When you’re strategizing how your business is going to navigate the next season, data storage probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind; but although we may not often think of it, the role of data storage is indispensable to the overall health of a business. To meet this need, I’ll introduce you to a storage solution you may not have heard of, called “network attached storage.”
Network attached storage (NAS) is a storage device that plugs into your local network. Typically you’ll connect the NAS into your router. From here, you can choose to connect it to the internet so that it can be accessed from anywhere, kind of like your own personal cloud, or you can limit the access to within your network. This still provides much greater flexibility in terms of access than, say, an external drive, because any compatible network connected device will be able to access it, assuming they have proper credentials.
Additionally, NAS will typically be set up in a RAID, which arranges a set of drives together so that if a drive fails, there is redundancy and you don’t lose any data. RAID also combines the performance of the drives to provide quicker performance.
One of the leading NAS companies in this type of storage is QNAP, which manufactures numerous models for a wide variety of use cases.
Is One Copy Enough?
From emails to spreadsheets, and from records to marketing content, chances are you’re creating data that you need on a regular basis. And having this data stored only on your computer or your SaaS account can be a dangerous practice. Drives fail and documents are sometimes accidentally deleted, but if you have sufficient backup copies, you can mitigate potential data loss.
There are numerous backup tools that can be utilized with a QNAP NAS for data backup. One of these is called Hybrid Backup Sync 3; this is an app designed for numerous types of backup tasks. From one central backup app, you can sync jobs to and from the cloud, and set up backup jobs to the cloud, external drive backups and Time Machine backups of your Mac. Additionally for Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, an app called Boxafe can be installed to back up users’ data, including emails, docs, sheets, slides and more.
How Do You Secure Your Data?
There is always some degree of inherent risk to our data anytime we are open to the outside world via the internet. So it’s important to consider how we can mitigate any potential issues that could come along. For starters, being vigilant in maintaining up to date firmware can be one of the best lines of defense against attacks on your data, as vulnerabilities are frequently patched on up-to-date firmware. QNAPs can also be scanned to detect and remove malware with the Malware Remover app. Other useful tools include two-step authentication, volume encryption, snapshots and system logs, among other things.
Your Next Storage Solution
If your business is growing, there’s no time like the present to get your data storage plan in place. For more information on QNAP NAS, you can take a look at their website, qnap.com/en-us.
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