How strong is your office’s back-up system? Could you honestly say that you would be able to restore to the previous day’s information if your computer crashed? With the current focus on digital and cloud-based technology, this blog post is about the importance of backing up Trust Accounting information. We use the 3-2-1 process to ensure that you don’t experience partial or total loss of data.
Our own in house IT and Tech guru Jerome offers his suggestions on managing this backing up process within your organisation.
An earlier blog post dealt with the top 10 mistakes made by agents. The number one mistake consistently made was not backing up daily. If this has happened to you, you know that it is an absolute nightmare. It usually results in tears and becomes a very expensive exercise in trying to get data back into your trust accounting software.
One of the stories that I like to share in my trust account training is of a situation that I witnessed several years ago where a major agency in Newtown burnt down to the ground. I wondered what their backing up method was? But loss of data doesn’t have be caused by fire! Theft, power surge, technology failure or even something simple like accidentally unplugging a power cord can spell disaster.
The PSBA Regulations 2014 Part 4, 22 (10)a. tells us that we should back-up our data at a minimum of once per month but frankly that’s not often enough. You only have to experience one of the above scenarios to have all of your hard work disappear. The agents that have had this happen to them, now back up 4 times a day. It’s better to be over cautious than under.
What does Jerome (our IT Angel) suggest? Follow the 3-2-1 backup process and avoid the tears:
With the advance of technology, the proliferation of digital media means we need to safeguard our data even more carefully to prevent tears and a lot of swearing when things go wrong.
What could potentially go wrong? External hard drives can fail, small SD cards are easily lost, your office or home can be subject to theft, water damage, fire or in many cases that folder on your desktop with all your important information is accidentally deleted.
To avoid the stress and sleepless nights, keeping your data safe can be as easy as following the 3-2-1 backup rule which has become one of the most well known backup philosophies in today’s digital age.
So what is it?
Rule 1: Keep 3 copies of anything that is important to you.
What this means is you would have one original copy on your main computer and two copies of that original. In the event the original copy was deleted, computer crashed etc, you still have two copies.
Rule 2: Back-up using 2 types of media.
Use a mixture of media types for backing up. Have one backup copy on an external hard drive and the second backup copy on a USB stick. By using different media types you are protected if one of these fail when you need it most.
Rule 3: Keep a back-up copy off-site.
This rule is particularly important in the worst case scenario of your house/office burning down, flooding or in the unfortunate case of theft. Keeping an off-site back-up has become increasingly easy with many companies now offering a cloud backup service such as Carbonite or Crashplan*.
Keeping a cloud back-up is one of the best solutions to off-site backup as it is hassle free and automatic. Another method is to copy your files to an external hard drive or USB and take it to a second office, your home, or a relative’s or friend’s home. The important part is to take a copy off-site. If you opt to take this physical backup off-site approach, don’t forget to update this back-up copy at least weekly.
In Summary…
Every business, regardless of industry, should be following the 3-2-1 backup rule for all of their data. Of course use this rule to protect personal files such as your digital photo collection. How devastated would you be if you lost your whole collection of photos?
“3-2-1” may sound like a lot of work, but just ask anyone who has lost their trust account information. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone!
*We have no affiliation with these companies. Please read the product description and decide if this is the best solution for your company.
What do you think of the 3-2-1 back-up method? We’d love to know your thoughts.
~ Jane Morgan is the Director of End of Month Angels, a consultancy firm specialising in Trust Accounting. Jane knows the legislation and the requirements of running a successful Real Estate office because she practiced Real Estate herself for 18 years. Don’t trust just anyone with your trust accounting. Trust End of Month Angels and get back to what you do best – growing your business.