Your files are gone, now what? We previously wrote a blog post about backups & how to make them secure. Despite working relatively securely, your files are lost. Can happen, happens to the best. The most important thing now is to get everything back as soon as possible! Here's how to do it.
Retrieve previous versions
There are a number of ways you can easily recover your files yourself. Your staff can easily do this themselves. If you work with versions, it can be done that way. For example, in Microsoft Teams, where you can see the versions back if you worked directly in Word or in Word online.
Shadow copies are similar to this and are available on servers. These are copies of current folders and files, or rather how the state was at the time of the copy. The advantage is that these copies take up little space. You can easily view them with right-click > properties > previous versions.
Please respond as soon as possible
The most important thing is continuity. You want to be off the air as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the more people will be affected. Don't want to! Notify your IT department as soon as possible. Don't have an IT manager, but use an outside IT party like Lime Networks? If so, contact them immediately. IT experts have experienced this before and know exactly what to do. That way, the problem is resolved as quickly as possible and you have as little downtime as possible.
What helps a lot: make sure you know everything about the situation. What exactly did you lose? When did you have it or did you last change it? What do you think went wrong? What were you doing when it went wrong? These are important questions, where comprehensive answers can significantly reduce downtime.
Sample case: Cryptolocker
We don't want to scare you. Again, losing files can happen to anyone and that's why you have experts like us. A while ago, we had a client who was suffering from a Cryptolocker. This is someone who takes your files hostage and wants Bitcoins in return. The hacker encrypts your files, making your files encrypted and therefore unusable. The client was somewhat panicked because the hacker was talking about large amounts of Bitcoins that equated to sky-high amounts of money. We immediately got in the car with a USB drive. This had backup software from the cloud on it. We logged on and an hour later everything was up and running again. So the downtime was only an hour and all files were fully restored. So staying calm is the most important thing!
Retention
We back up every day. But what if I threw something away two years ago? Or it's at least 2 years ago but you don't know. What tape is the info on or do you actually still have it. Retention is the concept of how far you can go back in time and at what intervals. You can best keep data that is a year old in version of a month. But of your live data that you use this day, you'll want it backed up every hour. Discuss what you expect from your retention and make sure you include this in your continuity plan.
By the way, did you know that in business you have to keep all your data that you use to achieve your sales for 7 years according to the Internal Revenue Service? That's not just bookkeeping but also virtually all e-mail, your sales meeting or your operational documents. Who keeps what has what. Whether it is for the Inland Revenue or that troublesome lawsuit that has been dragging on for 3 years.
