How to Protect Your Small Business Data

All businesses, big and small, need to protect their information. Given the variety of threats to business data such as fire, malwares, flooding hacker attacks, computer viruses, simply relying on anti-virus software isn't enough. Suppose you own a small fashion and jewelry or a handicrafts business you wouldn't want to lose sleep over losing your customers' information.

Despite not having the financial resources at part with big businesses, small businesses and home business owners, can employ a number of techniques to ensure data safety.

1. Install anti-virus software: Thousands of computer viruses exist today and new ones are continuously being added to the virus family. Installing a good anti-virus software is essential to data safety. At the same time, regularly updating the anti-virus software is no less important than installing it.

2. Operating system safety features: Use the security features built-in your operating systems. Often you just need to activate and customize these features to suit your data protection needs. For instance, Windows Vista has a several utilities that enable you to back up your data, and in case of a problem you can revert to the restore points, or return to the state of your computer before the problem occurred.

3. Configure a firewall: A firewall program keeps a tab on the data that tries to seep in to your computer. If anything suspicious tries to sneak in, the firewall will sound an alert and offer suggestions about what you can do to ensure safety.

4. Disconnect from the Internet: When you don't need to be online simply disconnect from the Internet. This way your computer won't send out any information without seeking your approval.

5. Cautiously download from the Internet: Whenever you download a software or other files from the Internet, ensure that you are doing so from a website that you trust and know about.

6. Backup your data: Depending upon your needs and the type of business operations you may back up your data daily or even several times in a day.

You have a number of options for data backup, three common ways are

External hard disk drives can be connected externally to a computer, and they can be simply plugged in to your computer for data transfer. You even have the choice to encrypt these backups, so even if someone gets hold of your data they won't be able to view it.

USB Flash Drives like external hard drives, are memory devices, albeit much smaller. They are also known as USB keys and thumb drives. You can save your data on these devices simply by plugging them to your computer's USB port for data transfer.

Online Storage also known as file hosting services, or online media centers are Internet hosting services designed to host static content, such as your business data documents. There are a number of such services available like YouSendIt, Windows Live SkyDrive, Drop.io, Dropbox and Box.net.

While employing some of these and other means for data protection might not be free, however it's worth investing a little in data safety than facing downtime and loss of business opportunity.