Remember when we needed to remember things? The other day I was standing in the grocery store and went completely blank as to what I came to buy. I had not captured a list in my phone, and had to call my wife to get it.

Back in the days before the Internet, access to factoids were a matter of actually remembering. You didn't have the luxury to whip out your Smartphone and Google it. As it turns out, the vast stores of information available to us on the Internet has changed the way we remember things. A study done by Columbia University found that we're less likely to remember something if we know we're able to find it somewhere else - and in the age of the Internet, most information is indeed just a few clicks away.

My forgetfulness at the grocery store reminded me of how interconnected we are to the data in our lives. I shudder at the thought “What if it disappeared?”. We’ve adapted our lives around uninhibited access to the data we need right now to conduct business and manage our lives. If you can’t get to that data, what happens next?

If the data is just lost or damaged, it’s simple to restore it, right? It could be, if the data was actually backed up. Shockingly, almost every assessment we’ve done over the past two years has uncovered failures in the backups – data was not being backed up. If the data wasn’t backed up, it can’t be restored. Yet most folks are oblivious to the risk of their data disappearing.

Do you know for sure that your data is backed up and protected?

Have you considered all the data spread across notebooks and desktops throughout your offices… is that data backed up, or only what is on your servers? Has anyone actually tested the backups to ensure they can be restored? If you can’t answer positively to all these questions, call us and we’ll be happy to help you find peace of mind.