Tag: backup solutions

Design Effective Business Continuity Solutions with IT Consulting in Los Angeles

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Design Effective Business Continuity Solutions with IT Consulting in Los Angeles

IT consulting firms in Los Angeles can help your business achieve proper business continuity key performance indicators (KPIs) through consultation and service provision. A combination of both these strategies will often produce the most secure solution.

Be Strategic

In order to determine what will best safeguard your business, you need to know where to center your business continuity framework. You might consider these KPIs:

  • Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
  • Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

RPO is the time it takes to get a specific application back online once a disaster has occurred. Meanwhile, RTO refers to the total time necessary for the reboot of your network after a substantial crash. You should run tests to see what the numbers are. How close are you to your objective in either scenario, and are you able to steadily get those numbers down? Figuring this out will help you know whether your business continuity solution has been adequately designed.

Once you’ve got your KPIs figured out, your next step is going to involve properly integrating your solution. Several steps this direction include:

  • Assigning RPOs and RTOs by application priority
  • Combining both on-premises and cloud solutions
  • Instituting optimization and monitoring support

Application Priority

IT consulting firms in Los Angeles can help you determine which applications should have priority over others in a total crash scenario. RTO is going to, in many cases, have to launch some applications sequentially. You’ve got to know what’s most important to reboot first, otherwise when the crash comes you’ll be operating out of a panic and could incidentally damage you network, which certainly is no good for business continuity. So, set up RPO and RTO not just to recover malfunctioning apps and networks, but to also do so in proper sequence.

Redundancies: Multiple Backup Solutions

You want as many sources of backed up data as you can acquire. Cloud backups that continuously backup your data are strategically valuable. Additionally, it makes sense to have a separate off-site backup solution in the event something happens to your cloud storage option, and an on-site backup in case either of the other two systems is compromised. You might even keep a hard drive updated with the most important data at regular intervals at your home property. The scope of your redundant backup solutions will depend on your budget. It’s generally a minority of businesses that can afford truly comprehensive redundancy solutions; so, perhaps you’ll start with on-site backups and a cloud solution. An MSP can help you determine what’s most affordable and realistic.

Optimization and Monitoring Support

Even if you can only acquire one backup solution, regular optimization of primary and secondary systems, as well as the most continuous monitoring you can source, can both prevent network crashes and facilitate more expedient, reliable business continuity.

Secure Business Continuity

IT consulting firms in Los Angeles through Advanced Networks can cost-effectively maintain the security of your network. Contact us to help advise you on the steps you should take in establishing a business continuity solution, as well as to attain consultation that can be a very real help when an unexpected disaster arises.

IT Consultants in Los Angeles Provides Necessary Disaster Recovery Solutions

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IT Consultants in Los Angeles Provides Necessary Disaster Recovery Solutions

IT consultants in Los Angeles can be an integral component of disaster recovery. If you don’t have some kind of solution in place, you’re very likely to experience downtime. So, consider these questions:

  • Have you ever had downtime?
  • Can you afford to lose all your files suddenly?
  • When was the last time you experienced a system crash?

Downtime

IT consultants in Los Angeles providing disaster recovery can reduce downtime expenses, which are often substantial. If you only lose $1,000 an hour from downtime, then one eight-hour day of losses comes to $8k. 10 days like that in a year comes to $80k. If you can find disaster recovery solutions under $1k a month, you’ll find they pay for themselves many times over. If you’ve ever had downtime, imagine seeing that lost productivity essentially erased. With a cloud-based backup and disaster recovery solution, you’re going to see failover that reboots systems almost instantaneously. Data mirroring is one way this becomes possible. Basically, data is mirrored on the cloud, and when a system starts to crash, the mirrored network launches, allowing for continuing operations while whatever issue undermined primary systems are addressed.

Data Retention

You need to have data retention solutions that are continuously in play, because if you don’t, something could erase all your files in an instant and leave you no recourse. Consider ransomware, as an example. This is a program that holds your information for ransom under encryption. If you don’t pay the ransom, your files are destroyed, often within a 24-hour period. What’s worse is that you may be ransomed again if you don’t have a disaster recovery solution in place. Ransomware tends to hide itself and can be very hard to find once it has wormed its way into your systems.

System Crashes

Some businesses use data that must be maintained on-site for security purposes. Having a backup solution of this variety is commendable; but you’ve still got to test it as regularly as you can. When was the last time you had a system crash? Was it three or four years ago? Have you tested your backup recovery solutions since then, or have they remained invisibly operating in the background?

It’s absolutely essential to have a regular regimen of tests for your backup solutions. They’re no any good to you if they can’t restore systems when you need them most. This is especially true considering Moore’s Law predicts technology will double on itself every 1.5 years or so. This trickles down to businesses, for example, laptop purchased five years ago will be presently so anachronistic it’s near unusable. If you haven’t tested your backup in the last three to five years, you may not have one.

Securing Backup

IT consultants in Los Angeles providing disaster recovery through Advanced Networks helps you be sure systems are at their most secure in a perpetual way. You’re likely going to come against situations where tech doesn’t function as it should. Not having disaster contingencies in place is catastrophic. Contact us for backup solutions designed to avoid such situations.

IT Consultants in Los Angeles Help Maintain Business Continuity

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IT Consultants in Los Angeles Help Maintain Business Continuity

IT consultants in Los Angeles can be an integral component in maintaining business continuity. You don’t necessarily need to onboard the entirety of security services from a given MSP to experience the security of business continuity. Sometimes you can work with them on a basis of consultancy. However, there is such a thing as opportunity cost. That is to say, by doing something yourself internally, you’re likely to spend more money and take more time, limiting your outward marketing potential— or other operations that require some quotient of funding. With that in mind, following are several considerations to take into account as you go about designing your business continuity solution:

  • Malware is a primary threat to small businesses
  • Small businesses are a primary target of malware
  • The majority of security situations develop internally
  • Many businesses neglect to test backup solutions properly

Malware and Small Businesses

IT consultants in Los Angeles providing business continuity will definitely recommend that you defend against malware. Small businesses are more susceptible to things like ransomware because they can’t afford not to pay the ransom. Hackers understand this, and as a result, there are quite a few small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) who are primarily targeted— approximately 43%, in fact.

Malware is a big threat to your business— especially if you’re smaller. And as an SMB, you’re a primary target. If you don’t have some kind of business continuity solution designed to overcome such hacking problems, you’ve got greater than a four-in-ten chance of being compromised.

Majority of Security Situations Develop Internally

Complicating the issue is the fact that most of your greatest security threats develop internally. A lot of that comes from a lack of education. Basically, employees don’t realize that many of the issues which compromise systems come from their poor online etiquette. Many MSPs can actually help you educate your workers pertaining to best online practices; it’s wise to employ such solutions as best as you can.

Don’t Neglect Backup Tests!

It doesn’t matter how comprehensive, extensive, or expensive your backup solution is if you have not been careful to test it. Backup systems that are maintained by your business on-site are subject to entropy just like any other system. The same goes for physical backup solutions maintained offsite. The best marriage of cost-effective backup that simultaneously reduces maintenance costs and invokes redundancy solutions will often come from a cloud computing solution. Cloud backups are maintained by the providers of the cloud solutions they purvey. It’s in their best interest to ensure all systems operate correctly. This is especially true when things like shared liability come into the equation. HIPAA predicates fines for MSPs who don’t properly secure clients in accordance with HIPAA regulations. Ergo, MSPs and cloud providers who may be in a position to provide such services must be very careful they don’t get fined. This is one of many reasons why many SMBs outsource to the cloud for backup.

IT consultants in Los Angeles can help safeguard your business in ways you may not even have the ability to anticipate. Contact us at Advanced Networks for security you can trust.