Best Business Practices for Photographers [197]
Chapter 24 Office and On-Location Systems: Redundancy and Security Beget Peace of Mind
The simple fact is you have office systems and camera systems. If you are absolutely certain that at no time will any of those systems fail, nor be hacked, then you can consider skipping this chapter. You can also go to Las Vegas and put your entire fortune on red or consider living life without health insurance or savings for a rainy day. Skip this chapter at your own peril.
In May 2006, the Small Business Administration reported that "a University of Texas study reports that 43 percent of companies experiencing a catastrophic data loss never recover, and half of them go out of business within two years. So businesses, and for that matter anyone who owns a home computer, should back up financial records and other vital information stored on hard drives." Although this message was intended for those preparing for natural disasters, the statistics, without equivocation, apply to our everyday business activities. So, in the event that you have a catastrophic data loss, a 43-percent chance of your business shuttering is statistically close to betting the farm on red.
Redundancy: What Is It?
Redundancy, when referring to data, office, or photo equipment, is a state in which you have duplicative systems and storage so that should one fail, the other may be drawn upon to restore or re-create valuable data. If you're speaking of duplicate cameras, you can complete the assignment with the second camera if need be. There are numerous systems to employ, some of which you may be doing already. It might be simple things, such as making copies of an important receipt or installation serial number for Photoshop or creating a CD with all your best portfolio images. Maybe you even clicked Yes in the occasional pop-up window from your accounting software, prompting you to back up your financial data. I hope.
Communications Networks
In my office, every day we transmit images directly to clients, to our own FTP servers where clients can retrieve them, and to online galleries for client review prior to the delivery of final images. All of this is in addition to the lifeline that is the sending and receiving of e-mail. Of late, we have also switched to Voice over IP (a.k.a. VoIP) telephone service. I have contracted with the fastest cable Internet provider available to me. Yet, should that service go down—for weather reasons, a service provider outage, or a tree falling on the cable line—I will be dead in the water. With a single cable modem line costing $60 to $90 a month, that equates to about $2 to $3 a day. If my service were to go down for even two days, the costs to my business would far and away exceed the cost for several months of service.
As a result, because my location offers at least two Internet service providers, I have contracted with both to provide Internet access. This gives me peace of mind, knowing that I will be able to continue to function should one of my providers fail. As a last resort, the cellular modem I have can be configured to provide a third level of service. And, as a redundancy for the laptop, I have a no-monthly-fee (pay-per-use) WiFi service provider so I can find a wireless access point when traveling and take care of e-mail and file transfers where necessary.
Firewalls and System Security
Firewalls are hardware and/or software whose purpose is to prevent unwanted access into your internal office/studio network from the outside. The term firewall came from safety walls in construction, but you might be more familiar with it in relation to your car, where the firewall is the wall between the engine compartment and the passenger compartment that will minimize (or hopefully prevent) a fire from the car's engine from making its way to the passengers.
It is a fact that every second of every day, hackers are scouring the Internet looking for "zombie computers." These are computers that are hacked not because the hacker thinks you have any valuable information on it