Many small business owners think they have nothing to fear from hackers and online criminals, but those attitudes are precisely why hackers have started focusing on small businesses.

A recent study by Visa showed that since 2005, small businesses have been the source of 80 percent of data security compromises, and another study by the security firm WebRoot found that hackers “are increasingly liking the low barriers presented by the mom-and-pop shops".

In addition, small business owners rarely think about the security of their backups. Just like your original data, your backups are susceptible to corruption, theft, or destruction in the same disasters that destroy the original data files. In fact, nearly half of tape backups fail to restore data when needed.

With all of this in mind, FlexITechs offers important services and layers of protection for your company's and customers' valuable data from theft, disaster, crashes, accidents and corruption, including policy development and testing of backup files.

PLANS:
• Security Plan -- FlexITechs will develop a Security Plan that includes data security procedures such as the physical protection of your technology infrastructure, employee security education, recommended security improvements, and repercussions for violations of your security policies.
  
  
• Computer Usage Policy -- FlexITechs will help you develop a Computer Usage policy that includes who can access which network resources, employee computer monitoring methods, and the repercussions for violations of the policies.
  
  
• Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan -- To ensure that your company gets back up and running quickly, FlexITechs will develop a plan that includes procedures for recovering from disasters such as fires, floods, lightning strikes, theft, and other calamaties that destroy your technology infrastructure and data.

DATA STORAGE:
• On-Site Backups -- We'll automate your backups via a manual backup schedule using CDs or USB thumb drives that can be swapped out and taken off-site so your data won't be lost in a catastrophe like a fire or flood that destroys your office and computer systems.
  
  
• Remote Backups -- Protect your data by storing it through our online data storage service. Using our online storage service for daily backups, you don't have to worry about making the backups or losing your data to a hard drive crash, accidental deletion, or a catastrophe like a fire, flood or lightning strike. Completely automated, your data is securely backed up and encrypted to two mirrored data centers that store multiple days of backups in the event the latest backup was corrupted.

DATA PROTECTION:
• Anti-Virus Software -- As authorized resellers of the complete line of AVG Anti-Virus products, the most cost-effective anti-virus software on the market, we protect your data from corruption or deletion by viruses and other malware.
  
  
• Anti-Spyware Software -- We utilize the most effective anti-spyware tools to prevent theft of your data and your company's and customers' information.
  
  
• Redundancy -- You can buy a true server from FlexITechs that includes built-in redundancy with multiple hard drives so your business can continue operating while repairs are made. Or, we can analyze your current server and propose upgrades to provide such redundancy.
  
  
• Physical Security -- We can show you how to protect your company's servers from theft or damage by burglars or disgruntled employees.
  
  
• Network Security -- We can build a new server or upgrade your existing server with Microsoft's secure Small Business Server 2003 operating system (2008 version of Small Business Server coming this year). We can also close potential holes in your existing network. If you have or want a wireless network, we can secure it with data encryption, MAC filtering and other security methods.
  
  
• Network Monitoring -- We can monitor your network remotely to check for changes that might compromise the security of your data.

DATA RECOVERY:
• File Recovery -- Depending on the value of your data and the difficulty of reproducing it, it might make sense to have a failed hard drive scanned with specialized software to attempt to recover the data. FlexITechs can scan your drive and potentially recover data that hasn't been backed up.