According to the article, data loss is the most common business disaster. Here is the second of six steps Walzer suggests to make sure you get the right solution for your business’s needs:

“Consider backup options. Your backup must be offsite, secure and available for recovery 24/7. One popular option that meets the above criteria, with the added benefit of ease of use and automation, is online backup.” (A Small-Business Guide to Disaster Recovery)

The Baltimore-based law firm Goodell, DeVries, Leech & Dan learned that data loss can happen to anyone anytime. A senior partner was preparing for a trial in Arkansas when his computer crashed two days before the hearing. The firm had yet to implement a backup solution, so the Director of Technology, David Roden, found himself on the next flight into Arkansas.

After this, Roden began looking for a reliable solution that wouldn’t hog their network resources. Shortly after that, the firm decided on MozyPro. If a computer ever fails again, anywhere in the world, Roden will be able to manage the recovery right from his office.

MozyPro provides simple, secure, and automatic backup that can literally save your business in the event of a disaster without the large investment in time and money of other backup solutions.

These reasons are supported by a recent report from Forrester stating that small business IT spending will decline more than enterprise IT spending in 2009. In addition, a Gartner survey found that losing intellectual property or customer data was the number one concern for North American organizations.

Paul Emmons, founder of Emmons & Co., said he would recommend Mozy to any business because it addresses these exact concerns. “It is off-site, automatic, and gives quality protection at an affordable price,” he said. “The ability to set backups and move on to other responsibilities is invaluable and something no other solution has given me.”

Most small businesses are not immune from facing struggles in this economic environment. Fortunately, products like MozyPro help businesses meet these challenges head on and allow them to focus on providing quality services to their customers and communities for years to come.

Earlier in the day during the general luncheon, The New York Times Columnist David Pogue gave the keynote. He, too, discussed how new technologies are changing the college campus. He called out Twitter and other social media tools that engage students for better or worse.

EduComm 2009 brought together those in education who have a vision of tomorrow’s campus and how new technologies are shaping the future of higher education. At Mozy, we too are committed to helping those in higher education to protect their information through a simple, secure and affordable backup service. In fact, we announced this week that we have more than 700 educational institutions using Mozy. More information can be found at www.mozy.com/education.

With the amount of digital information being created at an all time high, institutions are seeing the value in using Mozy because they only pay for the storage space they use and there are no hardware or installations costs. This assists schools in complying with stricter budget requirements without sacrificing security and simplicity.

Barbara Sutcliffe, manager of business operations at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University said, “Like so many schools today, we are looking for solutions that are affordable, reliable, and easy to use. While the cost of Mozy is minimal, the peace of mind it provides is priceless.”

Although my college days were not that long ago (or so I tell myself), I can’t help but wonder how many hours I could have saved not having to retype papers or class notes if Mozy had been around. It is good to see that students and faculty now have a better option than floppy disks for saving files!

“You need to back up your systems, and it’s not hard to do. Virtual offsite backups give you more disaster protection than onsite backups to an external hard drive, and the further offsite those backups are the less likely the tornado coming through your town will hit the site where your backups are stored.”

His comment reminds me of a MozyPro customer, Joseph W. Booth, who is a long-time member and contributor to the American Bar Association. Booth started using MozyPro after he launched his own law firm earlier this year and ended up savings 92 percent in backup costs. He says he works in “Tornado alley “ and trusts MozyPro to back up and protect his important law firm files from the threat of a disaster.

Whether it’s protecting against a tornado as MSNBC’s Mitchell discussed in his article or protecting against other types of disasters or thefts, a good backup strategy includes keeping an off-site copy of critical business information.

Like most companies facing economic challenges, law firms are looking for ways to cut costs and improve efficiencies. For instance, long time member and contributor to the American Bar Association, Joseph Booth, knew he had to be smart about his investments when he opened his own practice. By choosing MozyPro, he realized a 92 percent savings over other backup solutions and was still able to easily and securely protect his most important business data.

Mozy also helps law firms address the need to protect large amounts of case files and client information, as Tina Peot of PHMPP Law attests. “I have endless amounts of data to manage, so it is essential I have a simple backup solution,” she said. “Mozy doesn’t take up more of my time, but instead makes my job easier.”

Not that I need a lawyer, but if I did, I sure hope that they knew how to keep my information safe. I guess Mozy offers peace of mind to more than just law firms! For more information, or to read more of our customer stories, visit http://mozy.com/legal.

Take AVSIM for example. AVSIM, a leading website dedicated to the flight simulation community focusing mainly on Microsoft’s Flight Simulator program, recently had their two servers hacked and their site brought down. The company had no external backup system. Thirteen years of hard work and success where instantly wiped out.

“Yes, we dutifully backed up our servers every day,” the site’s founder said. “Unfortunately, we backed up the servers between our two servers. The hacker took out both servers, destroying our ability to use one or the other back-up to remedy the situation.” As of right now, AVSIM founder fears that the company may never recover from their data loss.

While we don’t wish disaster upon anyone, the truth is, disasters happen. Accidentally deleting a file, contracting a virus, or being the victim of a hacker can ruin your business in minutes. Unfortunately, stories like that of AVSIM’s are occurring more and more. I’ve made sure my friends and family have a backup plan, and so should you!

Like any business, healthcare providers are not immune to economic headwinds and are also being forced to reduce budgets and do more with fewer resources. MozyPro online backup offers secure, automated backup at an affordable price, which frees up valuable resources to focus on more important things—like managing your business.

In our announcement, we shared a few customer stories such as that of Dr. Wayne T. Faber of Tenafly Dental Associates in Tenafly, New Jersey who realized a 97 percent savings in backup costs after switching to MozyPro. For more information or to read the full customer stories, visit www.mozy.com/healthcare.

Individual medical records once stored in filing cabinets are now being digitized and stored as electronic health records (EHRs). As part of the recently passed economic stimulus bill, the HITECH Act encourages healthcare providers to move to EHRs and provides financial incentives for doing so. Compliance with government regulation is also critical, and MozyPro helps healthcare providers become compliant with both the HIPPA Privacy and HIPAA Security Rules.

This will result in unprecedented amounts of digital patient information being generated in the coming years, which also needs to be protected and securely backed up. With over 15 petabytes of data currently under management, Decho is one of a handful of trusted companies in the world that has experience securely managing data at such a massive scale. To put 15 petabytes in perspective, Decho stores 750x the digitized content of the Library of Congress! That’s a lot of data.

Citing a recent webinar by Gartner analyst Kurt Potter, Shane Schick of ITWorld Canada notes that companies should exercise caution before making drastic changes in an effort to cut costs, especially in their IT environments. Some cost-cutting measures can actually harm a business when it comes to the delivery of their products or services. Potter states, “You need to build competencies and discipline around cost optimization.”

One vital aspect of any business is the protection and storage of critical customer and business data. So how do you protect what’s most important with reduced resources? Schick says that being willing to embrace emerging technologies is one way to effectively reduce cost and increase productivity.

Instead of backing up your business information with traditional on-site storage, which many times requires expensive hardware, setup fees and constant monitoring, you could use Mozy’s online backup solution. Not only will this save you money on power, infrastructure, and physical space, but it will also save you time and resources, which is priceless for any business.

The great part about Mozy is, you still get the highest in security standards. With files transferred and stored in encrypted states, you will never have to worry about the integrity or security of your data. Even if you move offices or lose systems to theft, viruses, hard drive crash, or natural disaster, your critical information is securely stored and accessible when you need it.

We were pleased to learn yesterday that MozyPro had been awarded the Excellence in Technology Award in the “Backup and Recovery” category from the readers of Small Business Computing. The article states, “this year marks the first time an online backup and recovery service has won the top spot, and honors go to MozyPro.” This award further reinforces Mozy’s position as the most trusted online backup service for consumers and businesses alike. After a humble launch in December 2006, MozyPro has since grown to more than 30,000 business customers ranging from then smallest home office users to large corporations like General Electric.

Since the launch of MozyPro , a tremendous amount of time and effort has gone into continually improving the service with enhancements like an improved Windows Server client, the availability of an AES private encryption key, and the recent release of a Mac version of MozyPro. We still have a lot of work to do, so expect more exciting enhancements and improvements to MozyPro over the coming months and years. We wouldn’t have won the Excellence in Technology Award without the outstanding feedback we receive from you, our customers. Whether positive or negative, we appreciate the honest feedback, so keep it coming!