For reasons of business continuity this case study report is leaving the Company name out. Worrying about Data Loss is a going concern of all businesses.

Going back a few years, one of our customers gave us a call on Thanksgiving day indicating that they had a large chemical fire, and reached out for help. The voice on the phone reflected not only the emotional toll of what just happened but they also had a lot of uncertainty of what to do. Prior to the fire, this business had taken the time to build 2 separate data centers in their facility and the the primary datacenter was near where the chemical fire occurred and actually was so hot that it melted the equipment. In fact, it was so hot that it melted the large I-beams supporting the floor.

What about the backup datacenter room?

Well the problem was that the smoke damage from the fire entered the backup datacenter room through the ventilation system which was melted in various spots creating huge vacuum holes sucking in smoke.

They reached out for help to their providers and although the incumbent was a provider, they never even returned their phone calls by the time a solution was already completed. NetAccess is a smaller, customer centric, and much more nimble group of professionals and immediately called in our key team members to assist. The team knew the importance of reacting quickly. Our teams at NetAccess strive to get to know most of our customers by name. Our customers are not numbers, and we strive to understand what and how each business functions with the services we provide. Although we didn’t provide services such as phone services at the time, we were in a position to be able to help with other services to get this Business that was offline back up and running quickly.

And they needed help fast.

We knew that businesses that are in this position, ones that are a perilous state of loosing their data, have a failure rate of over 60% in the 1st six months of a disaster, and a staggering 72% disappear within 2 years that suffer major data loss. And here was a Company that couldn’t even send their employees in to the building due to fire Marshal orders. They had no phones and uncertainty surrounding their equipment even functioning. 300 people were on the brink of loosing their jobs.

We opened up our datacenter on Thanksgiving Day and they moved their backup equipment in. We installed vinegar trays to capture the smell.

We let 40 of their staff move into our office.

In 2 days their phones were working and ringing on their temporary desks.

We worked with their IT team to help them find them 4 different locations in the city to house their staff and build a private network; wired and wirelessly connected them all together with 100Mbps service to all 4 locations in 5 days. A fully operational network and phone service including some ‘borrowed’ equipment built that could support 300 people.

This immense effort resulted in this business being able to carry on parts of their revenue generating activities, maintain their presence on the web and telephone. They had the best chance of success. This business still exists today partly because of our response time, willingness to figure out an out-of-the-box solution, and an understanding of the business continuity issues at stake. NetAccess accomplished all of this before they even got a returned call from someone who had no idea what services they needed or the realization of the potential impacts to their business by their lack of response or client knowledge. There will always be this gap between the incumbents and smaller more nimble customer centric organizations like NetAccess, and a key reason why bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better.

Without an effective partnership with your IT provider, service providers have a limited focus on the service rather than the larger benefits of business objectives or outcomes.

We would welcome a free consultation with you to see how we can help be part of your IT plan. If interested please reach out to us 905-524-2001 or sales@netaccess.ca to arrange a talk with one of our professionals.

Worrying about Data Loss

Data Loss Prevention is a Process not a Technology

• Build Business and Functional Requirements That Reflect Your Purpose
• Implement Five Simple Processes to Help Use Data Loss Prevention Effectively
  • A High-Level Process to Provide Context
  • A Process to Create or Update Policies
  • A Process to Provision and Deprovision Access to the Prevention Platform
  • A Process to Maintain Effective Detection of Sensitive Data
  • A Process for Triage and Resolution
• Implement Reporting Linked to Data Loss Prevention Policies