Essential questions regarding your Solicitors Practice data

As Solicitors practices generate large volumes of information, data safety becomes a concern. Simple safety measures such as off-site data backup should be considered.

Faced with computer viruses, spyware, software corruption and hard drive failure, your computer is anything but a "safe" storage site for your solicitors data. However, by having duplicate data backed up elsewhere, computer problems may disrupt minimally the daily operations of running an solicitors practice.

By understanding why data needs to be backed up, what data needs to be backed up and how to back them up, a solicitors practice can protect their data properly. The following questions will help you understand how online back up could help you prevent the loss of your business critical data:

How much is your practice worth?
What data do you back up?
How do you back up data?
When do you back up data?
How do you keep data safe?
What can go wrong?
Who owns the data?

How much is your practive worth?

Is your practice data worth €50,000? Of course. Is it worth €500,000? Probably. In fact, it could be worth €2,000,000.

Imagine the worst-case scenario: your solicitors practice burns down overnight. The next morning, as you sift through the ashes you realize you have no way of knowing what meetings are scheduled that day or any other day. The paper appointment book is gone. You have no way of getting phone numbers to contact clients. You also realize that you have no way to find out how much your clients owe you, because the billing records are gone. So are all the client records. The legal folders with their all-important contracts, as well as essential financial applications and correspondence are gone. All is gone. In other words, all the information or data you need to generate income as a solicitor is gone forever.

Nearly one-half of all companies experiencing a disaster never reopen; insurance companies do not protect against data loss; eight of 10 data backups are inadequate at the crucial moment they are needed.

If your office was destroyed, you would lose your data if they were on paper. A backup is an electronic copy of essential data. If you have been backing up your electronic records with off-site storage of the data, you can have all your data back without a problem. And if they are stored online, you can access them in a matter of minutes.

Loss of practice data such as Case Files, Transaction Data, Planning Information, Financial Records and Client records could result in serious damage to a Solicitors practice. Electronic computer records can be safeguarded using a backup system. There are several acceptable backup systems that have different benefits and shortcomings. Online backup offers significant improvements in both costs and reliability over older traditional systems.

Electronic records are safer than traditional paper charts and books, as long as they are backed up off site. Electronic records stored on site are subject to the same physical perils as paper records—fire, flood and theft. In addition, electronic records face the unique hazards of data corruption and computer viruses. Data backups are the equivalent of photocopying each page in every chart and all pages in the appointment book. They also are your copy of all of your financial records and correspondence. Whenever anything is changed, new copies can be made.

What data do you back up?

Ideally, you should back up the entire hard drive of the server computer—the computer that stores all the practice data. It is possible to back up just the data; however, if the entire hard drive is backed up, it will include the data, as well as the proper versions of each software application and all the settings unique to the office. This makes restoring the computer system much faster and easier.

Electronic solicitor records have grown in sophistication and now take up a lot of electronic memory, and as a result, solicitors practice data files can be 80 gigabytes or more.

You should back up all practice management data, including client records. Your computer may have other essential data on it as well. This data could include accounts stored using software applications different from the management software; you could be using Alphalaw Vantage, Solicitor Case Manager, Lawfusion, Pinpoint or ProClaim. You also may have management data stored as part of a management program. And finally, there may be correspondence, contracts, employment records or other essential documents stored on the computer in files separate from client records All of these essential data—not just the basic client records—need to be backed up and protected.

How do you back up data?

Early backup systems copied the information to disks: high-capacity removable disks, tapes, REV disks, DVD’s, or CDs. All of these media have limited storage capacity and generally are not able to store all the solicitors practice data.

Online backup: Copies the essential data off-site to our secure data centre at ParkWest, Dublin, using the Internet. This method has many advantages and solves most of the problems associated with tape. With online backup

Data can be backed up several times a day
Data is stored off site in a secure place right away
Data is copied in delta block reducing backup times
There is no tape to change and take off site
Data is encrypted using up to AES256 encryption to increase security.

If the office experiences a disaster between backups, you are at risk of losing any data acquired since the last backup. Therefore, the shortest time between backups is the best. You have

Complete control over backup schedules (for example, you can choose to backup every hour, once a day or multiple times per week).
Support for an unlimited number of custom backup sets, with the option of backing up data changes since the last data replication or performing a full data backup.
Data is stored in secure, fully redundant data centres (if one data centre is destroyed, the other data centre still has the data)
Multiple copies of the data are stored in more than one location;
Every operation is performed on two or more duplicate systems, so if one fails; the other can take over
Data is encrypted (using AES256 as used by NASA)
Only you or authorized personnel can view your data;
Complies with The Data Protection legislation and can be updated to comply with future standards.

When do you back up data?

Ideally, you should back up your data constantly so that every bit of information is copied instantly. As there always is a risk of losing data, we recommend using the CDP (Continuous Data Protection) function. If the office experiences a disaster between backups, you are at risk of losing any data acquired since the last backup. Therefore, the shortest time between backups is the best. Online backup allows for much shorter intervals than backups involving tape or removable hard drives.

How do you keep data safe?

You should back up your data at least once each day and do a separate backup for the end of each week and each month. If your data is corrupted or infected with a virus, you may need to go back several days or even weeks to get a clean copy.

Online backup is the safest way possible to keep data off-site, because there is no human intervention and the service is automatic. However, if you choose to back up your data on tape, you should replace backup tapes regularly. Tapes wear out, so do not risk losing all of your data because you did not want to incur the expense of buying new tapes. Also, do not rely on a fireproof safe to store backup tapes. Thieves usually do not take time to think or investigate; they just grab whatever looks valuable. If the tapes are in a safe or left in the computer, they most likely will be stolen. In addition, fireproof safes are designed to protect paper, not magnetic media, which most likely will be damaged in the heat of a fire.

Check the backups regularly. Do not assume the data is being backed up correctly. Check the logs every day and have an expert verify and do a test restore on a monthly basis. With online backup you can check the data is backed up instantly, as well as restore instantly.

What can go wrong?

The weakest link in any backup system is the human element. If the system relies on a human to replace the tape or removable hard drive each day and take the tape or removable hard drive off site and the person misses work or forgets to do it, the system will not work. Online backup will bypass the people using the computers and automatically back up everything in the background with no human involvement.

Another problem is that tapes and other media can be damaged. For example, a tape left in the trunk of a car can be damaged by heat, dirt, moisture or being banged around while being driven over a rough road.

Damaged or worn-out media will not copy the data properly. Often it is not possible to know there is a problem until there is an emergency and it is time to restore the data. By then, it is too late.

Who owns the data?

The solicitor owns the data, even when the data is stored online. However, that means the solicitor needs to be able to exercise the usual functions of ownership. Only the solicitor can decide who has access to the data, and the solicitor can decide to take the data somewhere else at any time. The data is available in a readily transferable and accessible format.

Conclusion

A solicitor’s data is essential to running the solicitors practice and generating income. Therefore, it has great value. Electronic data is easier to copy and protect than are paper data. The best way to protect your practice data is to make a backup copy and take it off site. Online backup offers significant improvements in both cots and reliability over older backup methods.

If you would like further informatin on the Online backup Solution or other Services DSS provide please contact Sinead Doyle on 086 049 3754 or email sdoyle@decision.ie