Offsite backup for information storage is critical for businesses

In today’s world of pictures, contacts, documents and other assorted files stored in many different locations, a reliable backup approach needs to be a key aspect of your business plan. 

For Realtors®, their phones and laptops are their lives. Contact information, photos and other business critical files  collected over many years are in the best of cases difficult and in the worst impossible to replace. If something happens to this information, your ability to conduct business and provide service to your clients goes away and you’re left wondering how to proceed and pick up the pieces.

Often times, many people think they have backup in place. They back up critical information to CDs, thumb drives or even large USB drives permanently connected to their workstations. While these devices do provide some measure of backup, they lack the real depth needed to fully replace what you have lost. They also provide a false sense of security. How often do you really refresh those files with your new data? What is the possibility of those devices failing? What protection do you have from fire or theft? In each of those scenarios, your true protection is very limited.

The solution is offsite backup. In the world of the “cloud,” so many products can give you the peace of mind you want. These solutions backup everything, offsite in at least two locations. Your data is in different parts of the country, secure and accessible by you, whenever needed. You no longer have to worry if you manually backed up to CD or USB drive. Once the software is installed and setup, your data backs up automatically several times a day.

The good news is that you have many products to choose from. These are the most widely used sites: carbonite.com; sugarsync.com and dropbox.com.

Any of these solutions could give you the peace of mind you need, for a reasonable cost.  Look them over and begin the process of protecting your data.