Step #7: Passwords Ensure all passwords granting access to company’s computer network, databases and critical files are properly enforced. Passwords should be at least 8 characters in length and combine letters and numbers. Users should change their passwords at least every 90 days. Network administrator passwords should be changed every 30 days.

Protection Beyond Security The 7 steps outlined above are critical as first line of defense in protecting your data. However, it is important to be aware that data loss can still occur. Beyond data loss caused by disasters and criminal activity, data can be lost for a variety of more mundane reasons. These include application corruption, hardware failure, accidental deletion and user error. In any of these circumstances, you will need to roll back to a clean, available copy of your data. Continuous, online backup to a secure remote site provides archived and up-to-the-loss copies of data that can be quickly and conveniently recovered. With this added protection, your data is not just secure, but available and supporting your business.

Paul Hrabal is founder and President of U.S. Data Trust. U.S. Data Trust provides online backup and recovery services to growing companies that need to protect and maintain access to their data without risk and IT overhead of maintaining an internal tape backup system and staff. Paul may be reached at 1-888-DATA-SAFE or pr@usdatatrust.com. Information resources and a confidential data risk survey are available online at http://www.usdatatrust.com . ###

“In wild a plant and its pests are continually coevolving in a dance of resistance and conquest that can have no ultimate victor. But coevolution ceases in an orchard of grafted trees, since they are genetically identical from generation to generation. The apple tree is no longer evolving, but viruses, bacteria, fungi and insects who love it, are. The domestication of apple has gone too far, to point where species’ fitness for life in nature (where it still has to live, after all!) has been dangerously compromised.

Now in a business thing to look out for is competition, and in order to stay competitive, we need to keep evolving with them, right? Constant change typifies today’s work environment, and if we don’t allow our employees to be constantly changing, learning and growing, as well, not just “grafted,” business will not fare well.

If you plant seeds and let people be who they are, think creatively and individually, work in area of their strengths, and have opportunity for growth, you’ll have an organization much better able to compete, one that can keep coevolving in today’s fast-changing environment.