The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting a predicted temperature of 43 degrees in Sydney tomorrow.
With large parts of the country in the grip of a heatwave, it is possibly a bit late to be thinking about emergency management especially if your business is located in a fire-prone area.
But 'better late than never' applies - if you don't already have an offsite backup system in place to keep your business's most important data safe, now is the time for action.
- For relatively small files, online backup services like Ninefold's Oxygen Cloud are a convenient approach and can be set up very quickly. The big advantage is that once that's done, the process continues automatically.
- Backing up the entire system to a hard disk that you take home every night is another simple strategy. 2TB drives are readily available for around $100, so buy a pair and use them alternately so at least one copy of your data exists off the premises at all times. While this method relies on you taking regular action, if a disaster does occur you'll be up and running again relatively quickly.
- These techniques can be used together - the hard disk backup means you have a complete though usually not completely up to date copy of all the programs and data on your computer, which can be augmented with the most recent copies of crucial files retrieved from the online backup service.
- If you're using cloud-based services such as the Saasu.com accounting site, your data is already off-site and so you don't need to take action in this regard. That said, it is wise to satisfy yourself that any service provider's disaster recovery plans meet your requirements.
More useful backup tips
- Read our overall guide to the best backup strategy
- Read about disaster recovery imaging softwareI and why it's a very useful way of backing up
- More tips on emergency management and recovery is at business.gov.au.
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