Frequently Asked Questions

Is my organization too small to justify offsite storage of our data? An organization is never too small to implement a disaster recovery plan. Your critical business information is the lifeblood of your organization. Protecting it should be one of your number one concerns. Southwest Data Protection wants to help you and your organization attain safety for your data.

Can my organization afford offsite storage with SWDP? Affordable leading edge data storage technology is the service we provide. Southwest Data Protection believes in the importance of disaster planning and strives to make this service available to everyone at a reasonable price.

How often should my organization be doing data back ups? Each individual organization has unique needs. Ask yourself: How many hours/days/weeks of business information am I willing to lose? This is data that your organization must reenter and reprocess. The process of redoing the work will push you even further behind schedule. The whole event probably costing your organization thousands of dollars, if not more.

If we have a disaster, and need our backup media, how soon can it be provided? After you contact Southwest Data Protection and explain your need, your data can be provided to you very quickly. Next day service : 24 hours or less. Rush Delivery : 4 hours or less. Emergency Delivery: 2 hours or less.

Why do I need a special service for computer media?  Don't fire resistant files and safes protect everything from fire?   Fire resistant files and safes are available for different ratings, because paper and media require different levels of protection.  During a fire, paper is more durable within a safe or vault, and can tolerate a wide range of humidity and temperature ranges.  Media such as diskettes, CD's and tapes cannot survive either the higher temperature or humidity levels, and require a much higher standard of protection.

When a disaster strikes will your business be ready? A recent study found that 40% of all small businesses never re-opened their doors following a major disaster. When tragedy strikes, many companies are unable to recover their operations and keep their customers. Business continuity planning is an important step toward managing business risks, including natural disasters, terrorism, employee sabotage, computer failure, and human error. Off-Site data protection is an important ingredient in any business continuation strategy.

Are you at risk?

A disaster could strike at any time, causing you to lose all or most of the critical data needed to run business today. Ignoring that possibility or putting off action, is not the responsible way to protect your organization's vital assets.

If you don't back up your systems regularly, or keep copies of important documents, now is the time to change your organization's procedures. Having an up-to-date copy of your data and important paperwork, kept outside your office, could potentially save your organization from damage caused by a computer virus, power surge, fire, or other similar disaster.

Once you have made the commitment to establish a backup schedule, prioritize critical documents, and then treat that information as your organization's safety net, you have begun to remove risk from your business. What you do from there, determines your level of risk, and your ability to lower that risk.

Many organizations rely on employees to periodically take their back up data home to provide an off-site solution. Minimal security, insurance concerns, errors, employee fraud, and the risk of damaging the backup media make this approach very RISKY.

Using a bank's safety deposit box or an on-site safe to store back up media could result in the data not being available after normal business hours and these types of locations might not meet with the media manufacturer's recommendations for storage.

For your back up media, on-line back up services are relatively expensive, time consuming, plus there are security, recourse, and ownership issues to be aware of. Additionally you don't have the safety net of a clone tape available, should your provider go out of business or change hands because of a merger.

The Ultimate in Protection, Southwest Data Protection, Inc. is in the U.S. safety zone.