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The NEWORK Centre
Level 2 Willbank House
57 Willis Street Wellington
Phone 499 1048
e-mail nework@xtra.co.nz |
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No 2 23 October 2003
The Website
The website has a number of facilities that are available to Nework members. Members are able to use the office at Level 2, Willbank House for meetings and making local calls.
- Discussion Centre
: A new innovation to the website is the discussion centre that can be accessed most readily from the Home Page. We would like to see the discussion centre used for just that. If you have an issue that others may be interested in making a contribution or exchange views, enter the matter as a discussion issue on the Discussion Centre of the site
- Centre facilities
: The facilities that are available are listed on the Membership Info Page If you wish to use the premises for a meeting, the Centre can be booked by either sending and email to the Centre or using the Discussion Centre on the Website. The website also enables you to check if the Centre has already been booked by someone.
- Our Story
: Neworkers are people questioning the long held norms around working life. The Nework Centre provides the catalysis, the stimulation, the space, and the challenges to change the status quo for those who wish to live their lives in new ways. We are developing a description of these new ways. We invite you to contribute with your suggestions. So far we have pages on accountability, ways of working, work values, inclusiveness, sustainability, celebrating success, era, service, collaboration, rewards, reciprocity, wisdom, 'age", choice, and transparency. There is plenty of opportunity for your input.
Membership of Nework
Membership of Nework is available to
- those who wish to support the aims, vision, philosophy of the Work and Age Trust NZ Inc
- to Nework/portfolio practitioners.
- and to those who are exploring the way forward, to see if Neworker/Portfolio working is for them.
Membership is by way of a donation. We have suggested $50 as being an appropriate level of support. As members we meet others who are outside the organisation. How about you inviting them to support the Centre by becoming a member.
The Importance of : Backing-up
Recently, my "stand-by" computer hard drive cried enough and decided that I wasn't going to be able to get any information off it - or at least not without going to great expense. This made me look at the issue of security of the material on my main PC and "Oh Dear".
So, I spent nearly an evening burning CD's backing up everything that I had on the computer. This included the downloaded programs, the hundreds of files and folders of data that I had with great enthusiasm scanned, typed, prepared, formatted and the rest.
I realised just how much at risk my business was.
I then did some investigating. Small and medium sized businesses are the most "at risk" from data loss because of their limited time and resources to devote to consistent and reliable system backups. According to a recent study by the Wharton School of Business, approximately 10% of small companies go out of business specifically because they are not protected against data loss. That number jumps to 50% when the data is lost for more than 10 days!
The Statistics can be Frightening
In the States, roughly one in four computers is a victim of computer-related crimes each year. Approximately 300,000 laptops were stolen in 1998 alone, resulting in billions of dollars in losses. Each year, more than 80% of companies were victims of computer viruses, with more than 30% of that group reporting significant data loss. And last year alone, more than 350,000 businesses and millions of homes suffered fire damage. The most costly loss? - Information!
The average failure rate of disk drives is 100%
All drives eventually fail. In most failures, files are lost
It takes 19 days and costs US$17,000 to retype just 20 megabytes of sales loss
That same volume of accounting data takes 21 days and costs US$19,000
Back-ups : simple, yet rarely followed through. At every company, from the smallest to the largest, an estimated 60% of vital data* is stored on individual PCs, with little or no protection (*source: IDC analyst report).
Back up is even more vital when you consider the rate of failure for laptops is as high as 15-20%* per year and every year 30%+ of all PCs are lost or stolen. (+source: Gartner Group statistics)
Back-up : Think of it as Insurance for your Data
Your computer may be destroyed by some untimely disaster, but your really valuable asset - the data vital to your business - needs to be safe and secure on a back-up located in a different site from your PC.
So, what back-up options are available? There are many options available from those of the specially designed an written programs that transfer the data onto a specially designed storage system owned and operated by the business, to those that transfer data to a regional office machine to those that are perhaps more practical to the portfolio worker/NEWORKer :
Just some options include :
- CD back up is a reliable way to back up your data and the discs are generally easier to transport than external tape or hard drives. Plus these drives can be used for many different purposes. However you are vulnerable to loss through theft or natural disaster unless you religiously remove the discs to a safe location.
- External tape or drive back up is a reliable way to back up all your data onsite. You may have to purchase specialised software if you wish to automate the task and, unless you store the back up copy somewhere else, you are still vulnerable to loss through theft and natural disaster.
- Online back up offers a secure, automatic, remote back up solution. This means no matter what happens to your data, your vital files are protected off-site. Generally online back up is set and forget so it takes no extra time or personnel. As an added bonus, files can be accessed from anywhere at anytime. If you use this option it is important to check that your files are stored securely where they will not be accessible to hackers or subject to other such security threats.
- USB Mini Drive : A relative newcomer is the Mini USB drive. These drives plug into the USB port and can be used to back up or transfer personal data. These devices are more targeted at transferring data than for backup; however, this can be a useful backup device for someone who is on the go and doesn't have a great deal of data.
- Floppy Disk : There is the A Drive on most PC's and you can gather together lots and lots of those small 3.5" disks.
Is your business data safe if your PC "falls over"? I hope so!!
The NEWORKer can be viewed online at the Work & Age Website
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