The recent riots in London and other British cities have exacted a toll on a number of fronts, including the loss of business data—damage that's not as visually striking as the images of burning buildings, but equally harmful to a business' ability to function.
To help businesses prepare for the threat of more violence and protect the data that remains but may still be at risk, Barclays Business is making its I-Sure web data backup service available for free to all U.K. businesses that sign up during the next three months.
The service can't recover data that was already lost due to destruction, but with the security situation in the U.K. still volatile, Barclays decided to act to help businesses that haven't yet suffered damage but still may be at risk.
"In the recent London riots there was a lot of property destruction, ranging from fires through to more general destruction of business stock and physical property," says Richard Exton, managing director and business expansion director of Barclays Business. "That really forced people to think not just about the physical security of their premises but their information security."
The riots, considered to be the worst in London in many years, began about a week ago. While the exact causes are still emerging, it appears the riots are an outgrowth of earlier protests over government austerity measures in the wake of the recession, though that's been the subject of debate in the U.K.
As the violence continued and spread to other cities such as Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham and Bristol, more than 400 people were arrested, and a number of commuter rail lines and Tube stations were temporarily closed. News accounts of the riots included numerous reports of businesses—mostly small locally owned neighborhood businesses, that were destroyed, burned and attacked in other ways, including physical assaults on the owners. British law enforcement officials have also warned of waves of copycat activity over the next few weeks.
Exton says it's likely that many businesses have lost key information - for example, if their server or computer was based on site, they may have lost that information.
"A lot of that data is irreplaceable, be it anything from their business accounts through to files on their own customers," he says. "It's the kind of thing that entrepreneurs work their entire life to acquire and can be so quickly lost," he says.
By registering for I-Sure, which normally starts at about $5 per month, these businesses can store two gigabytes of information in servers offsite. Businesses, which download I-Sure onto their PCs, can back up their business files, including word documents, spreadsheets, accounting files, emails, pictures and graphics. Encryption is provided by an SSL connection, and users can choose to manually update their files or have them automatically updated. Up to two gigabytes of storage are being offered for free, which is the equivalent of about a few thousand documents, 20 Excel spreadsheets or about 20 email inboxes and address books.
"Then if the business does experience some of the difficulties like fire or computer failure, they will at least be able to reconstitute that information," Exton says.
