What is the greatest risk to our corporate data?

The obvious answer to this one is – whatever gets you first. There are a multitude of risks to our data when it is stored on spinning disks, connected to the whole world by thin wires. If the spinning disks don't fail and the thin wires don't let you down, your files are still at risk as they're accessible to the whole world via the internet.

Yet, despite this, the single biggest risk to your data is probably you or your staff. I'm not being sinister here; large amounts of data are lost through simple file deletion or mistakes that lead to the corruption of files.

Often, the most sophisticated security systems and the most robust of servers with redundant power and spare hard drives, and even fail-safe systems, cannot protect you from your own staff and their interactions with computers.

That said, it is still worth doing the following:

• Ensure you have a very good firewall that is managed and kept up-to-date to protect you from the latest attacks.
• Filter your email and web content to ensure it's as clean as possible to reduce risks of virus and malware.
• Run local anti-virus software to protect you from USB keys and other forms of mobile data.
• Have power protection in place and redundant hard drives.

As your business grows, it is also strongly advisable to restrict your employees' access to only the files that they need to do their work. This means that they can't accidentally wipe a folder of files that they have nothing to do with.

I must warn you at this point that security is a double-edged sword. The more you spend to lock your systems down to manage them effectively, the more you will spend to manage those same systems. It's not an expense anyone would suggest you plan to save in business though, as the issues arising from poor data management can cost a lot more than the issues arising from good data management.

Of course, if it's local damage you need to protect yourself from, the best solution is to have great backup of your work in progress. Today, you can have local backup done on a continuous, automated basis throughout the day with replication to an offsite store via the internet. Systems for this are improving rapidly at the moment, and exist at various price points and offer a range of solutions from back up only, to onsite or offsite recovery, to virtual servers or physical servers.

Depending on your budget, you can have instant fail over or slow fail over, or a quick rebuild process. Over the past few years, computers have become more important to businesses where they are relied on for many forms of communication and service management. Outages today are likely to be significantly more costly to your business than they were just a few years back. So, have your recovery windows been reduced to match the demand?

If your backup system is not as good as it should be, or is left to chance with media being exchanged manually, it is time to seek the advice of a backup specialist to get your data backed up automatically to offsite repositories. A bit like a free brake inspection on your car - it really can save you.

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David Markus is the founder of Combo - the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.