Business in the modern world, large or small, relies heavily on one thing: technology. Almost every company now records its data, customers, transactions and more or less everything on their own database and computer systems. Even something as rural as farming relies heavily upon data analysis and input in order to work out profit margins and viability for future business plans.

This reliance on technology is something which has made all our lives much easier. But it has also created an unparalleled danger for businesses. Roughly six percent of all computers will have serious problems which result in complete data loss in any given year. Out of that statistic, around sixty percent of companies that lose their data, and there have been many examples of this happening, shut down within six months and a whopping ninety-three percent of companies that lose their data for a period of ten days or more have to claim bankruptcy within one year.

Those statistics show just how dangerous having all our data contained in technology actually is. However, there is a very simple solution that any company can take in order to cover themselves against this kind of crippling disaster. Firms such as CA Technologies will back up your entire business data collection and manage it so that in the event of a problem, all the company’s data is kept safe and the effects of the problem are kept to an absolute minimum.

Whilst most large companies have this kind of operation in place, it is incredible that such a huge percentage of small and medium sized businesses overlook something so essential to their own survival. It is estimated that in the United States of America alone, around 11.8 billion dollars is lost due to the failure of companies to provide themselves with adequate data protection and backup. To put that in perspective, that is almost double the amount of money lost through viruses, another major problem businesses have with technology.

Essentially, it boils down to technology awareness rather than technology over-reliance. We use technology to make our lives easier and to be able to control business data in a simple and useful fashion. However, we must remember that anything stored on a computer is not in hard-copy, technology can and will malfunction and we should make sure we are prepared for that inevitability so that we can minimise the fall out when the time comes.