Do you know your wife’s telephone number?
Or your neighbor’s? Chances are, even the numbers you use regularly are stored on your mobile phone, and you never actually have to dial them. Not only that, but your phone is smart enough to keep your recently dialled, frequently dialled, and please don’t answer numbers neatly categorized too. And that’s just on your phone.
How much more information do you access on a daily basis via computers? No matter where you are or what time it is, you can check on the progress of an order, confirm payment, or find someone’s number. Love ‘em or hate ‘em – computers make our world go round.
Big business, big data
Today, everything can be boiled down to zeroes and ones. Data is being collected from more places, by more means, and in larger volumes than ever before. Big data is the new “big thing”, and can be used for a variety of purposes from addressing global hunger to keeping shoppers happy.
Financial services, healthcare, energy companies, accountants, lawyers, retail, and communications are trailblazers when it comes to big data. Big data helps companies gain a sustainable competitive advantage through valuable analytic solutions and integrated marketing applications.
New reward, new risk
Just recently – June 22 – Microsoft’s Office 365, with 18.2 million subscribers, was attacked by a massive zero-day Cerber ransomware that comprised a ransom note accompanied by an audio file explaining the attack and how to salvage access to the files. It took Microsoft more than 24 hours to identify the attack and start hindering the attachment.
Ransomware is a fast growing threat and data intensive industries are prime targets. The smart thing for data-driven businesses to do, though, is to invest in proper backup. Having an instantaneous backup solution in place means that if your business gets infected by malware, ransomware, or any other data impacting problem, you could be back up and running within an hour.
If you would like to find out more about protecting your valuable data, please contact us for more information.
