Millie doesn’t have time to worry about cybercrime; she’s trying to run her business. But she knows that faster attacks, more files held for ransom, and a snake pit of malicious code doing the rounds are all putting her increasingly mobile business at risk. Luckily for Millie, her IT manager is switched on to endpoint protection, keeping her business safe from data corruption, data breaches and data loss. Here’s what happened one day in the life of Thoroughly Mobile Millie.

08:00 hours – Millie avoids opening a phishing email

As Millie unwinds after her gym workout, she takes 20 minutes over a coffee to check her emails.  In the midst of them, she finds one from her malware and virus detection software app, warning her against a potential threat. Not recognising the sender, she chooses to blacklist the email.

Smart decision.

Had it not been for the real-time detection model her IT manager set up, in a millisecond, she could’ve exposed her business and contacts to data corruption via the latest evolution of email attack.

Unlike traditional detection models, this endpoint protection module uses file pattern and predictive behaviour recognition, scanning all emails superfast, protecting the business without slowing down Millie’s busy day.

At the same time, Millie’s IT manager is able to access the app’s Web-based portal to manage and report on the entire company’s activities, without having to worry about onsite server hardware or software, and the hassles of managing daily signatures or updates.

09:00 hours – Millie arrives in the office to discover an employee has lost their iPad

It’s what we all dread. Losing a laptop, smartphone or tablet with sensitive customer data – not to mention business data. Every year, thousands of business devices are lost or stolen, exposing organisations to the risk of data breaches, fines from the ICO – damaging business reputations and customer confidence.

However, with their endpoint protection set-up, Millie’s IT manager quickly steps in to lockdown the device and wipe sensitive data. He’s easily able to monitor and secure activity without compromising the mortified employee’s privacy.

11:00 hours – Millie welcomes three new recruits, already governed by endpoint protection

Millie’s business is flexible. It has to be. So as employee numbers grows, contract and grow again, their endpoint protection scales accordingly. This keeps her business secure and compliant with data governance and industry regulations.

And it’s all managed by her IT manager, from one central point. He’s also supported with out-of-the-box advanced system reporting, automated report generation, delivery and proactive metric-based backup management.

12:00 hours – Millie travels to a meeting with her lawyers, and needs to access files on the way

In the taxi on the way to meeting with her lawyer, Millie and a colleague need to make some last-minute changes to a document. A quick Skype for Business message exchange with a colleague in the office directs them to the file, which they access, collaborate on with their office-based colleague, amend and save. Changes are effected immediately and accessible across the business, to both office and remote workers alike. It’s also backed up. This means Millie’s business continues to work at the speed required, they’re productive and there’s no need to waste their IT manager’s budget or time – support costs are minimised.

13:00 hours – Lawyers can get the information they need quickly – with the Legal Hold application

Finding the right data you need quickly is no easy task for any legal team. With the best endpoint protection package for the business, Millie’s IT manager has made data retrieval fast and secure.

With compliant seven-year archiving and eDiscovery, the information the lawyers need is found quickly, saving Millie further the need to pay for costly consultants, legal services and third party tools. It automates and centralises backup and search of data across devices. So IT and legal teams can easily identify, collect, preserver and review potential data internally.

16:00 hours – Millie’s management team reviews their ISO 27001 compliance requirements

With the case meeting out of the way, Millie heads back to the office for a compliance meeting with her management team. To help them keep customers and win new business in an increasingly competitive business environment, Mille is keen to assure her customers of her business commitment to keeping their data secure.

Using the same backup package that protects business critical information of more than four million other corporate users, Millie is able to provide that guarantee with ISO 27001 data security protection.  Advanced encryption and other top-level security procedures and protocols safeguard her business data at all times – during transmission, storage and recovery.

22:30 hours – With endpoint protection, Millie and her IT manager have peace of mind

Safe in the knowledge that the business is protected 24/7, Millie and her IT manager can get a good night’s sleep. (Even though someone, somewhere, is working out a new way to disrupt this…)

£230million. At its worst, that’s how much last winter’s weather was *estimated to cost UK small-medium businesses in a single day. A frustrating **two-fifths of those businesses are now likely to fail in the next two years. A cloud backup and Disaster Recovery solution can stop this happening to your organisation. Here’s how.

“It is only in sorrow bad weather masters us; in joy we face the storm and defy it”~ Amelia Barr

According to telecoms provider, Daisy Group plc, nearly a third (31%) of UK businesses have been affected by bad weather over the last two years. Transport problems, power cuts or broadband and phone line failures are all to blame. Last year, bad weather prevented an estimated three million UK workers from completing their normal work responsibilities.

That’s a pretty gloomy picture, right?

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The sunshine behind the cloud: cloud backup and disaster recovery

With cloud backup and disaster recovery in place, the impact of the weather fades dramatically. Why? Because, as long as you have access to the Internet via broadband or 3/4G wireless connections, you can keep up communications and proceed with business as usual – albeit maybe with limited capabilities initially. But either way, your telephone, email, internet connection, power, data and servers are all accessible and under control.

Such a resilient cloud disaster recovery set-up means that, if disaster strikes, you’re ahead of the game. And the faster you get your business back in business, the less your reputation and finances suffer.

Speed: as fast as Hermes, the winged messenger

In the event of a disaster, cloud technology is fast. It reduces recovery times from hours or days to just minutes. Remote access to backed up data means, amongst other things, you no longer have to physically transfer tapes to offsite stand-by sites. You can also recover servers and applications much more quickly, significantly limiting business downtime – which you want to avoid like the plague. The longer you’re unable to operate, the more damaging it is for your business – both financially, and for your reputation.

Guaranteed: as wise as Athena, goddess of wisdom

It’s smart to make sure you have a guarantee behind your data and IT systems recovery. A simple automated appliance can: sit on your server and capture snapshots of it; convert them into virtual rescue images; test their integrity; and test invocation and rescue. This daily process will ensure your business continuity through a disaster.

But make sure you get a convincing SLA and guaranteed 30-day transition period, so your systems are fully tested in your environment before switching back fully to your usual system.

Security – as controlled as Zeus, king of the gods

Your server snapshots should be protected during capture, transfer and storage with encryption and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technologies. However, for the highest possible protection of your data and systems, what you really want is a service provider that is overlaid end-to-end ISO 27001 security processes, which are independently audited.

Reliability – as steady as wine-loving Bacchus is not!

The cloud is reliable. It avoids introducing risk through human error as it eliminates many of the complex, manual steps that traditional recovery solutions require.

Cost – as accurate as Artemis’s hunting bow

The cloud makes the most of your financial investment. You don’t need to pay for your own hardware just for it to sit idle.

Scalability – as smart in business as Hermes, god of trade

Cloud solutions are easily scalable, so you can expand or contract recovery capabilities on demand, without having to pay for services you don’t need. This is a massive benefit for SMBs.

Accessible – as accessible as Aphrodite’s skirts, but in a good way

Because you don’t need to make a massive investment in hardware or in-house specialised recovery knowledge, cloud services (the good ones) put SMBs in a position to adopt an enterprise-level solution that otherwise would be beyond their reach. So not only do cloud solutions require less financial and resourcing investment, they also enable SMBs to achieve the same type of recovery times, recovery points and security levels as large enterprises.

Your entire business in the cloud: phones, emails and calendars

Cloud backup and disaster recovery will give you the confidence that you can maintain business some form of business continuity, no matter the weather. But ultimately, you can run your entire business from the cloud.

All your phone settings, call routings, apps and configurations are saved remotely, in the cloud, so you can still access and manage your phone system from any location with an Internet connection. Unlike the early days of Voice over Internet Protocol, when users could only access a VoIP network from a computer, today you can access it from business handsets and any mobile device with an Internet connection.

The same goes for your email and calendar. For example, with the Microsoft Office 365 suite of cloud solutions, you can access your email, calendar and contacts from any device. You can even conference or collaborate on files with your teams in real time, regardless of physical location. So, if you’ve had to disperse your teams to locations that aren’t your primary site, your people can still keep working and communicating in way that should appear seamless to clients and customers.

The cloud can also provide resilience for your internet connection, with failover that ensures that if one internet connection fails for whatever reason, you will maintain a seamless connection, ensuring business as usual – even wirelessly with 3 and 4G.

To find out how our business continuity/disaster recovery solutions work, check out this two-minute video: