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Are you ready for an IT Disaster?

In 2009, a squad of FBI agents burst through the doors of 2323 Bryan Street, Dallas, Texas. Their target? Cabinet number 24.02.900.

The Bryan Street building was not the headquarters of a drug empire, a kidnapping ring or a money printing organisation: it was a data centre. And the cabinet the FBI seized contained the computers two men had been using to defraud AT&T and Verizon of more than US$6 million.

Cabinet 24.02.900 also just happened to be home to the data of dozens of other perfectly innocent businesses, not the least being Liquid Motors, an online company that provides inventory management to car dealerships. The seizure of their data cost Liquid Motors heavily in customers and plunged them into a legal battle with the FBI that nearly brought the business to its knees.

Was it just plain bad luck, or could Liquid Motors have avoided this disaster? Finding yourself sharing rack space with criminals would seem to be a risk that even the most exhaustive of business plans might not have identified.

Not so, according to our team at Wellington-based IT company Resolve Technology.

“Whether you’re already storing your data in a cloud platform or contemplating doing so, there are some simple but critical steps you can and should take to avoid IT disasters. In essence, they’re about finding out what security measures your IT provider has in place and ensuring your business continuity plan covers all scenarios,” explains our team.

When you’re evaluating IT providers’ track records, we recommend asking, first up, for referees, and going to the trouble of calling them. Then check whether or not the provider stores their customers’ data in multiple locations that are geographically separate from one another. A good provider will have at least two sites that talk to each other: if one goes down the other will ensure the data remains available.

Modern cloud storage isn’t just convenient—it should be significantly more secure and accessible than traditional on-premise solutions. If your data isn’t more secure as well as more accessible, then you’re not getting all the benefits of cloud transformation.

Beyond geographic redundancy, today’s businesses need to consider additional layers of protection:

• Zero-trust security models that verify every access request
• Immutable backups that can’t be altered by ransomware
• Regular security audits and compliance certifications
• Incident response plans that have been tested, not just documented

With cyber incidents affecting New Zealand organisations increasing year on year, cyber insurance has become essential rather than optional. Modern cyber insurance packages can cover a business for the impact on revenue and profit of data loss due to software or hardware failures, ransomware attacks, and sophisticated social engineering schemes, as well as the risk of liability for the loss of clients’ or business partners’ critical data.

There’s another fundamental precaution we recommend, irrespective of where your data is stored: implement the 3-2-1-1 backup rule. Keep three copies of critical data, on two different media types, with one copy offsite, and one copy immutable (unable to be changed or deleted). This approach protects against both traditional hardware failures and modern ransomware attacks that specifically target backup systems.

The digital landscape has evolved dramatically, but the core principle remains unchanged: while your data might be out of sight, don’t let it be out of mind. Do everything you can to make sure you select a trustworthy provider whose arrangements are sound and secure. Consider comprehensive cyber insurance, because even the best-laid plans often go awry—and today’s threat landscape is more complex than ever.

If you’d like to discuss your organisation’s disaster preparedness or evaluate your current IT security arrangements, our team would be happy to help.

Chris Drowley
General Manager, Resolve Technology
Outside the office, Chris runs a highly organised empire of model trains — where the schedules are always on time, unlike the real thing.