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What would happen if your business were taken over by hackers? Could you stay in business if you lost crucial data such as banking details, transaction histories or personal and sensitive customer information? If you were able to stay in business, how could you gain back the trust of your clients?

In many cases, a massive data breach could spell the end of the business you’ve spent years building up. Even more concerning, cyberattacks are growing in frequency, with 1.34 billion records leaked in November 2019 compared to 251 million in November 2018. Not having strong data protection in place would be reckless to say the least.

Luckily, even though cyber crime is increasing, our data center’s safety measures are developed specifically to combat the most sophisticated threats. We have put our years of experience to work and built the most secure public data center in Idaho. Our clients put their trust in our backup and recovery services, and here’s why:

Offsite Location

You might wonder what the point of having a separate data center is when you can keep the records and information for your Idaho-based business onsite. While it may seem that housing your own data is the best way to keep an eye on it, it may actually put your valuable information at greater risk.

There are several reasons why keeping your data onsite can be dangerous:

1. Your infrastructure may not be continuously monitored and maintained. This means your systems could have weaknesses that are easily exploitable by threat actors seeking to steal your data. Busy businesses often don’t have the time to ensure their infrastructure is constantly protected against the latest threats without some outside help.
2. Equipment organization and inventory management are more easily neglected. It may not seem critical to take frequent stock of your digital assets or untangle the mess of cords near your servers, but keeping equipment clean and organized is one key to ensuring your data stays protected.
3. Disgruntled employees or criminals can more easily access your data. When your data is housed onsite, disgruntled employees who know how to access your servers can wreak havoc on your data. Similarly, criminals looking to physically steal from you are more likely to target your business’s location if they know your valuable data is stored there. 

By storing your data at an offsite location such as the Nuvek data center, you can avoid these potential dangers. We have a five-layer physical security system with gates, security cameras, door locks, biometric access, and cabinet locks that protect your data round the clock. We also employ virtual security tactics such as hardware and software version management to ensure you always have the most up-to-date security guarding your data. Last but not least, we keep our server rooms clean, organized, and temperature-controlled as an added measure of safety.

Multi-Homed Internet Connection

A multi-homed Internet connection means having more than one connection to the Internet, thus inherently improving data security and ensuring maximum uptime. Even if one connection fails, the others will still be there to keep you online and keep your data protected. Conversely, a data center with only a single-homed Internet connection runs a huge risk of losing your data if there is an outage, whether caused by a natural disaster or cyber attack.

Remember, hackers are waiting to take advantage of any weaknesses within your network, and when connections are down you may be vulnerable to unauthorized entry and data theft. Infrastructure that ensures 100% uptime means you have a much more secure setup in place that deters hackers. 

Round-the-Clock Patching

In order to keep your data as secure as possible, it’s critical that all software is kept up to date at all times. This is why Nuvek’s round-the-clock patching service is so important to our clients.

We are continuously monitoring our servers, installing patches the moment a weakness arises that could lead to a breach or downtime. That means that even if the software has a vulnerability that developers don’t yet have a fix for, patches can prevent that vulnerability from being exploited by threat actors.

Fully Redundant Data Backups

Even if the worst were to happen and your data were breached or stolen, a Nuvek relationship means there will always be a safe, accessible copy of all your data. This means you can avoid the exorbitant costs that accompany data recovery, including ransomware costs paid to cybercriminals, which in 2019 amounted to a massive $170 billion. There will be no need to shut down your business should a disaster occur, and no need to give in to the cybercriminals who caused the problem in the first place.

The Bottom Line

Knowing that your Idaho business data is secure means one less thing for you to worry about. As a business owner, there is so much to consider, so much to think about, so much to do, that allowing an expert third party to manage your data storage can save you from facing the catastrophic consequences of data loss. Choosing Nuvek to assist with your Idaho data center requirements means you can rest assured that your data is safe and protected using the most up-to-date backup and recovery solutions available. To learn more about our data center and backup services, contact us today.                                                                                                                                         

Most Idahoans have heard the story of the young farmer who, when asked his greatest quality, says, “I can sleep when the wind blows.” As proof, he confidently sleeps through the night when a storm hits the farm, because he has already prepared everything in advance. It feels good to be ready when disaster strikes. But can your Idaho business say the same when it comes to protecting your valuable data?

Data makes our modern world go round, yet the more sophisticated threats against it get, the more vulnerable that information becomes. Any Idaho business that deals in data needs to have somewhere safe for it to be kept, and this is why selecting the right data center and data backup services in Idaho is so crucial. 

So how do you select the right facility to house your data? Here are three main things you should consider when selecting an Idaho data center:

The Three-Layer Approach

Before selecting a partner to store your data safely, businesses across Idaho should consider the dangers facing their digital information and employ best practices for avoiding those dangers. One excellent way to prevent threats facing your data is to select a data center that takes a three-layer approach to data security. 

These three layers consist of physical security, virtual security, and patching. Each layer provides invaluable protections that keep your data from being lost, stolen, or corrupted, ensuring your confidential information is always kept safe.

1. Physical Security

Physical security is key for protecting against a variety of threats, including theft, natural disasters, overheating, and more.

The first aspect of physical security to consider is the building the data is stored in. Unguarded premises can encourage data theft and lead to potentially devastating losses in the event of a disaster. Strong physical security means safer data.

At Nuvek’s Pocatello data center, we ensure our building is physically protected in five different ways to ensure the security of our clients’ data:

• Gates: Our building is surrounded by gates to keep unwanted visitors off the premises.
• Security Cameras: We have security cameras lining the exterior and interior of the building to deter criminals and gather pertinent information if needed.
• Security Locks: Every door is secured with physical locks to ensure only authorized personnel are able to enter.
• Biometrics Using Handprints: In addition to physical locks, once you enter the facility, biometric security requires a handprint scan to enter server rooms.
• Locked Server Cabinets: All of our servers are kept behind locked cabinet doors as an extra layer of protection.

Besides keeping criminals away from your data, physical security has other benefits, such as temperature-controlled rooms that keep your data servers from overheating or getting too cold and measures that protect against natural disasters. 

A reliable data center will also keep equipment clearly organized and maintained, which can be a difficult task when servers are housed in-office. Tangled cords and inaccurate equipment inventory can lead to security hazards. 

2. Virtual Security

Of course, physical threats must be mitigated, but virtual security is also a primary concern for businesses who want to keep their data safe.

The methods cyber criminals are using to infiltrate systems have become more advanced than ever in recent years. In fact, the news has recently been saturated with major attacks such as the SolarWinds and FireEye data breach that impacted thousands of customers and even organizations within the federal government.

Additionally, though companies may think it uncommon, disgruntled employees who know the ins and outs of how to access your data can easily corrupt, destroy, or disseminate it. In just August of last year, Idaho’s Saint Alphonsus Health System was exploited by an employee who used cyber knowledge to steal $1 million. Without virtual security protections, your business could face catastrophic consequences from a breach—including non-compliance penalties, lost customers, litigation, and great financial costs.

You’ll want to make sure the data center you select has comprehensive virtual security, such as anti-malware software, hardware and software management, and continuous system threat monitoring. At Nuvek, we employ Barracuda web filtering and the professional version of Malwarebytes round the clock. We also keep hardware and software up to date at all times through version management, an important security step that many data centers simply don’t have the time to complete.

3. Security Patches

As a subset of virtual protections, installing patches on software is critical to maintaining data security. Installing patches regularly means not only keeping every piece of software up to date, but also eliminating new software weaknesses to keep them from leading to vulnerabilities that hackers could use to exploit your data.

By updating software as often as possible through patches, you can stay one step ahead of the cybercriminals at all times, keeping your data protected. You also protect against zero-day vulnerabilities that software developers haven’t yet created solutions for. Any business who holds valuable or confidential information will want to make sure regular patching is included in their data backup services.

Nuvek’s Data Backup Services In Idaho

When searching for the right Idaho data center to protect your business data, there are a number of things to take into consideration, but among the most important are physical security, virtual security, and patching. 

At Nuvek, you can rest assured that our data center takes each of these security measures very seriously with a multi-layered approach to ensure your valuable information is well protected. When it comes to protecting data, we can sleep when the wind blows, and our clients can, too.

To learn more about Nuvek’s data backup services, contact us today.