“If you’re a small or medium-sized business, digitally stored information is your life-blood. You cannot afford to take a chance with backups,” warns Gavin Smith, Founder & CEO of DataFort. “If you use a local backup solution such as magnetic tape or CD Rom, then unless you conduct daily checks on the media’s integrity, your company is at risk.”

Smith cites a story from March 19th 2004 when the Japanese arm of Citibank - one of the world’s leading banks - suffered a PR and business nightmare when a magnetic tape of customer data (including names, addresses and account numbers) went missing on its way to the bank.

“It is almost inconceivable that an organisation such as Citibank could lose such valuable customer data, especially considering the tape was being transported by a security company!” adds Smith.

“Imagine if that tape contained all of the bank’s customer records. A catastrophic data loss on local servers could have forced such a company out of business. This situation rarely occurs within the corporate world but it’s an all too common occurrence for SMEs who lose local data through virus attacks, theft or system failure – only to find their backup is missing or corrupt.”

Smith quotes anecdotal evidence of backup procedures failing because of lost tapes, faulty media and forgetful staff.

“Many people try to be disciplined about backing up data,” concludes Smith. “Unfortunately, they are in the minority. Humans are fallible and they forget things, which is fine if it’s a phone call or a message, but potentially disastrous if they forget to change a backup tape or take that tape home. SMEs need to take a hard look at how much value they place on their data. If their data is as valuable as their customers, a managed off-site backup and storage solution should be implemented before disaster strikes.”