The number of ways for data to be lost or destroyed is virtually endless. There are physical threats, such as computer theft, water, or fire damage. Additionally, there are internal threats that result in loss of data such as hard drive crashes, OS crashes and Internet viruses. Whether the data loss is personal or professional, its effects can be devastating. It is crucial to protect against the loss of data through various storage methods including cloud storage services.

While losing precious baby photos or cherished vacation memories is certainly heartbreaking, the effect of data loss on companies is far more severe. Modern businesses rely on technology for nearly every single aspect of operation and as a result, generate and maintain copious amounts of data in order to run efficiently. Once data is lost it can be difficult for some companies to return from this, and a company could end up going out of business as a result of missed sales.

Typically, data loss occurs in one of a few different scenarios. The most deleterious scenario is one in which data is lost and irretrievable. In the event of unrecoverable data corporations may lose important business information or risk having the only information be in hard copy form. Hard copy is becoming increasingly insignificant. Therefore, not having data backed up in a secure location is an enormous risk for a business to take.

If a business has taken precaution and used services such as Ross Backup, then it is highly likely that data lost will be retrievable. While this is certainly preferable to data lost forever, there are still negative considerations to this scenario. The primary concern in the event that data must be retrieved is the amount of time lost while the data is restored. Data is unavailable while recovery operations are underway and the effects of the recovery operation are far reaching. Applications that rely on stored data to function may fail as a result of the time it takes to recover data. This is true especially when relational databases are in use.

The primary effect that data loss has on businesses is also the most harmful:  the loss of income or sales. For instance, data loss may result in the applications that allow consumers to make purchases to fail if the sales application must reference lost (or in the process of being retrieved) consumer information. When a company misses sales opportunity, revenue is lost. The bottom line is that a serious data loss could result in the demise of a business. It is imperative that businesses and individuals take precautions against data loss by backing up or storing data elsewhere.