December 4

Five Most Common Causes of Data Loss

According to the research, approximately 15% of small to mid-sized businesses still aren’t backing up their data in case of disaster or one of the other major causes of damage or data loss. Even those that do perform regular backups should be vigilant of any threats to their system. Below are the five most commonly experienced culprits of data loss to watch out for.

  1. Power Outage – The number one cause of data loss, power outages sometimes occur without warning or good cause. Unfortunately, there’s only so much one can do to prevent one of these events from occurring, but there are ways to safeguard your hardware and software from being destroyed or at least minimize the damage in case of a power outage.
  2. Virus, Malware, or Attack – Probably one of the most commonly considered sources of data loss and damage in light of recent events, viruses and malicious internet hackers not only have the ability to steal private and sensitive information; they can furthermore infect your system with a virus that deletes or damages important data that’s being stored on the hard drive.
  3. Natural Disaster – This doesn’t necessarily have to be as extreme as a flood or hurricane (although they certainly inflict their share of data loss, as well). Something as common as a lightning strike or strong winds could be the root cause of a power outage or system malfunction that results in data loss.
  4. Human Error – The most common human errors that result in data loss include accidentally deleting a file, shutting down the system incorrectly, and unplugging hardware without properly shutting it down beforehand. And while 85% of businesses report backing up their data, there’s a high probability that the person responsible may at some point be guilty of committing the human error of forgetting to back up, or failing to do so on an ongoing, consistent basis.
  5. Equipment Failure or Malfunction- It’s not a coincidence that this culprit is being mentioned last. When all of the other usual suspects are eliminated, guess what? Sometimes systems just malfunction or experience complete failure for no apparent reason—unfortunately more often than we’d like to admit. Systems inexplicably crash, controllers unexpectedly fail, and software functioning can become compromised without anyone ever realizing there’s a problem until the loss of data is discovered.

If your business has recently fallen victim to data loss due to one of the causes above, don’t panic—we have the equipment and expertise to recover lost files. No matter what the source, our professional disaster recovery specialists will restore your data.

Request a quote today, or try a free demo of our software to do-it-yourself!

Category: data loss prevention, helpful hints

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