One of the most commonly overlooked steps to protecting your data and technology investments is power/surge protection. While many businesses have two or three data backup systems in place, they often leave their systems, network and backup drives unprotected from power surges.

A power surge can cause complete system failure, or partial system failure for workstations, servers, hard drives or anything else connected to the electrical outlets or the phone lines. Power surges can occur to due lightening, electrical issues in the building, or at the pole.

In order to properly protect your system, every entry point for electrical surges should be filtered by adequate surge protectors and battery backups if possible. Be sure that you have a qualified professional examine your network to make sure you are protected. No surge protection or filtering system can guarantee your investment or data will be protected, especially from lightning strikes. However, the appropriate steps to protect your data can save you thousands of dollars in hardware and potential data loss.

When examining your network for surge protection, keep in mind that even just one computer that connects directly to an AC outlet, that is connected to the network can serve as an entry point for a surge that can destroy all of your computers.

One of the most commonly overlooked entry points is the analog phone line which connects to your fax machine or your DSL modem. DSL Modems, and some fax machines, then connect directly to the network providing another entry point that can destroy your technology investment.

Battery backups are especially important for your servers and workstations. As you may already know, you should never just turn a system off. This can result in loss or corruption of data as Windows is always writing information to the hard drive during normal operation. Sudden loss of power can have the same effect. A battery backup unit will detect when the power is out and shut the system down appropriately using the available battery power.

Some UPS units will even allow you to work long enough to finish what you were doing, save what you are working on and then shut down manually. Affordable UPS system will cost anywhere from $50 to $300 dollars. Enterprise class backup units are available that cost in the $1000’s which allow for longer work time during a power outage.