3 DANGERS OF HAVING AN IN-OFFICE SERVER (FIRE, WATER DAMAGE, ETC)

Still pondering on whether it is truly advantageous to avail of offsite servers (like the Cloud)? Not so many people realise the risks involved in storing all the data needed to run their businesses and companies in their own in-house servers.

Here are some of them.

Security of data may not be so tight.

Depending on who has or had access to the passwords and the actual physical in-house server equipment, security of data stored on in-house servers may not be very reliable. Deliberate attacks on systems and individuals who have access to sensitive data can cause more harm than inadvertent exposure. One in four of all data breaches are a result of theft. Former employees, inside people who have a grudge against an business, or criminals looking to make money from the sale of the data will look for data stored on laptops, hard drives, and thumb drives. Insiders are the number one cause of data breaches.

Fire and Water Damage risks

The most obvious risks in maintaining your own servers is not something which you can control entirely – but more of freaks of nature or “force majeure.” Especially if your office is located in a flood, typhoon/cyclone/tornado-prone area, you are at risk of losing data if you maintain all office data in local servers, or worse, physical disks or drives.

And if your staff is not alert enough to notice, you may also lose your date due to overheating of your equipment, or even a fire as a result of component heating or malfunction.

Theft

Let’s face it – no matter how big your equipment is, for as long as they can be re-sold, they can be stolen right from under your nose. Recently, there have been incidences of CPUs and servers being carted away by thieves. Of course, along with the equipment go all of the data stored in it.

Or when old computers or hard drives are sold or recycled, the information contained on them might be deleted, but if not properly erased, that data can be retrieved by anyone with just a few cheap tools. Additionally, leaving data on media that is not adequately protected with a strong password or with encryption leaves it vulnerable to a hacker or thief.