Protect Your Digital Assets During National Preparedness Month

SEATTLE, Sept. 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Mozy^®, the world's most trusted provider of secure data backup and access, would like to remind individuals and businesses that September is National Preparedness Month, as sponsored by The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). In the wake of recent hurricanes, wildfires, tornados and floods, now is the perfect time for individuals and businesses to assure they are prepared for disasters or emergencies at home, at work and in their communities. Preparing for an emergency should include protecting not only one's physical assets, but digital assets as well.   

"It's easy to imagine the impact of a disaster on the physical items in your home or business, but we often overlook the value of what's stored on our computers, servers, and tablets," said Dave Robinson, VP of Marketing at Mozy. "The irreplaceable photos, videos, financial documents, and business files on your laptops and servers are just as susceptible to fire and water damage as the furniture, printers, and file cabinets. Both are important and need to be protected."

Here are a few simple steps to make sure your digital assets are protected:

1. Store copies of important physical documents in a safe place locally as well as offsite.
2. Sign up for an online backup service – to protect everything important on your computer.
3. Make sure your antivirus software is up to date.
4. Consider investing in an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) if your area is prone to power surges or failures.
5. Scan important physical documents so you have a digital copy as well.
6. Keep a hard copy list of your important passwords, and consider using a password manager program.

Completing these simple steps can give peace of mind before, during and after an emergency or natural disaster. Such peace of mind was felt by Ashlie Kerr of Nashville, Tenn., as floodwaters rose towards their home a couple of years ago:

"I had delivered my third child and brought her home from the hospital on a Saturday afternoon," said Kerr. "We celebrated with our family who had come in town, snapping a few hundred pictures. As we awoke Sunday morning, the rising flood required us to immediately evacuate our home. As the volunteers drove us away, I cried as I watched our plants disappear under water and our fence go floating away. However, I knew my young family was safe, and I knew that even if the water destroyed our computer, our digital baby photos were backed up by Mozy; that in itself was an incredibly comforting feeling to me."

The Pelindaba Lavender farm in the San Juan Islands, Wash., suffered a catastrophic fire that destroyed everything, including the company's servers and valuable business data. Fortunately owner Stephen Robins was prepared with MozyPro and quickly rebuilt his business. "It was the worst time this could have happened—summer is our big season and we had no inventory except what was physically in our stores. But it was amazing how quickly Mozy enabled us to get our server hardware restored and running," said Robins. Within one week, Pelindaba had restored its normal business operations in temporary office space and its new Macintosh server was ready to deliver all of the company's vital business operating information. "MozyPro made our recovery a cut-and-dried process, and it ran so consistently that we never needed to worry about losing our data."

Whether the emergency is from a food, fire, hurricane, earthquake, chemical spill, or terrorist incident, September is a good time to take the simple steps to be prepared. A good place to start is the FEMA checklist found at www.ready.gov.

About Mozy

Mozy is the world's most trusted provider of secure data access and backup for consumers and businesses, with more than three million customers, including 80,000 business customers and more than 90 petabytes of information stored at its multiple data centers around the globe. Mozy was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2007 and operates as part of Decho Corporation, an EMC company. More information can be found at www.mozy.com.

Mozy and MozyPro are registered trademarks of Decho Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. 

SOURCE EMC Corporation