Reasons Utilities Need Backup and Recovery

Imagine this happening to you one Monday morning. You walk into your municipal utility’s office, ready to start your day. But you flick the light switch, and nothing happens. Your office is dark, and your server isn’t running. No power means no data, and no data means no service for your utility customers. But it doesn’t have to be a power outage that keeps your utility from serving your community. Cyberattacks, pandemics, natural disasters, human error, and hardware malfunctions can keep you from accessing your essential customer files. As part of your disaster recovery plan, you need a way to recover and backup your utility’s data.

 What is Data Recovery and Backup for Utilities?

To protect your essential customer files like names, addresses, phone numbers, and payment information, you need to back up your data. Data backup is the act of keeping a current copy of your utility’s files stored in a different location from where your working data is, usually on a separate device or in the cloud. If your working data is inaccessible, then you can restore it to its last backup point.

Backing up your data will not always restore all of your information. If any of your files are damaged, then your utility needs data recovery, which is the act of retrieving lost, damaged, corrupted, or otherwise inaccessible data. As long as files can be repaired, data recovery returns your system to the last functioning point.

 

Reasons  You Need Data Recovery and Backup for Your Utility

When your data is lost or damaged, you shouldn’t have to ask when was the last time we backed up our data. Instead, you should have an automated method for backups, daily weekly, or bi-weekly, depending on how often your data changes. As with any disaster, natural or technological, it’s essential to plan. Below are some of the reasons your utility needs a plan for data backup and recovery.

 Cyberattacks

Cybercriminals are looking for ways to get into your network to steal your data. Employee and customer private information is stored on your servers, whether on-premise or in the cloud. Credit card, bank, and social security numbers are gold to cybercriminals who can get into your network. And, although some cybercriminals are looking for this information, other cybercriminals are looking for ways to disrupt your community.  With the most recent utility ransomware attacks, you’ll see that it’s not only customer information but also access to critical systems that cybercriminals want to disrupt.  

When you have your customer information software like NorthStar CIS hosted in the cloud, you make it more difficult for cybercriminals to attack your system. The NorthStar Cloud, housed in AWS’s infrastructure, ensures you have the best security the industry has to offer to keep your data safe.  What’s more, having your CIS in the cloud will reduce your costs and free up your IT staff for higher priority, in-house tasks, and you won’t have to ask when was the last time my data was backed up. You’ll know that your data is secure in the NorthStar Cloud.

 Human Error

Your customer service representatives, IT, and finance staff have access to your data. Although they may not intend to harm your files, employees have been known to make errors that wipe out files and information. Keeping a backup of your files will ensure that you can restore everything from the last backup point. And if any of your files are damaged, then a recovery team will be able to restore your files.

 Cybercriminals also know that your employees have access to your sensitive data, and they create phishing scams specifically to get into your network. Phishing scams and ransomware are one of the most common breaches that can knock out your services until you pay the ransom to restore your system. If a cybercriminal holds your data hostage, then you can either pay the ransom or determine if you can restore your data with your backed-up files. But, if you don’t have a backup, then you can’t use them to restore your files, so it’s better to have a backup, just in case.

 Technology

Technology is changing the way utilities do business. Gone are days where we filled out forms in triplicate and stored them in files. Often, we only have digital copies of transactions, which makes your data backup even more critical for recordkeeping. If your utility is going paperless, you’ll need to back up your customers’ files.  Instead of a paper copy filed in a drawer, you’ll now have a digital copy stored separately from your originals.  

Technology also makes it easy to access your files. But if you’re using an on-premise server, you should replace your hardware every three to five years because all equipment fails eventually. If your data is corrupted and you don’t have a backup when that happens, it could be difficult to nearly impossible to get your utility back up and running again.  While your team is working to restore your server, your customers will be frustrated because they cannot access your services.

One of the latest, most widely adopted technology is moving your business to the cloud. Having a cloud-based CIS will keep you from having to buy new hardware. Instead, NorthStar Cloud uses AWS’s architecture, and the AWS team makes sure that you have the latest hardware and the best security protocols in place to keep your data safe and available when you need it.

 Downtime

No matter what causes downtime, not having your data when you need it costs your utility money and frustrate your staff and customer. You could have a long-term power outage, a storm, a cyberattack, or a server crash, resulting in your team not being able to access critical files when they need them the most.  Downtime frustrates customers because it interrupts daily operations. Once your back up and running, your team has to work to restore normal operations, costing you money.

But, having your customer information software in the cloud will reduce downtime and free up your IT staff for other high-priority tasks. With NorthStar CIS, your downtime is reduced because AWS has redundant systems in place to keep downtime to a minimum. When you use a cloud-hosted solution like the NorthStar suite of products, your backups will be maintained within the AWS infrastructure. Best of all, your data will be secure and available when you need it.

Ready to move your customer experience software to the cloud? Contact us to learn what NorthStar Cloud can do for you.