Backup software for law firms

As a lawyer, you have an ethical duty to ensure that your clients' electronic information is not lost, destroyed, or disclosed inadvertently. Some states have ethical opinions specifically addressing electronic information. In other states, the existing rules and opinions applicable to paper documents logically extend to electronic documents.

Additionally, the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) legislation enacted in 2002 provides regulations for retention and accessibility of archived data in financial, government and healthcare organizations. In order for law firms to continue to serve the needs of these industries, they too must also meet regulations to protect the security of client data.

Lawfirms and legal organizations tend to generate a significant volume of data related to client matters. This includes:

• Client Correspondence
• Legal Briefs & Filings
• Legal Research
• Court Transcripts
• Trade Publications
• Misc. case related documents

Additionally, attorneys are tasked with preserving data confidentiality and strict compliance to all regulatory (SOX), legal hold and e-discovery requirements. This puts a significant strain on the legal staff to balance the data volume; security and compliance as part of their daily routines. Combine this with a high-pressure, time constrained work environment and a lost or misplaced document can result from winning to losing a case.

Not all legal organizations are equipped with comprehensive data backup facilities. While there are tons of online services that provide data backup and document storage, these may not be easily utilized due to confidential nature of the data and adherence to internal practice guidelines.

Backup strategy

Often companies use tape backups or online backup services offered third-party companies on the Internet. These approaches often come with limitations and problems.

Problems with tape backups

Unreliable

Tape is unreliable, with failure rates as high as 20% to 50% for data recoveries. The biggest challenge with tape backup is often administrators don't know if they have a good backup that can be restored until they actually have to restore one, which is often too late.

Vulnerable

Backup tapes remain vulnerable to physical damage or theft. Most of the time tapes are stored in the same room where the actual machine is physically located and has a potential of getting destroyed in case of a fire.

Labor-intensive

Tape backup is slow, labor-intensive and results in large backup windows, costing your firm productivity and profitability from the administrative overhead

Problems with online backup services

Privacy concerns

The biggest challenge with any online backup service is privacy. Since every online backup service store files to third party networks, there is always a possibility of unauthorized access to the confidential information you treasure. In fact, some backup service providers have no guarantee that stored data will be kept private. For example, from employees.

If you are concerned with privacy, the only way to be 100% sure is if your files never leave your network.

Cost

Most online backup services charge a monthly fee, which may depend upon the storage size and number of users accessing it. Although this cost is minimal in the beginning, it can significantly grow when you add more data.

It is also possible that a remote backup service provider could go out of business or be purchased, which may affect the accessibility of one's data or the cost to continue using the service.

Network

Every backup service requires Internet access. Although this is not an issue during normal operations, you may not able to backup or restore files if the Internet is down or slow. Imagine restoring gigabytes of data over a slow Internet connection. It could take days before you can have access to every client file.

A better solution

Privacy concerns

Your backed up files stay in your network. No third party company will ever get involved in handling your files. For added security, you can even use encryption to prevent unauthorized access within your company.

Cost

Syncrify is a product, not a service. This means you pay once and use if forever. Since backups are done on your machine and network, there no usage cost - backup as much as you like without spending a single dime. It could be in terabytes and you still pay a small one-time fee. Check the pricing page for details.

Always available

Files stay within your network. You can certainly use the Internet to backup files between offices that are physically located in different areas. The bottom line is they stay available to your 24/7, whenever you need them.

Unattended backups

Once Syncrify is setup, backups occur automatically without any human interaction. You can run backups every night at a given time after they leave and network activity is at minimum. Users can optionally get emails confirming a successful job.

Using Syncrify

Follow the steps below to install Syncrify.

• Designate a machine to hold backed up data, download and install Syncrify Server. We also recommend watching a video on this subject.
• Using the server's web interface, create a new user.
• Connect to the server's web interface from the client machine. This accomplishes two tasks: ensures the client can see the server and displays a download link to install client.
• Download and install Syncrify client
• User the server's URL in Syncrify client and the user you created earlier to make your first backup.
• Optionally, watch a video to how the advanced features in Syncrify client.

Need help?

We understand installing client and servers is not your core business and you would rather spend time in solving your client's problems than tweaking around with a software product. When you use Syncrify, help is just a phone call away. Give us a call and we will help you install and configure Syncrify on your network.

If you or your institution wants to implement a more reliable backup and disaster recovery strategy while reducing costs, contact us today. Download Syncrify today and see how easy it is to implement and protect your most valued assets.