The National Park System was created to save not only areas of unspoiled nature and wildlife, but also to preserve historic and prehistoric landmarks and structures as well as other objects of historic or scientific interest. Just as the federal government sought to protect all these, every organization must save its valuable information and data.

The protection of this information has spawned a variety of technologies over the years.

The first and most basic was backup. Because we're human, we make mistakes. We overwrite files, we delete things, we move files and lose track of where they are—especially electronic data. It's all too easy to do. And so, the "technology park rangers" created backups. Having a backup protects your information from any of these scenarios. Traditionally, a backup was saved overnight so that the most a person could lose was a day's worth of work. But as technology has advanced, minute-by-minute or even second-by-second changes and revisions are possible with solutions like Office 365 that have revision and versioning built in without user intervention. Additionally, over time, backups were enhanced to protect and save an organization from not only human error but also from technical disasters such as hardware or software failure, environmental disasters such as fire or flood and much more. With today's backup technology, we can "spin up" a complete backup image of a computer within minutes or hours. Even better, depending upon the business need, this restored image can be accessed either in your own office or, if your office isn't functioning, in the cloud. Sadly, it's not so easy to restore a park or historic artifact.

There are more technologies that protect your information that every business should have. Almost all technology requires power to operate; and therefore, the absence of power creates obvious problems. Computers don't like to be turned off in the middle of writing a file. Networks cannot complete a data transfer when the power is disrupted even for a nanosecond. As a result, simple power protection of critical devices on a battery backup or uninterruptible power supply is a basic requirement for most organizations.

While many only think of parks when talking about our National Park System, the word to keep in mind is actually "system." Our National Park System includes natural areas, historical area, recreation areas, national capital parks and more. The National Park System has a vast array of systems and services to protect its assets.

Want to save yourself from the threat of ransomware or compliance reporting after a security breach?

Be sure to have a system in place—many layers of defense—to save and protect your information. This includes security software like anti-virus, URL checking, multi-factor authentication, encryption, security awareness training, security monitoring, and more.

None of our national parks and historic areas would have been preserved without the foresight of our nation's leaders, artists, writers and individuals willing to take a stand and take action to preserve them. Businesses need to take a similar stand to protect its information and protect its future interests.

Need help walking down the "information protection path"? Give us a call today and take action to preserve your business information.

Learn more about IT Radix's data backup solutions here.

First published in our August 2018 IT Radix Resource newsletter