plan will entail. “If it should happen, there are some very simple steps to do right away, like immediately remove the PC from the network while troubleshooting, download a trusted malware program like Microsoft Security Essentials that will help find the issue, back up your data right away, and follow the prompts to remove the virus.” When choosing a malware program, Bates says business owners should consider the cadence of “definition updates,” which are what help the programs work at an optimal level. “Ideally, the program should update daily to mitigate a business’ exposure to the latest threats,” she says. Another way businesses can prepare for and survive disasters is to migrate existing systems into the cloud, says Jayson Stangel, director of eBusiness, North America for Business & Decision, a company that has offices in 18 countries as well as throughout the United States, including the Scottsdale office where Stangel is based. “The cloud offers better levels of redundancy spread over a wide geography, which most small businesses cannot afford to do on their own.” In addition to cloud services, Stangel’s company helps its customers though its Managed Services practice, which owns and operates Tier 3 data centers and disaster recovery solutions. “Customer data is replicated to our disaster recovery site. Because this is done at the hardware level, we have the ability to disaster-proof virtually any application or service.” It starts with helping the businesses define their requirements and understand the impacts of those requirements. Lee admits his original website had some platform flaws it in that led to it getting hacked so frequently. To help solve the problem and remain proactive about hacking, Lee hired hosting partner FireHost in the fall of 2009, and has remained cybercrime-free ever since. He is also back in good graces with Google. However, the analytics that FireHost provides him show that many hacking attempts are still happening. “It has been interesting to see how severe this problem still is,” Lee says. “But in almost three years since addressing the problem with FireHost, we have not gone down once due to hacking, despite several hundred attempts.” Business & Decision businessdecision.us Microsoft Corp. microsoft.com Miracle Berry mberry.us
inbusine ssmag.com
WHERE YOUR ORGANIZATION GETS NOTICED!
Bringing together nonprofits and the people who support them Call: 480.481.2002 / Email: Myra@Myragards.com Website: blacktie-arizona.com / Brochure: PromoteYourNonProfit.com
F e b r u a r y 2012
31