Benchmark Information Technology

newsletter | tell a friend

How vulnerable is your network?

What Every Small Business Owner Must Know About Protecting and Preserving Their Company’s Critical Data and Computer Systems

Have you ever lost an hour of work on your computer? Imagine if you lost days or weeks of work. Worse, imagine losing your client database, financial records and all of the work files your company has ever produced or compiled. Imagine what would happen if your network went down for days, and you couldn’t access email or the information on your PC. Or picture the consequences if a major storm, flood or fire destroyed your office and all of your files, or a virus wiped out your server.

Every 5 years, 20% of small to medium businesses will suffer a major network disaster causing loss of critical data. (Source: Richmond House Group)

Do you have an emergency recovery plan in place that you feel confident about? How quickly do you think you could recover, if at all? Many small business owners tend to ignore or forget about taking steps to secure their company’s network from these types of catastrophes until disaster strikes. By then it’s too late and the damage is done.

Famous Last Words: But That Could Never Happen To Me!

Research reveals that 6 out of 10 businesses will experience some type of major network or technology disaster that will cost them between $9,000 and $60,000 in repairs and restoration costs on average. That excludes lost productivity and sales, not to mention damaged client goodwill resulting from your company’s inability to operate or fulfill its commitments due to technical problems. Unless you’ve experienced having your business grind to a screeching halt because you and your employees couldn’t access necessary data and operating systems, it can be difficult to determine the actual financial impact a severe computer breakdown can have on your business. Fortunately, statistics delineate a compelling picture.

  • Companies experience an average of 501 hours of network downtime every year, and the overall downtime costs an average of 3.6% of annual revenue. (Source: The Costs of Enterprise Downtime, Infonetics Research)
  • 93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster, and 50% filed for bankruptcy immediately. (Source: National Archives & Records Administration in Washington, D.C.)
  • In 2007, 40% of small to medium businesses that manage their own network and use the Internet for more than email will have their network accessed by a hacker. More than 50% won’t even know they were attacked. (Source: Gartner Group)
  • Of those companies participating in the Contingency Planning & Management Cost of Downtime Survey: 46% said each hour of downtime would cost their companies up to $50,000; 28% said each hour would cost between $51,000 and $250,000; 18% said each hour would cost between $251,000 and $1 million; and 8% said it would cost their companies more than $1million per hour. (Source: Cost of Downtime Survey Results, 2001)
  • Cyber-criminals stole an average of $900 from each of 3 million Americans in the past year, not including the hundreds of thousands of PCs rendered useless by spyware. (Source: Gartner Group)

Take Steps to Avoid Disaster

In addition to the soft costs of lost productivity, there are the hard costs of repairing and restoring your network. There are more than 50 critical checks and maintenance tasks that need to be performed on a daily, weekly and monthly basis to help you avoid such costs. Here are a few of the most critical.

  • Pinpoint any exposure to or risk from hackers, viruses, spyware, spam, data loss, power outages, system downtime and even employee sabotage.
  • Review your system backups to make sure the data can be recovered in case of a disaster. You don’t want to discover that your backups were corrupt after a major disaster wiped out your network.
  • Scan your network for hidden spyware and viruses that hackers “plant” in your network to steal information, deliver spam and track your online activities.
  • Look for hidden problems that cause error messages, sluggish performance and network crashes.

If you don’t have the time or staff to perform these critical kinds of checks, find out how Benchmark Information Technology can help. Call us toll-free at 866-275-0884 (option 1), or email us at . One of our highly qualified engineers will be happy to review your current network system.