The Other Kind of Firewall

It's crucial that your company's network has a strong firewall in place to keep your data safe; although, one firewall may not be enough. In the case of an actual fire, you will want to have a real firewall to keep your servers safe. We're talking about a firewall for your firewall. This sounds redundant, but redundancy makes for good security.

Hopefully, you have some preparations in place to protect your office building and your staff from a fire. At the very least, you should have a plan to evacuate people in a timely manner. Your building code will mandate that you have smoke detectors, and if you're really serious about fire protection, then you may even have a sprinkler system.

There's a chance that your office building has firewalls. Firewalls are commonly used to separate different tenants within the same building. You will also find firewalls in the kitchen, since that's where many fires start. Firewalls are nothing more than extra thick walls made out of flame-retardant building material. The goal of a firewall is to slow the fire's destruction, not necessarily to stop it altogether (which is called fireproofing).

The whole point of a firewall is to protect what's valuable. Many business experts agree that your company's computer data is your most valuable asset. Which makes us ask the question, "How well protected is your data from a fire?" There are several precautions you can take to safeguard your sensitive information so that it won't be turned into ash. Here are a few:

Build a Real Firewall
It makes more sense to build a firewall around your server room protecting your invaluable data than it does to have a firewall for your kitchen protecting your employees' lunches. If you are remodeling your office building, then you may want to consider making the walls in your server room extra thick. You can also add firewalls to your existing server room by adding extra layers of fire-rated sheetrock to your walls. Remodeling is an effective solution, but it's also time-consuming, costly, labor intensive, and you will have to work around a messy construction project while it's going on.

Fire-Rated Vinyl
One easy solution that you can take advantage of is fire-rated vinyl curtains. Used foremost in data centers, these curtains are essentially walls of clear vinyl secured to the floor and ceiling. You can see through it, which gives the office an open feel, and it's much easier to install than using traditional building materials. Many vinyl curtain providers advertise setup times of less than one hour and you don't have to use power tools to install them.

Vinyl is much more durable than you would think. You can install vinyl curtains with a class 1 rating for flame and smoke generation. If your office were to ever be hit with a fire, then having an extra layer of protection between your servers and the flames (and smoke and debris) could make a big difference in your data and equipment coming out unscathed. When designing your office, keep in mind that replacing a computer network is a complex job and should be given more priority than protecting easily replaceable office items like furniture and potted plants.

Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Solution
A firewall is a great solution that will buy the firefighters time to get the fire under control, but if the trucks are too late, then the firewall will only delay the inevitable ash heap, not prevent it. It's times like this when the value of backing up your data to the cloud is really felt. With a Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution from SMART Services, your melted data can be quickly recovered onto a working terminal so that you can keep operations going, even if your office is burnt to the ground.

Having a physical firewall in place, a virtual firewall, and a Data Backup and Disaster Recovery solution, are all key components to your business continuity plan. This plan includes precautions that will protect your business from disasters that can cripple your operations, especially the ones causing data loss like computer viruses and fire. Your plan will also need a way to keep your business going if you're hit with a worst case scenario, which is where solutions like BDR come in. To learn more about how to best prepare your business for any disaster, call SMART Services at 586 258-0650 .