Are Your Backing Up Your Personal Injury Computer Files?
Backup of firm data is another important component to your data storage plan. Recent disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, emphasize the need for a solid backup plan. The frequency with which your firm backs up its data depends on a number of factors, including the firm size and the firm’s reliance on computer data. A good policy for backing up firm data is to do it every day, so you do not lose more than a day of work in the worst case scenario. There are two components to a good firm data storage plan: on-site and off-site backup.
On-Site Backup: Like external hard drives, on-site backup is basically a process whereby changes to the firm’s network are copied every day at a certain time to backup “tapes.” The tapes should be manually rotated every day, and stored in a secure location (possibly a fire-safe). Typically, daily backup tapes are saved for a week to ten days, and you should have monthly backup tapes for about the past year.
Off-Site Backup: Like on-line backup, this is a process whereby the information on your network is saved daily to a remote server, allowing access to data if disaster strikes your network or if you need to access a prior version of documents you’ve updated. Your vendor will make an exact copy of your total data, called a “seed,” and will store it on their data center. Then, once a day (typically at night), the changes made to your firm’s data are uploaded over the internet, modifying the vendors data. Your vendor will keep a regular rotation of information, so they can recreate the data as it existed in your network at specific points in the past. If you need to pull individual files, or backup the entire system, they can facilitate the process.
How often has our law firm need to check out our backup? Never. I've also never had to make a homeowner's insurance claim either. But it is important that I stick with both.
