Caused by hard drive weariness or physical damage, viruses or malware activity, due to accidental deletion or intentional erasure - data losses happen for a multitude reasons, and they happen a lot. Digital data these days is equal to billions of dollars, which is why shedding it could imply vast material losses at best, or become fatal at worst. For business owners it can be much more than just an unpleasant incident: as can be seen from the recent reports, the chances of never being able to pull through the hard times remain huge for enterprises that have dealt with grave data loss. 

It's easier to understand the big picture in numbers. Take a look:

• 70 percent of small firms go out of business within a year of a large data loss incident

• 94 percent of companies that experience severe data loss do not recover;

• 51 percent of these companies close within two years afterwards

• 43 percent of companies do not reopen again after massive data loss

These are only a few of Benchmark's Survey findings. However, despite all of the above looks hella dramatic, no need to panic: it should serve as a visualization of the importance of digital information for today's business prosperity, not an inevitable disaster. The good news is that it's within your power to take all necessary measures to eliminate, or minimize at least, the chance of data losses - and protect your company, no matter of size, from potential troubles.

Let's get into the details on most common perils your data may face, and see how to ward them off. Here goes!

1. Human Errors

Human factor is always at play: at least once in a lifetime each of us deleted an important file without realizing it. Same may happen to one of your employees - and there is no guarantee that won't be an important document, and paysheets for the last few months, a decent chunk of clientbase, or a vital annual archive. The biggest trick is that we often notice the misstep after a while, when needed file has already been overwritten and it's too late to correct a mistake.

How to avert?

Proper training could help you minimize the impact of human error in data handling: ensure your staff is aware of how the backup systems function, and how information is processed and stored within your company networks. If one has comprehension of basic operations, it is easier to avoid such mistakes - or spot them timely at least.

Backup systems is another important mean to keep your data safe and sound: automated workflow will leave some room for human errors to occur while processing and help to preserve previous data states in case anything needed to be restored, which together helps you minimize the chance of any loss.

2. Viruses, Phishing And Malware

These threats can compromise your data in each and possible way: to delete, corrupt and steal information from your machine (including sensitive files), to thief its resources, to slow down and bring to a crawl operational processes, but most importantly - viruses and versatile malware can work quietly and imperceptibly.

How to avert?

The answer is obvious: protect your system with appropriate anti-virus software; keep the programm constantly updated, and don't forget to regularly scan your system to avert any possible harm before it's done.

3. Hard Drive Faults

More than 67 percent of data loss occurs due to hard drive crashes and system failures. Being one of the most fragile parts of a computer, hard drives tend to fail due to overheating, high humidity, dust congestion, mechanical issues - or as a result of user mishandling, like jostling or hitting a computer in hope it will work faster. Finally, a hard drive wears out over time - as with any machine - and eventually goes belly up. 

How to avert?

To prevent hard drive malfunction, be sure to keep the device in proper conditions: watch the temperature, avoid overheating your device; remove excess dust regularly. And for the most hot-tempered ones: resist the temptation to kick the system unit when your system gets slow while processing: it won't be able to fight back, but it can hurt your with a bill of several hundred dollars.

Alarm! No, seriously, it's important. Do not try to perform any DIY repairs to your hard drive in case it stopped working: utilizing questionable recovery software may overwrite the missing information with new pieces, while any physical manipulations can cause it to become unrecoverable, i.e. deleted permanently. Only professional data recovery company stands a solid chance of retrieving your inaccessible files from unrecognized / fault / damaged hard drive since they have the necessary equipment at their disposal. 

Salvagedata recovery team could be the one to help you: once you pass your device to the technicians, they will quickly determine the problem and inform you on available restoration options, so you will get your data back as soon as possible. In addition, Salvagedata has its offices all across the US - just choose the most convenient one.

And Other Menaces

Power outages can be just as harmful for your system: nearly 3 out of 4 organizations are at risk of failing to recover from disaster / outage, which means large data pieces had been lost due to unexpected electricity knockout. As well as nature disasters, device theft, targeted hackers and Insiders attacks, software corruption - the list is too long to count them all, however, the cure is the same: system backups.

Yes, I'm nagging about these like a mom who's trying to persuade her kid to eat broccoli because it's healthy. But the truth is that data losses occur far more often than you might think - and you can't predict all of the causes. Regular backups, however, by far remain the most dependable method that you can rely on to protect your data from any possible inconveniences. But after all, it's up to you!