globaldatavault's Space http://globaldatavault.posterous.com Most recent posts at globaldatavault's Space posterous.com Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:47:00 -0700 Go Daddy and Revolution: What would you do? http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/go-daddy-and-revolution-what-would-you-do http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/go-daddy-and-revolution-what-would-you-do

What can happen if the lights sought out all over the world and everything went dark? That’s the premise of the new NBC drama REVOLUTION that airs September 17th at 10 EST. Since Disaster Recovery is right up our alley, we figure it’s a must see for our crew.

Yeah, yeah. It’s likely the entire globe won’t suddenly be without all electricity, but let's say - gasp - just the Internet took place? Can you even remember a period when we didn’t possess the inter webs, let alone the smart phones that connect us to them 24/7. Would you panic? Would your heart start racing as fast as any kind of Go Daddy’s customers on September 10th when all of their websites and hosting transpired? That has been virtual pandemonium. The help center lines rang a fast busy for hours, the device was overloaded with terrorized business owners in the middle of an entire productivity meltdown that afternoon.
A busy schedule Daddy incident (whether it was or wasn’t the job of Anonymous, Go Daddy’s claiming internal router issues) was small potatoes when compared with the thing that was unleashed recently in to the nuclear defense system of Iran. Proof positive that with a far more organized  and well-funded effort, cyber threats to our critical infrastructure - water purifications, turbine and who knows what else - are a very real thing.

What’s known as the Stuxnet virus, which according to the New York Times, is credited because the work of yankee and Irsaeli governments, is a highly sophisticated computer worm established via a simple USB thumb drive. Stuxnet infected the industrial software and equipment running Iran’s nuclear centrifuge system and literally damaged the machines essential to Iran’s uranium enrichment program.

Thankfully for most American’s, a tight schedule Daddy event may be the closest widespread outage they’ve ever been put through (so we hope ever will and that they had online data backup in play), but on Monday evening, we are able to all play a little “what if.” (The pilot is on the NBC website here.)
Such as the girl right after this video, “I hope that never happens,” but you want to know, how were you effected through the Go Daddy outage and - what would you do if the power went out?

http://www.globaldatavault.com/blog/go-daddy-and-revolution-what-would-you-do/

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Sat, 08 Sep 2012 16:03:00 -0700 Hurricane Isaac Update http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/hurricane-isaac-update http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/hurricane-isaac-update

Here is a live view of wind speeds as reported hint.fm/wind. This image shows the measured sustained wind speed in New Orleans at 10:00a.m. today.

Hurricane Isaac winds Aug 29, 10:00a.m.It's been a fast paced couple of days for Global Data Vault, but the situation is going well. When the storm approached, we reviewed the status of info protection for all customers in your neighborhood that was required to be affected by Hurricane Isaac. We proactively contacted those that could have needed help. We understand their data protection schedules so we can compare the freshness of your versions of the data to determine if support is needed. As being the storm hit, all data was current.
We’re already providing disaster recoveries to customers in New Orleans, and perhaps, we are bringing their systems live in hosted environments on our Dallas data center. For the reason that storm moves on slowly, we expect to continue within this role for around the following few days.

 

Please visit: http://www.globaldatavault.com/blog/hurricane-isaac-update/

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Sat, 08 Sep 2012 11:38:00 -0700 The TV show Revolution – could it really happen? http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/those-great-tv-show-revolution-could-this-pro http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/those-great-tv-show-revolution-could-this-pro

Higher than a half a billion people lost power in India late recently. It was subsequently the most important electrical blackout in history affecting 10 percent for the world’s population. The blackout extended almost 2,000 miles, as well as the impact was felt even throughout the united states as the data centers and India-based telemarketer firms were crippled and without power. Basically we haven’t experienced a blackout like the person who happened in India, united states has each of our share of metered pressures. The continued ratchet up in energy usage along with the stress it places on our infrastructure is alarming. Having looked at an additional notice from the state of Texas regarding stress put upon the ERCOT grid, and having lost power in our new office (NOT our DATA CENTER - see end of article on why we’re safe) 3 times from your first 5 months of transferring, one’s thoughts can’t help but consider the what if’s… and therefore foreboding twist is exactly the concept of NBC’s new tv show, Revolution. But they can “Revolution” really happen? Or at least the standard premise on the show while the whole world goes dark inside a total blackout?

Certainly there’s peace of mind in realizing that a lot of data centers alleged to have diesel powered generation capability backing them up. They all tout it in their marketing materials and claim to be infallible. Sure, that’s comforting, but take a look at so what happened when the Derecho storm ravaged Washington, DC - online retail giant Amazon.com’s data centers went offline leaving Netflix, Pinterest Instagram and Heroku within a panic. So… May be a total blackout really that implausible? You function as the judge:

Granted this dramatic interpretation with the items “could” happen is a lot fetched - certainly we’re not really headed to total global blackout just yet. But there can be legitimate concerns when protecting your computer data. In the event the US obtained the massive outage, the important grit of such diesel powered generators will surely be tested. If you experience an influence failure that’s widespread, there’s someone, somewhere, who dropped some critical portion of their data. It’s a good bet that net every data center that says he will be fully resilient really is. Buying enough their lights might be on, their connectivity partner is probably not. And connectivity is every bit as important when you’re evaluating the continuity in the data center or disaster recovery site.

Having power are a few things. Having connectivity is actually. If your pipe to all your data center is offline, at no cost . your home based business. One method to further protect what you are promoting coming from a power interruption is always to confirm that crucial computer data center uses a Tier 1 mobile phone network provider. Dig somewhat deeper to your data center’s marketing material and then judge what volume of connectivity they'll use. Global Data Vault is contracted and a Tier 1 network provider, Level 3 Communications. Tier 1 essentially indicates that Level 3 doesn’t be forced to pay a person to communicate with any two points available anywhere. In the thought has the human brain whirling a lttle bit, here’s virtually any hyperlink onto a menu of Tier 1 networks so that you can verify if you are data center is aligned using these tier 1 network providers, and whether Revolution is just another over-dramatized tv show.

 

Please Visit:http://www.globaldatavault.com/blog/the-tv-show-revolution-could-it-really-happen/ 

 

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Fri, 07 Sep 2012 14:56:00 -0700 A New SAN: The gift that keeps on giving http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/a-new-san-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/a-new-san-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving

 

 

You know that feeling of joyfulness as soon as you develop an investment of something you’ve had your skills on for a little bit and it’s tragedy in that now it’s yours? Well, our collective faces are grinning inside the afterglow on the buying a whole new SAN (storage area network) from HP. In the world of Global Data Vault, this SAN would be the ultimate new hardware present we can easily give ourselves.


Let’s review this exciting technology and discuss how facilitates delivering better, faster,
and many more reliable services to you.


In geek speak, SAN’s are enterprise-class, dedicated networks
that provide the means to access consolidated, block level data storage, and those are words which makes us happy. SAN’s are primarily accustomed to make storage devices - like disk arrays - accessible to servers so that the devices appear as locally attached devices for the operating system. So apart from the colossal sophistication of what a SAN can do, it will allow Global Data Vault to take our level of service up a notch with added reliability, recovery speed, economies of scale and management features:


Reliability: It’s a dirty little secret among technology
service providers, but things break everyday. Premier data backup and disaster recovery companies (like Global Data Vault) have a tremendous system of fail safes when ever hardware goes bad in order that replacements are put into production seamlessly with out the first is effected. A SAN encapsulates lots of the problems that may go awry and fixes every one of them on it's own, and creates incrementally better reliability. We like that.


Recovery speed: SAN’s facilitate
a far more effective disaster process of recovery. These are better good at keeping multiple copies of customer data because a SAN can span a distant location that houses an alternative storage array. It enables storage replication through the disk array controllers, and that means after a disaster event, you are up and running faster than you might even think you’re ready for.


Economy of Scale: A SAN provides
more economical growth, allowing us to get a much less expensive scalability option, which we then transfer those efficiencies to your customers. And that provides you with something to smile about.


Management features: A SAN storage network simplifies storage administration
because it contains networking capabilities from it. Inside a lesser storage option, we might have to logically separate the storage into different devices. The SAN manages to do it for people. Think of it this way: A less sophisticated storage option would be just like having a car park packed with a lot of little buckets that people were pouring data into. A SAN allows us create highly virtualized storage pool that people can pour all the data into. The SAN was designed to work out the separation logically plus much more effectively that we can ourselves.
We choose a SAN by HP for numerous reasons. Technical excellence, appropriate investment and superior support are usually keys. And it also may be a “chicken vs. egg” thing, but we realize that although most business leaders ask the question, “How may i succeed?” the founders of HP instilled another question in to the culture: “How are we able to contribute?”. Global Data Vault shares this mind set and appreciate all the good it brings when our suppliers share this view as well.

Please visit:http://www.globaldatavault.com/blog/a-new-san-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving/

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Thu, 16 Aug 2012 07:24:00 -0700 Building a Disaster Recovery Site - Part 3 http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/building-a-disaster-recovery-site-part-3 http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/building-a-disaster-recovery-site-part-3

Whether you are outsourcing your Disaster Recovery program or keeping it in-house, the steps recommended to implement it are critical. With this series, we’ve drafted an outline of methods to enhance an online Disaster Recovery site to your IT. With our previous articles one and two, we detailed steps 1 through 5:


Determine the company requirements for RTO and RPO
Determining the appropriate location
Acquire and / or build the best platform on the Disaster Recovery location
Virtualization of the primary and backup environments and production systems


Moving the data
In this final installment, we’re investigating the last three steps:
6. Synchronizing your data
7. Creating the failover environment
8. Testing the program


Synchronizing the Data
The only way to synchronize the info is to implement software or hardware to control the process. The software application or hardware platform you choose to install will sit inside your primary server environment and it'll keep an eye on all your data, continually monitoring it for changes. When it sees a difference, it knows to send the alteration into the Disaster Recovery site.
This action typically occurs on what’s known as a “block level.” Block storage is normally abstracted using a file system or database management system in order to use by applications and prospects. A block of internet data is exactly what your disk system writes. Consider such as this: Your operating system provides a database that houses all your data. When you hit “file à open” in Microsoft Word, after this you find the file you want, and you’re telling your computer system to open the file. Laptop computer translates this activity to a disk location where the information you have is stored internally, than the computer and file system move the read check out that location and it starts reading the information - and voila, it pulls in the file in your screen.
The process of synchronizing knowledge is an activity of monitoring every discrete storage destination for changes. After you save your file with revisions, your os in this handset sees there is a “dirty block” plus it saves the new file back in the redundant system on its next update (here’s where your RTO and RPO become important). The synchronization piece watches for changes, marks them as dirty, moves them for a set schedule and after that you’re done.


Unfortunately, software program that you apply to synchronize your data isn’t off-the-shelf software you could purchase at your local Best Buy, you’ll have to purchase an enterprise class software application or perhaps a hardware solution from the of the a number of providers within this space. One example of such a simple solution which GDV uses is Falconstor. On the hardware side, we also implement HP LeftHand SANs to facilitate the method.


Creating the failover environmentSimply because you’ve replicated the information, doesn’t mean it should take off and work. If only it were so simple! Given that you’ve replicated crucial computer data to a different Disaster Recovery environment, you must be competent to operate your entire systems made by this new Disaster Recovery environment.Obviously, all of your Disaster Recovery information is now on a new IP location. The redundant systems have to be told to go into production and where new data and transactions will be recorded. All the access from the outside should be pointed for the new Disaster Recovery site, and also the redundant systems have to be informed that they’re the live copy now, all before you’re operational again.


Pointing the access to the new Disaster Recovery site could be as simple as switching domains. You are able to move a web server exactly like you would move something as simple as a WordPress blog. The web figures out the site is at a different address. The final user still goes toward the main website, but they're now accessing the live Disaster Recovery site. Usually, a domain name represents an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, for instance a pc used to access the web, a server computer hosting a web site, or the web site itself or any other service communicated via the Internet. An example of a domain name is “www.google.com”.


Larger enterprises with web based applications institute what’s called BGP Routing, that is a Border Gateway Protocol. This allows them to update their routing quickly if any kind of their infrastructure goes off line. They seamlessly look at to their Disaster Recovery site because the Internet routing happens with the speed of sunshine. This scenario known as “active-active.” The failover environment is easily ready; RTO and RPO are nearly non-existent.There are numerous ways to accomplish the failover, two common strategies repointing your domain names or even a more sophisticated route like BGP active-active scenario.


Testing the program
Now that you have your Disaster Recovery site built and the failover in position, you have to check it on a regular basis. If it’s no longer working correctly, you risk losing data and business resources.


At Global Data Vault, we test all of our customer’s sites every three months - of course, if you’re building your own Disaster Recovery site, we recommend you need to do the same. Test environments will be different based on what system you’ve implemented. For our protocol, we pull-up the most recent data replica for that client by using them log into a designated portal. The portal takes the customer to their systems that reside on Global Data Vault’s data centers, so they view and test the timeliness of the information. We have the customer record a transaction while they’re there to assure its working. If the RTO and RPO are just right, then we can relax.
As you can see from the 8 detailed steps in our three articles, developing a remote Disaster Recovery site is no small feat. It’s mired with complexity that varies for each business and its requirements. For information on how Global Data Vault can assist with building your Disaster Recovery site, please contact us today.

Please visit: http://www.globaldatavault.com/blog/how-to-build-a-disaster-recovery-site-part-3/

 

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Tue, 14 Aug 2012 03:16:00 -0700 Building a Disaster Recovery Site - Part 2 http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/building-a-disaster-recovery-site-part-2 http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/building-a-disaster-recovery-site-part-2

Just what does it decide to use establish a remote Disaster Recovery site for one's IT? (Part 2 of 3)


Whether you are outsourcing your Disaster Recovery program or keeping it in-house, the steps forced to implement it are critical. In this series, we’ve drafted a description of methods to create an isolated Disaster Recovery site to your IT. In the previous article we detailed steps 1 and a couple:


Determine
this company requirements for RTO and RPO
Determining the suitable location Along with this information we’ll take a look at steps 3 - 5:


3. Acquire or build the best platform at the Disaster Recovery location
4. Virtualization on the primary and backup environments and production systems
5.Moving your data


Building
the suitable platform:
After establishing your RTO (restore time objective) and RPO (restore point objective) requirements, you’ll must have a solution to make restores happen. If you’re capturing transactions, for instance, you need to have methods to record those transactions in multiple places which means you have the capacity to bring those to the disaster recovery site. And, naturally they need to be sent to the disaster recovery site in the timely enough basis to accomplish your RTO and RPO.


You will need:
tools that will replicate database stop speed communications between the sites that happen to be reliable which enable it to you want to keep replication in place while it current
redundant storage


redundant processing power
how to switch between primary and backup easily and quickly without things going terribly wrong


the manpower
to produce out infrastructure nearly twice in separate locations so to keep the two sites synchronized


the mechanisms
constantly in place to check out if the key is offline, change to the secondary, so when disaster is finished, switch to primary.


Virtualization
in the Environments The top and a lot of practical option to retain the sites synchronized is to use virtualization technology. The frequent and lots of changes that occur very quickly server environment make it much easier to maintain a virtual server rather than to take care of the software and configuration change requirements attendant to having an actual server. Should you use separate physical servers, they are going to in addition have separate required maintenance activities. Illustration: Microsoft issues patches nearly weekly on os. Any time you don’t patch the secondary server into the same level you patch the chief server, that you are guaranteeing problems, including security problems, when you move to working with the DR environment.


Patches, upgrades, configuration changes etc., are too complex to accurately maintain on two physical servers. Disaster Recovery systems perform vastly better
in a virtual environment instead of physical environment, and if you virtualize both servers, it is possible to maintain primary server and replicate the adjustments onto the secondary.


Moving the data
The most important issue to address when moving
crucial computer data out of your primary server as part of your secondary server is placed an operation that confirms just what exactly alterations in the primary environment will update to your secondary punctually. So in the case your RTO is 4 hours, then your secondary has to update more often than that to keep pace and offer the opportunity to meet your RPO.
We’ll continue our discussion on building a remote Disaster Recovery site to meet your RTO and RPO objectives in our next article with: synchronization, the failover environment and testing.

Please visit: http://www.globaldatavault.com/blog/building-a-disaster-recovery-site-part-2/ 

 

 

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Sun, 29 Jul 2012 12:56:00 -0700 Building a Disaster Recovery site http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/building-a-disaster-recovery-site http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/building-a-disaster-recovery-site

Disaster Recovery is one thing you hope you never need, but if you do, you’ll be very happy if you have right plan in place. Whether you are outsourcing your Disaster Recovery solution or keeping it in house, the steps required to implement it are somewhat complex, but very important. In this 3 part series, we’ve drafted an outline of how to build a remote DR site for your IT.

disaster recovery

photo credit: comicbookmovie.com

We’ll address each step in more detail:

  1. Determine the business requirements for RTO and RPO
  2. Determining the right location
  3. Determining if the right systems are available at the location
  4. Virtualization of the primary and backup environments/production systems
  5. Moving the data
  6. Keeping the data synced
  7. Building the failover environment
  8. Testing and proving the disaster recovery program works

1. Determine the business requirements:

Your “business requirements” boil down to one thing: figuring out how long you can afford to be without your IT. Is it seconds? American Airlines has a zero second threshold. They lose thousands maybe millions of dollars for each second their system is unavailable. Your business operations may not be so mission critical and are able to skip a heartbeat for minutes, hours, days — without a significant impact on your bottom line.

Ask your executive staff, what can the company financially tolerate in terms of downtime? And just as importantly, what can you withstand in terms of rollback of data in a failure situation? How fresh does your data rollback need to be?

These two measurements are your RTO or Restore Time Objective and RPO or Restore Point Objective.

RTO / Restore Time Objective is: how quickly do we need to be back in business?

RPO / Restore Point Objective is: data should be restored as it was on the last day, hour, minute, or last second even (think about a bank – they can’t afford to miss a single transaction). Then ask yourself, what’s the technology required to achieve those objectives? Your RTO and RPO are going to dictate the options available to you for your disaster recovery program.

2. Determining the right location:

Where do you want to “put” your Disaster Recovery environment? Contrary to common belief, “the cloud” is not up in the air somewhere, it’s in a city near you. If you want your data in “the cloud,” you need to understand where the data center, a.k.a. the cloud is that you’re floating around in.

Why is the cloud location so critical?  Consider events from earlier this month. The Derecho Storm that hit the Washington DC area left the region without power for an extended period of time, and with it took down popular internet sites Netflix, Pinterest and Instagram temporarily. Consumers were off line for an entire week and even big companies were forced off line. Behemoth Amazon’s cloud services were interrupted – because their “cloud” was located in the disaster zone

While no location is completely without risk, the ah-ha moment here is that if you’re going to choose aDisaster Recovery provider, you need to know where their facility is located so you mitigate your risk. You don’t want your cloud provider to be stricken by the same disaster as your primary facility.

Now that we’ve given you something to think about concerning the cloud, your RTO and RPO, we’ll continue our discussion on building a remote Disaster Recovery site in our next article with: determining the right systems, virtualizing the primary and backup data, and finally moving the data. Part three will address synchronization, the failover environment and testing. 

please visit: https://www.globaldatavault.com/blog/building-a-disaster-recovery-site/

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Mon, 16 Jul 2012 13:32:00 -0700 Checklist for developing an effective Data Retention Policy http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/checklist-for-developing-an-effective-data-re http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/checklist-for-developing-an-effective-data-re

Online Data Backup

Part 3: In our previous two areas of this series, we examined the history of information retention policies as well as the business and law that dictate what underlying issues you face when writing your data retention policy.

In part two, we took a look at the challenges that different industries face when considering what data to maintain as well as how long. Although each company has different requirements, the normal thread to each data retention policy is that your information is everywhere. Encompassing everything might be nearly impossible although this checklist isn't exhaustive; it’s a great foundation for any data retention policy. Combined with an innovative data backup system, you’ll rest easy knowing your information and facts remains safe and secure and simply recoverable.

On this final installment, we provide a data checklist and things to ask when setting your policy.

To start, assess that which you have. Your corporation has many categories of data that you'll be considering within your data retention policy:

Financial data

Databases

Email

Documents

Pictures / videos

Production data

System state information

Furthermore, the location of the data must be considered. You could possibly actually create a different DRP for each one, depending on what you keep where.

Servers - what is stored in your server?

Databases -what is stored there and how do the legal and business requirements dictate what you need to maintain and for how long?

Desktops - should you backup files which might be saved on desktops? Therefore, the length of time do you really need them? Typically desktop files may not be retained provided server data.

Email - This content in the data has to be evaluated.

What's inside your emails? Many organizations may experience that email is unimportant to core business, but others can make use of email for being an integral part of their order processing or customer care functions. Use the case of a freight forwarder for example, where almost every email has a document that come with key business information. That freight forwarder’s exchange server is, therefore, huge and crucial to copy. However, the freight forwarder can have customers that contact them years later looking for things that were to be sent to a particular location. On their behalf, email is imperative to backup. Your corporation will have a similar communications issue.

Recovery - how can your company recover its data from a potential problem or loss of data? How much time are you able to survive without your details before your company practice might be impacted? Have a reality check of this data retention policy and get:

Would it provide the necessary recovery? Will it restore in the time frame and also as you needed? Test that!

Frequency - Is there a danger of info loss, do you need to backup your data more once daily, and how long can you maintain the data?

- An example of the frequency of an retention policy might be:

Retain every daily backup for 10 days

Retain every weekly backup for 6 weeks

Retain every monthly backup for 14 months

Retain every year-end backup for 7 years

Evaluating the soundness of this data retention policy depends on asking your executive staff, is this right, would it be sufficient, and is it practical? There is a balance you’ll must achieve between cost to maintain data and the law your company is susceptible to. Furthermore, brainstorm the “what-if’s” scenarios and discover what data would be necessary to recover properly: What happens if we'd a partial loss of data of data for instance a server failure. What happens if there was a complete data loss for instance a premises disaster? What happens if we'd widespread corruption of info from a virus?

What if we a break down loss of data from deliberate sabotage

What if we accidentally destroyed important data? Imagine if we should return eventually for data for:

A tax audit

A labor law compliance audit

A product or service liability lawsuit

A work practices claim

A workforce tort says for example a sexual harassment claim

Finally, on your checklist, be certain that there isn't any “islands of data” not in the policy -

Laptops

Desktops

Remote offices

There's really no one size fits all for a data retention policy. Each company have their own unique needs, cost parameters and law that should dictate what's essential and mandatory to hold the business in case of an emergency or loss of data. Start out with the checklist above and boost it to match your individual business and law.

 

Please visit: http://www.globaldatavault.com/blog/checklist-for-developing-an-effective-data-retention-policy/

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Mon, 16 Jul 2012 13:28:00 -0700 Developing a Data Retention Policy: What data do you HAVE to backup? http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/developing-a-data-retention-policy-what-data http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/developing-a-data-retention-policy-what-data

Online Data Backup

In our previous article we outlined a brief history of and comparison of tape backup environments to disc backup environments. Understanding how your details are retained will be the first and critical key to designing an information retention policy, although the next steps can be a extra murky and sophisticated.

 

Depending on industry when you conduct business, the information you have retention policy may be dictated by legal or business retention requirements. For instance, a legal retention requirement includes:

Each state has unique legal requirements on what long medical records is required to be maintained

Every business’ tax records are to be kept for at least Three years - but there many exceptions for this rule: You need to keep all employment tax records a minimum of Four years right after the date that this tax becomes due or is paid, whichever is later.

In Texas, Sales and Use Tax records need to be retained for 4 years.

Businesses subject to OSHA regulations have specific requirements how long their data should be retained

Food manufacturers are needed to track all the ingredients as well as location of origin during the unfortunate event of poisoning

Machine shops should maintain records on from where the material origin during product failure

 

The The Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants has published a great resource on this subject here. Besides what you're legally necessary to do, you'll find compelling business arguments for retaining your information for time. How long you have to maintain customer or accounting records. Check out many scenarios that could impact your organization, as an example, should you offer any kind of warranty or credits? Will there be any potential for a recall to your manufactured items? What is the general practice inside your industry for maintaining business records? Imagine if you are to dispose of the business, for how long of a history would a possible acquirer want?

 

Start the information you have retention policy by inviting key employees to a brainstorming session and request, what happens if we will need to go back in time to retrieve for data for:

A tax records audit

A labor law compliance audit

A product or service liability lawsuit

A work practices claim

A worker tort such as a sexual harassment claim

 

and start to generate your policy around these scenarios. Check it against both legal data retention requirements and your own business retention needs. To some extent 3 in our series on developing an effective data retention policy, we’ll make a checklist to follow when arranging your business’s data retention policy.

 

Please visit: http://www.globaldatavault.com/blog/developing-a-data-retention-policy-what-data-do-you-have-to-backup/

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Mon, 16 Jul 2012 13:22:00 -0700 Hurricane Preparation Checklists – the Final 48 Hours http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/hurricane-preparation-checklists-the-final-48 http://globaldatavault.posterous.com/hurricane-preparation-checklists-the-final-48

 

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Hurricanes are very pricey and deadly. Yahoo Finance reports that 7 from the 10 most costly U. S. weather dilemmas in the last 30 years were hurricanes. Nevertheless the good news about hurricanes - if there may be “good news” about hurricanes - is simply because are in general foreseeable, enabling considerate working out ahead of storm possibly hits. Moment and accurate planning, individuals and businesses helps to reduce the exposure to the potential risks resulting from hurricanes. Global Data Vault has helped lots of customers though hurricane preparing and we’ve learned what is required to lessen risk and regain fast. 

We’ve gathered several hurricane preparing checklists that can assist you plus your company prepare - along with the very last hours as a hurricane draws near:  

 

Hurricane Planning Checklist #1: Family  

1. Develop an emergency communications plan. In the event relatives are separated from another during floods or other disasters, have a plan for getting back together. Separation is actually a possibility during the day when adults are in work and kids are at school. 

2. Ask an out-of-town relative or friend to become your “family contact.” Your contact should live just outside of your town. After a disaster, it can be safer to create a long distance call compared to a local call. Loved ones should call the contact and simply tell him or her where they're. Everyone have to know the contact’s name, address, and phone number.

3. Call your residence and casualty insurance broker, it will not be in its final stages to update limits and add appropriate coverage.

4. Discuss what to do if authorities have you evacuate. Arrange for a accommodations with a friend or relative who lives on vacation and/or find out about shelter locations. Review a directory of what you would take when you are required to or maybe if you may evacuate.

5. If you don't prefer to evacuate, look at emergency supplies. A few things you’ll want to have on hand are:

AA portable, battery-powered radio or television and further batteries.

Flashlight and further batteries.

First aid kit and first-aid manual.

Supply of prescription drugs.

Credit card and cash.

Personal identification.

An extra group of car keys.

Matches in a waterproof container.

Signal flare.

Map in the area and phone numbers of places you would go.

Wrench to turn off household gas and water.

A week’s source of water and nonperishable food.

Additional recommendations here

6. Understand escape routes. Depending on the sort of disaster, it could be required to evacuate your property. Plan several escape routes just in case certain roads are blocked or closed. Make sure to keep to the advice of local officials during evacuation situations. They should direct you to the safest route; some roads might be blocked or put you in further danger.

7. Protect your financial data and digital memories. 

8. Plan how to get good care of your pets. Pets can sense each time a storm is coming which enable it to go deep into hiding or behave erratically from fear. Make sure to keep tabs on where these are and ensure that your disaster planning provides a safe place for the children with you or friends and family with clean water and plenty of food.

 

Hurricane Planning Checklist #2: Personal and Business Data (IT)

Don’t put your information exactly in danger. Whether you are a current customer or not, call Global Data Vault at +1-214-363-1900.

1. Should you be already a client, we can perform a final check to be certain your system is ready. You will find there's special checklist that we’ll walk through to ask about protection for the critical data - we're also happy to tell you this anytime - not just for when disaster is looming.

2. Review and/or decide who's responsible to seal down your IT systems. As we have given any local backup appliance, allow us to assist you perform your IT shutdown. Then, for everybody who is evacuating, unplug and consider the appliance with you - or, if you have time, package it perfectly, and ship it to us.

3. If you aren't already a client, give us a call anyway. There may somewhat be time for you to protect critical data. It might be especially beneficial to use a USB drive handy, like the ones you can acquire at Office Depot had to have $100. We’ll protect computer data for Thirty days cost-free or obligation.

 

Hurricane Planning Checklist #3: General Business

1. Call your property and casualty insurance professional, it might not be too late to update limits and add appropriate coverage.

2. Review and update employee emergency contact information - make certain everybody has the most recent information.

3. Review and update vendor emergency details - be sure everyone has the most up-to-date information. 

4. Provide alternate contact details for your customers - or make sure they know if you expect your primary contact ways to failover and/or to survive intact.

5. Review your emergency communications plan. During an emergency, the ability to efficiently talk to staff, customers, authorities and the public can make a significant difference when it comes to how well your business can get over the disaster. To better assure this efficiency, it's wise to encourage open communication amongst workers prior, during, and following a critical situation. A good outline can be found in our blog here: http://www.globaldatavault.com/blog/business-continuity-planning-part-10-emer...

6. Encourage all employees to set up alternative ways of transportation for traveling both to and from work right after the storm if normal modes are interrupted.

7. Decide when you ought to close your offices. Determine who's got the legal right to initiate an evacuation. This can be a good option to create a sequence of command that allows others to provide the order in the event the designated individual is inaccessible.

8. Specify who will be in charge of shutting down critical operations and locking the facility during an evacuation. It is another instance where you should train additional staff if the designated individual is unavailable.

9. Let your employees are aware that you plan to support them after the disaster. Here are some good guidelines and ideas

10. When you setup an isolated IT operation after the event, remember these security precautions. Do not forget that disaster planning is a good idea even if you aren’t glued on the weather channel watching the hurricane approach. Start thinking of how to handle it when you're not in a much stressed situation, and don't forget that you're not alone. There are lots of people and resources that will help you, your loved ones and your business survive and overcome the worst of storms.

 Please visit: http://www.globaldatavault.com/blog/hurricane-preparation-checklists-the-final-48-hours/

 

 

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