operations requires some form of digital data. Therefore, data loss can have devastating impacts on the functions of a business, often causing entire departments to come to a productive stop. Common threats to this include hardware failure,

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There are many potential dangers to your organization’s information, ranging from hardware and software failure, to cyberattacks, to accidental deletion. These threats stress the importance of keeping up-to-date backup copies of your important files. This article aims to provide an overview of the dangers of neglecting data backup.

What is Data Backup?
Data backup is a cybersecurity management strategy that involves making redundant copies of your existing files as a fallback option should the original files become damaged, lost, or corrupted. These backups are often stored in a separate drive, either in an onsite server, or in the cloud.

If the original copies of a file are somehow lost, the company can simply restore the information by referring to its respective copy in the back up directory. This protects against many threats facing your organization detailed below.

Hardware Failure
One of the leading causes of data loss is hardware failure. Data is stored on the hard drives of your computers. These hard drives are not immune to physical wear-and-tear, and can show signs of damage or erosion after they have been operating for a number of years. Early signs of hardware failure can include computer slowdowns, freezes, or file corruption.

Should one of these hard drives fail completely, the data that is stored on it may be corrupted and lost forever. If these lost files pertain to client data or historical financial information that is needed for your business, your company could suffer permanent reputational damage due to these incidents.

Ransomware Attacks
Ransomware attacks have become one of the most common types of cyberattacks in recent years. In a ransomware attack, a malicious actor locks a victims’ sensitive data behind a ransom wall, encrypting it into an unreadable format, and demanding a ransom to be paid for its safe release.
If this data is not backed up properly, there is no way of recovering the encrypted data without succumbing to the demands of the cyberattacker. Furthermore, even if one were to pay the ransom fee, there is still no guarantee that the information would be released safely.

Up-to-date data backups would mitigate the effectiveness of ransomware attacks due to the fact that the victim’s data would be accessible through its redundant copies. Simply copying and restoring the encrypted files from the backup source would negate the leverage that the cyberattacker has.

Power Outages and Surges
Sudden power outages caused by thunderstorms or blackouts can cause computers to turn off suddenly without proper shutdown protocols. In these cases, software and data may become corrupted, leading to important files not being able to be opened anymore. In these cases, it can be difficult if not impossible to retrieve the files that have been damaged.

Accidental Deletion
Finally, files can sometimes be lost or deleted by user error. If a user accidentally presses the delete key with a file open, or accidentally deletes its contents and saves the file, the information can potentially be lost forever. However, a backed up copy of the file would allow users to simply recover the lost information.

GIGE Corporation has been helping Canadian organizations manage their data backup for 30+ years. Connect with our team via live chat on our website gige.ca to get started today.