Is your data protected from flooding?

By Luke Smits - Founder & Operations Manager

Recently a client came to us looking to modernise their existing systems to improve security, data retention and most importantly the user experience. Their existing system was at risk of data being accessed by unauthorized employees, the backups were patchy at best and the users could only access their data on their own computer, so working from another computer, laptop, or remotely was not possible.

They came to us first and we recommended a cloud solution that would provide all of the improvements they wanted plus much more. The solution came with some recurring monthly costs and a significant amount of labour to implement and train the users, but almost zero in capital costs for new hardware.

They were hesitant when presented with the words “cloud” and “recurring monthly fees”, and were more comfortable with spending some money to implement a more traditional storage platform that would achieve much the same user experience, but with a couple of key draw backs.

Our primary concern regarding the more traditional approach, was the security risks around users connecting remotely to the site, and the fact that all their data would be held locally, with only an offsite backup. Meaning if a power outage, internet outage, fire, or theft occurred then it would result in serious downtime for the users.

Now I mentioned power, fire, theft.. the one thing I didn’t think to mention at the time was flood.. why would I? They are on a high street in a newly built multi-purpose retail, residential hub… Flood didn’t even come to mind.

Well it came flooding to the front of mind when over the Australia Day weekend a high pressure water main burst and the first the client knew of it was when they opened the door on Tuesday and were greeted by their office computers floating gently against the office walls…

Luckily the client had decided to take our advice and had gone for the cloud solution and they were able to recommence trading that same day working from laptops and their mobile phones. The insurance claim will take weeks to process and the building needs to be vacated for at least 2 weeks to “dry out”. If they had have gone for the traditional solution they would have experienced days, if not weeks of downtime. Costs would have been largely covered by insurance either way, but their downtime and stress levels were significantly reduced by the solution implemented.

So the key message here is what happens in your business if a water main bursts and floods the office? How prepared are you, how much downtime will you and your staff experience and how much will that cost your business.

Talk to your IT people today to see how well you are prepared for an unforeseen event.