My wife and I lived in a condo in New England. Diagonal to our unit lived, “Will” (named changed for privacy purposes) in another unit in our association.

Sign Business

Will ran a sign making business.

Customers would hire Will to make wooden or metal signs with some text, like “10 MPH Speed Limit”.

Will designed the signs on his laptop using sign design software.

I don’t know how he actually made the signs. I presume he sent the design files to a sign manufacturing firm. The firm used the design files to cut the signs, router out the text, and then painted the signs.
 
Then, the firm mailed to the completed signs to Will.

Lightning Strike

One day dark storm clouds covered the sky.

It started to rain. Lightning bolted from the clouds and thunder rumbled through the area.

Then a lightning bolt hit near our condominium buildings.

A power surge traveled through Will’s condo’s electrical wiring and struck his laptop.

His hard drive was destroyed.

Will wasn’t able to recover any of his hundreds of design files he had created over the years from the drive.

Will hadn’t backed up his computer.

Backup and Recovery

I could tell Will was stressed from the loss of his design files.

If Will had backed up his computer he could have restored a recent backup and recovered all of his sign design files.

Suggestions

You might consider buying and installing these products and services to protect your valuable business data.

· Whole House Surge Protector

· Surge Protector

· Backup Service

Simplified Diagram of Our Data Protection System

Whole House Surge Protector — 1st Level of Protection

My wife and I work out of our house. We have multiple electronic devices and household appliances plugged into the house electrical system.

We get a lot of summer storms in late afternoon or in the evening here in Florida.

A storm related power surge could destroy laptops, hard drives, delicate SSDs, printers, refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines, etc.

We hired an electrician to install a Whole House Surge Protector for about $300.

The Whole House Surge Protector reduces the probability that a power surge could get into the house electrical system and damage any electrical devices or appliances.

Surge Protector — 2nd Level of Protection

We’ve installed Belkin surge protector power strips by our computers and TV.

We’ve plugged in laptops, scanners, routers, Internet modems, and monitors into the surge protectors.

This is our second line of defense if any surge gets through the Whole
House Surge Protector.

These surge protector strips reduce the chances of surges getting to delicate electrical devices.

Backup Service — 3rd Level of Protection

What if a surge gets through the whole house surge protector and the surge protector power strips to a laptop and damages a hard drive or SSD?

I have setup Datto backup services to backup our laptops.

I setup the Datto Siris 5X to backup my laptop. The Siris 5X backs up from my laptop to the local Siris 5X device, and then the backup is replicated to Datto’s Cloud Data Center.

The Siris 5X has several huge advantages over other backup services:

1. Screenshot Verification
    
   When the backup completes the backup image is booted and a screenshot of the login screen is taken and emailed to me.
    
   This tells me the backup is valid. For me that’s a very comforting feeling knowing the backup is good.
   
   
2. Virtual Machine
   
   
3. Suppose I’m using a backup service which doesn’t provide the ability to spin up a VM and my SSD is damaged.
    
   I’d have to spend several days restoring a backup. That means I’m extremely stressed wondering whether the restore will work.
    
   And, I’m not getting any work done.
    
   With the Datto Siris 5X I can spin up a Virtual Machine (VM) in minutes and resume work.
    
   In the meantime Datto will overnight mail me a copy of the backup from their Cloud Data Centers
    
   I could restore to a new SSD or new laptop the day I received the backup.
   
   

Conclusion

Personally, I’d prefer not having to pay money for backup services.
 
I want to hope that no power surges strike and damage my SSDs or my SSDs don’t fail.
 
I want to hope that no ransomware gets into my laptop and encrypts (locks) all of my data.

But it is probable that something bad will happen.

So, I don’t need more stress in my life worrying about bad things happening.
 
And, you know sometimes bad things happen at the worst possible time.
 
Like when you’re on vacation or in the middle of a presentation to a high-value prospect.

I want to rest comfortably at night, knowing I can spin up a Virtual Machine and restore my data.

If you want help backing up your data and sleeping comfortably at night contact me.

Check out our Cyberthreat protection plans.