It was Mike Breen’s job to back up his business’ computer records periodically, but he never felt comfortable with the way he was doing it.
Breen, marketing manager at Anchor Subaru in North Smithfield, used a tape drive to copy files, some of them vitally important financial spreadsheets. “But the tape drive was notoriously unreliable,” he recalled last week. “I had a lack of confidence in it.”
Once, he realized before anything disastrous happened that the tape drive had failed to back up documents for a full week.
Now he’s not worried at all.
Breen has signed on with Cox Business Managed Services, a relatively new offering by the business division of Cox Communications designed to give small and medium-sized businesses a helping hand with information technology and security matters.
Anchor Subaru now uses Cox’s Premium Online Data Storage Feature, which allows business customers to remotely back up, store and access information more easily and reliably.
While that service has been available to local businesses for about a year, Cox two months ago started offering what it has dubbed the Premium Security Suite, which provides antivirus and firewall software. The telecommunication company has expanded its Tech Solutions services – which have solely been offered to consumers – to small and medium-sized businesses.
“In today’s world, small businesses don’t typically have an IT department, or an IT staff, or even an IT manager,” said Mark Scott, vice president of Cox Business. “We now have a group of services that will help them manage their network and better control the information within their business.”
Verizon Business offers a competing package of managed security services, such as a new service launched in March that enables business customers to log, track and analyze user and system activity to help businesses monitor and fend off security threats.
Local businesses that need these types of services may benefit from the competition.
The data backup service from Cox, for instance, is a value-added offering, with customers getting at no additional cost between two and five gigabytes of storage space – depending on the connection speed purchased from Cox.
The Security Suite is $10 a month for every five computer terminals at a business. The charge can be lower, depending on the business’ level of Internet service.
And the Tech Solutions Service starts at $79 for over-the-phone and remote assistance; $149 for a technician to make a site visit.
Cox Business executives say most small businesses could use the help.
Because many are too small to have an IT department, backing up data is often an afterthought, Scott said, citing surveys that indicate that 50 percent of small businesses don’t back up their data at all.
Of those that do, Scott added, many times the data is stored in a desk drawer. “If you have some type of disaster such as a fire, you still have the probability that you could lose your data,” he said. “There’s a chance a company can’t recover as a business because they’ve lost those critical pieces.”
That’s why Cox has partnered with another company to provide backup services, according to John Schneeberg, senior product marketing manager for Cox Business. Cox won’t identify the company it has partnered with.
Under the system, the data is automatically encrypted and backed up at redundant data centers 3,000 miles apart. Schneeberg said the encrypted files meet security standards of the health care and financial services industries.
The program can be set to automatically back up a company’s files once a week, daily or several times a day. “It’s hands off,” Schneeberg said. “The customer doesn’t have to do anything; it’ll work for them.”
An additional feature: A company executive can access the backed up files from any place in the world, he said.
Another looming danger for business, Scott said, is the growing use of “malware,” software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner’s knowledge.
Citing a report by the research firm Yankee Group, Scott said there was more malware produced in 2007 than in the previous decade. “Small businesses will typically buy something off the shelf and try to manage it themselves,” Scott said.
But those products aren’t nearly as effective in stopping computer viruses as Cox’s commercial-grade security suite, powered by global security company F-Secure, said Schneeberg.
He said a large percentage of small businesses don’t have any virus protection, or some will have trial versions bundled with new computer terminals. “When that trial expires, the business owners don’t realize” it, Schneeberg said. “They still think they’re protected.” •
