News

Published on Wed 18 February, 2009
While I'm not exactly an obsessive compulsive or paranoid person, I do pride myself on being extreme careful and meticulous with my possessions. However, it seems that one can never be too careful, as I had recently discovered. I had brought my laptop with me while on holiday a couple weeks back when the operating system crashed and wiped out all the data on my hard drive. Now, being this extremely careful person, I had in fact backed up the data on two separate external hard drives, but both hard drives weren't with me then. I ended up getting an operating system reset from the local service center, and had to make do without my applications and programs for the rest of my holiday. Then I got back, discovered Acronis True Image Home, and rued the fact that if I had had it installed on my laptop before, I could have restored my entire operating system, settings, applications, programs and data with the simple touch of a button.

Published on Wed 11 February, 2009
The damage caused by a malicious worm to your computer can be undone using appropriate back up software. This is in fact deemed a much better solution as by the time security vendors release a patch, it's usually already too late. Kevin Moreau, general manager of Acronis UK & Ireland, states that “Having the ability to rollback to an uninfected state guarantees security, even when systems fail against threats such as the downadup worm. Plus, if you already have a backup and recovery system in place, this form of protection is essentially free, something to consider in IT budget crunch times.”

Published on Wed 04 February, 2009
Acronis has announced that its corporate Acronis True Image backup and disaster recovery software for servers and workstations "now supports virtual machines and file formats from Citrix XenServer". In more detail, the software now supports "every major virtualisation platform, including VMware, Microsoft, Parallels and Citrix/Xen", and some of the other new features include dual destination and integration with Acronis Recovery for Microsoft Exchange.

Published on Wed 28 January, 2009
Businesses are coming under increasing threat from hackers using zero-day attacks. Zero-day attacks are "essentially when unknown or unpatched vulnerability is exploited in the window between a vendor identifying a virus and when the vendor patch is issued". To circumvent this potentially sitcky situation, Acronis suggests that companies "need to have the ability to roll back to an uninfected state to guarantee security even when anti-virus systems are defeated, malware finds its way on to PCs or servers, or other systems are otherwise compromised".

Published on Wed 21 January, 2009
Acronis has just unveiled a portal for all its resellers and distributors. The portal offers "a hotline, open during office hours, to answer partner enquiries", and provides "24 hour access to sales and marketing collateral, in addition to technical resources allowing partners to gain in depth knowledge of Acronis and its solutions". So now, all of Acronis resellers and distributors (including us) are better equipped and prepared to answer all your queries about the various Acronis product.

Published on Wed 14 January, 2009
It seems to me that the millennium bug came late, nine years late to be exact. Long story short, my laptop died and cleaned out all my data on new year's eve. Data recovery specialist blamed it on corrupted software, and quoted me an exorbitant fee to get my files back which I flatly refused. Because I had invested in Acronis. I had actually backed up my all file archives onto on external hard drive but didn't have access to it at that time as I was away with my folks. So no matter where you are or how far away from your back up hard drive are you, Acronis will put you at ease whenever such situations arise.

Published on Wed 24 December, 2008
Yet another instance of embarrassing data loss, but this time, it's not a major online corporate entity, it's the Bar Council of London. A news report on the internet stated that "a laptop and four computer hard-drives were stolen from the London offices of the Bar Council". The contents within the stolen devices include "records of all practising barristers including thousands of personal bank account details", and "the details of 1500 complaints lodged about barristers with the complainants' names and addresses and details of witnesses and barristers involved". Although this incident is by no means an accident which could have been prevented with good data management practices, it does serve to further highlight the crippling effect of data lost, and the importance of preventing it.

Published on Wed 17 December, 2008
When even hackers are concerned about certain perils of the internet, you should be too! A news report states that “The ethical hackers have come up with a public interest litigation (PIL) to force the government to take stern steps to counter terrorism.” Their concern arose mainly after the Mumbai terror attacks where incidents of cyber terrorism occurred.

Published on Wed 10 December, 2008
Even major dot com companies are not immune to embarrassing data losses. InternetNews reports that while trying to get its users to alter their email settings, popular social networking site Facebook “has blown the lid off an embarrassing loss of user data inside the social network”. While fortunately, no vital information such as bank account and credit card details were lost or stolen, this lost of data provides insights on just how careless Facebook is in handling your information and whether they can be trusted. If even a major corporation, serving millions of customers on a daily basis can get careless and lose confidential information, perhaps it’s time to adopt better data protection practices on your own personal computer.

Published on Wed 03 December, 2008
It can be a little disconcerting to realize how reliant we’ve become on technology these days and wonder what if that technology one day failed us. I’m not talking about anything dramatic like in the movie The Matrix. Instead, I’m talking about how something as simple as a power outage resulting in the loss of data ranging from a final year thesis to important corporate information, could potentially turn our worlds upside down. Still, technology does represent a significant advance in our way of life and is here to stay so it is up to us to ensure that like fire, it remains a reliable servant and not a cruel master.

Published on Tue 28 October, 2008
NEW ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE HOME 2009! Acronis True Image Home 2009 provides maximum flexibility to ensure your computers protection and you can recover from unforeseen events such as viruses, unstable software downloads and hard drive failures. Create an exact copy of your PC for full backup or only backup your important data and application settings — it’s all up to you!

Published on Mon 21 April, 2008
Planning is the key to disaster recovery, and it is the responsibility of the IT Manager to convince management they need to spend the money to ensure the data security. A popular and effective tactic is for the IT Manager to make the Business Managers aware of the trials and pitfalls of not being properly prepared for a possible disaster, citing downtime, costs of recover, opportunity costs for business lost during the period the systems are inoperable and other risks the business faces sans protection. Only then should the IT Manager discuss the solution options. This is obviously very similar to the way an insurance salesman might pitch financial protection in the case of disaster. It's playing on fear, but it's justified.

Published on Mon 14 April, 2008
Every enterprise needs to be certain they are able to restore their electronic systems in the event of some unforseen disaster. Enterprise decision makers understand why business continuity is important: The survival of the enterprise depends on it. One great way to ensure that data continuity is to install Acronis True Image which allows an image to be taken when the server/system is operating at optimum performance and then to restore to that moment should disaster strike or the server fail. Of course, incremental backups and other functions are available which makes this software an unbeatable form of ensuring data will always be able to be restored in the even of some nasty dilemma that might just wipe all your data.

Published on Mon 07 April, 2008
Unreliable electricity supplies, natural disasters, terrorist attacks and faulty hardware have highlighted the need for businesses, large and small, to have systems to deal with potential downtime of machines and data. As computing systems become more complex they also become more inter-dependent, which means if one part of the system goes down, the entire chain can be adversely affected. It's amazing how many companies do not actually have a disaster recovery plan in place. These days most companies do at least make backups of important data, but very few have implemented methods to get up and running should a disaster actually occur. Have a one terrabyte external drive backed up with company data is fine (so long as it's offsite) but what do you do with it if your hard-drive is a smouldering mess?

Published on Thu 28 February, 2008
Soho.org reports seven mandatory steps to fulfil your fiduciary duty to prevent data loss: 1. Perform daily backups, 2. Take the data off site/back on-site daily, 3. Perform weekly full backups, 4. Do weekly test restores on random files, 5.Always rotate tapes, 6. Catalog tapes and 7. Replace tapes on a regular basis. Fortunately there are options for small business for restoring data quickly and efficiently like the Acronis True Image range of data backup and recovery software.

Published on Thu 21 February, 2008
International common law has now set the precedent that corporation can be held responsible for data loss if it causes detriment to another party. In FJS Electronics V Fidelity Bank, Fidelity bank had a data loss that resulted in loss to FJS. FJS sued Fidelity and won. Australian corporations beware, international common law is relevant in Australia and without due diligence to your fiduciary standard of care you will be held liable.

Published on Thu 14 February, 2008
Theft and personal data loss has reported to have soared to record levels in 2007. Modern hackers are easily staying ahead of the technological curve and so far the only security systems have been reactive. A US tech Co. estimated that in 2006 162 million records were compromised. It’s a global problem and it’s going to need cooperation on a global scale to even begin to fight the problem.

Published on Thu 07 February, 2008
A London based newspaper reported recently that a numerous government MP’s are calling for criminal accountability in the face of major and repeated instances of data loss. The calls came as the details of 25 million child support claimants was lost, and one week later 3 million learner drivers were mysteriously wiped from the system. Proponents for new legislation claim that personal data loss is a widespread problem throughout government bodies and contractors.

Published on Thu 31 January, 2008
Of the many forms of malware out there, ‘downloaders’ can be the most costly. They allow a hacker to remotely upload malicious codes on to a victims computer. An example of a downloader is the ‘diehard’, Windows based downloader. The top downloader in terms of traffic volume for December was the NetSky.q worm which surged to 20% of email traffic last month.

Published on Thu 24 January, 2008
Sometimes it seems that people are trying to lose their data on purpose. Another data loss case is where an external hard drive became infested with ants. What did the tech do? He sprayed the ants with bug spray. Not surprisingly the ants died, and so did the hard drive. Other cases include the accidental spillage of acid on a drive, and even putting one through the washing machine.

Published on Thu 17 January, 2008
There is however, a humorous side to data loss. Ontrack Data Recovery reported incidents where a British scientist got fed up with a squeaky hard drive, so he drilled a hold in the casing and poured oil in. Unsurprisingly the hard drive stopped, but so did the squeaking! Another case is where a storage device was dropped out of an aeroplane, with a parachute of course, but the chute failed and destroyed the device.

Published on Thu 10 January, 2008
There is however, a humorous side to data loss. Ontrack Data Recovery reported incidents where a British scientist got fed up with a squeaky hard drive, so he drilled a hold in the casing and poured oil in. Unsurprisingly the hard drive stopped, but so did the squeaking! Another case is where a storage device was dropped out of an aeroplane, with a parachute of course, but the chute failed and destroyed the device.