The best way to prepare for disasters and security breaches

used with permission from HP Technology at Work What would happen if your company lost your critical business data? Whether your application is email, your website, accounts receivable or any other critical  application, your IT infrastructure is vital to protecting your data—and to your business overall. If critical data is corrupted or lost due to disaster or security breaches, immediate business consequences may result. Decreased profitability, a blemished reputation, or loss of customers may cost you your business. Think of your IT infrastructure as the first line of defense. Arm that defense with technology that is designed to be resilient, highly available, and secure. Do you need to be more proactive when it comes to securing and protecting your data? Start with understanding your exposure that results from incomplete protection. Consider your infrastructure and the following: 1. Determine if your network security is reliable and pervasive across your business. A secure network should:

• Ensure mobile devices are securely connected, provisioned, and monitored
• Provide user access to the network that is easy and connected in a secure manner
• Authenticate users
• Monitor network traffic
• Quickly detect and quarantine threats.

2. Evaluate your backup and restore plans. Your business needs a plan to protect, retain, and analyze information while reducing cost, complexity, and risk. Consider the following:

• Does your backup handle all your applications and data types?
• How much time in the day do you have to back up your data? Do you have a regular backup schedule?
• If you have to restore data, how much time do you have to complete the recovery?
• Can you recover data from the past, or do you only get the most recent backup to recover? How far in the past must you be able to access data?
• If you lost your data, what data do you need to retrieve first, how fast do you need to retrieve it, and what way do you want to retrieve it (i.e., immediate access to any device?)
• What compliance and security requirements does your business have?
• Do you backup onsite or offsite or both? Is your offsite storage sufficient?

Your security is important to us

Relying on minimal security and inadequate backup is dangerous. Your business is at risk for security breaches, BYOD, and attacks or disaster. Take a proactive approach to protecting your business. Extend the capabilities of your IT team and leverage the experience and expertise of HP and our trusted partners to support your business. As you safeguard your data look for switches, wireless products, and routers that feature product level security that is designed to provide basic level of security that can ensure access to information and data, stop unwanted attacks, and thwart access from unwelcome external sources. Look for a backup and restore solution that scales easily, is simple to use, and includes capabilities such as snapshots, the ability to address both physical and virtual, uses data duplication, and more. The security of your business is important to us. Partner with us to help safeguard all your hard work—and your data.