Home topics small-business-resources hot-tips Business Tech Hot Tips Managing Business Tech Damage control: What to do if your business data disappears Adrian Briscoe May 14, 2012 How would your business fare if you lost your customer contact records, financial data or even just the last day’s worth of orders? Almost every company in this situation will experience some degree of productivity loss and some may also find themselves facing potential non-compliance penalties, missed sales opportunities, damage to reputation, and weakened customer confidence. It’s every company’s nightmare and, according to research from leading analyst firm, Gartner , data loss happens to at least 25 percent of organisations every year. That’s why a putting in place a data loss plan is like purchasing an insurance policy for your business. The odds are a hard drive will one day fail or your software will corrupt, or a staff member may accidentally delete essential files. How you handle such a situation will determine whether the loss becomes a major disruption to your business, or an untimely but manageable hiccup. The faster you recover your data , the faster you and your staff can get back to productive work. Therefore, it’s best to know before disaster strikes what options are available to you, where you are going to turn to and how you want to proceed with recovery so that any loss is minimised. To achieve this however, you need to understand the nature of the problem. Backups won’t stop data loss Many companies believe