Digital data loss can have severe consequences for any small business that is reliant on good recordkeeping. Losing customer data could mean that you don’t have any means to contact them or perhaps cause you to be left without details of financial transactions. This would either make it difficult for you to invoice them or leave a big hole in your financial records that would be difficult to account for at the end of the tax year.
If a small business does not take adequate data security measures, there are numerous things that have the potential to go wrong. A computer virus or trojan will almost certainly eventually infect unprotected computer systems that are connected to the Internet, causing damage or data loss. An antivirus / spyware solution and firewall is needed for every business computer to reduce risk.
Even computers that don’t have viruses can develop problems. Hard drives in particular have the potential to fail at any time and their lifespan can be quite unpredictable. Data loss like this can often be avoided by using external hard drives to backup your information, however if your business was to be hit by flooding, fire or theft then you would be likely to lose these too.
Some business owners use USB memory sticks to keep a record of data. Although these are often much longer-lasting than traditional hard drives and very convenient for data storage on-the-go, they are also very easily lost because of their small size.
The best solution for a small business is actually to embrace new technology and choose a cloud solution. This allows the business to store all of their information online far more securely than they would be able to offline.
