Backing Up Your Computer Remotely Over the Internet

Love it or hate it - your single most important practice tool and support system is your computer - without it, and the data it contains, you're out of business.

Backing up your computer files is your main defense against any computer malfunction or theft. Should the worst happen, with adequate backups all you will lose is the time is takes to upload the data onto the repaired system or on to another computer. Without backups, you could lose part or all of your practice data and files. Besides the monetary value of the loss, you could also expose yourself to serious liabilities should the loss cause you to miss a deadline. It’s not uncommon for companies to file for bankruptcy after a major loss of computer data.

And yet, a surprising number of companies don't back up or do so sporadically. The main reason is that backing up properly is a pain - it's challenging for those of us who aren't tech-savvy, time-consuming and expensive to set up, and needs lots of discipline to keep it going.  

However, the advent of high-speed internet has made a new and convenient method possible and a Canadian company - Virtual Tape Drive - is quickly establishing itself as a leader in the field. We asked VTD's President, Blue  Melnick, to explain how it all works.

Oomph: How do you get set-up to back-up remotely?

Blue Melnick: To start, you need a high-speed Internet connection. Dial-up doesn't work and cable "light" works only if you don't have a lot of data. With that in place the set up is straightforward. We go through a Q and A with the client to determine what needs to be backed up. Then we install the back-up software, schedule the backups and do the initial one, which takes longer than the regular daily backup. After that, the system backs up every day at the scheduled time and you receive a status report confirming the backup. The set up is also done remotely - we don't have to be physically in your office.

 
Oomph: It sounds fabulous, but how do I know it's working?

Blue: This is an excellent question, especially considering that 34% of companies that backup using tape drives fail to test their backup tapes. Of those that do, 77% have found backup failures and data corruption. [Fact provided by The Strategic Research Institute].

So, with tape drives you have to perform the backup and you also have to manually restore the data at least once per week to ensure that it remains recoverable. The other problem with tape drives is that with each backup you overwrite the previous backup. If you accidentally delete a file and then perform your backup, you also lose that file in the previous backup - which is why you need to set a rotation system with additional tapes - cumbersome, complicated and expensive... 

Virtual Tape Drive automatically stores 71 historical versions of your information over the last 52 weeks. This means that in each 12-month period, you can access your files as they existed on each of the previous 7 days, the previous 52 Sundays, and the last day of each of the previous 12 months. This lets you retrieve files that you lost weeks or even months earlier.

Oomph: Can the data be 'highjacked', stolen or hacked while it's in transit from my computer to your server?

Blue: No. Virtual Tape Drive protects your information against playback attacks, impersonation attacks and Man-In-The-Middle attacks.

Prior to leaving your computer, Virtual Tape Drive compresses and encrypts your data using 448-bit Blowfish encryption technology. To understand what 448-bit encryption means, consider first that online banking technology [employed by all 5 major Canadian banks] uses 128-bit encryption, resulting in 3.4028 x 10 to the power of 38 possible character combinations. For each additional bit, the protection or security level doubles: 129-bit encryption is twice as secure as 128-bit, 130-bit encryption is twice as secure as 129-bit, and so on. No computer in known existence has broken the Blowfish encryption technology.

As well, your data is always housed on our offsite servers in its encrypted state, and only you have the 56-character code [created at the time of installation] needed to decrypt your files.

The integrity of Virtual Tape Drive is also secured. Each Virtual Tape Drive program encrypts portions of its program code to make reverse engineering very difficult. The small amount of data necessary to operate the Virtual Tape Drive software resides in a double-encrypted form placed in the computer's registry. The key to unlock this data is based exclusively on that computer's own digital signature. Moving the data from one computer to another will not allow you to crack open the encrypted data.

Oomph: OK, so how much does all this peace of mind cost?

Blue: We charge a one-time set up fee and a monthly fee. The set up fee includes the data storage consultation, the installation of the Virtual Tape Drive application on your system, a detailed inventory of everything being backed up by VTD, regular monitoring of the backups, all future software upgrades and updates, telephone and on-site technical support. The monthly service charge depends on the quantity of data [measured in gigabytes] and the type of data. Static data [data that doesn't change] is stored at a lower rate per GB than dynamic data, which is data that changes regularly.

As of July 1, 2007, our average monthly service charge was $5.83/GB or $24.82/month.

For more information on Virtual Tape Drive, please visit their website at www.vtdcanada.com