Today's pop-culture spouts hip-hop, camera phones, 50" Plasma HDTVs, high speed Internet access, web cams and integrated global espionage right there in your living room, office PC or PDA. I have access to more information today than I could have ever dreamed!! Someone call security! Am I being oppressed?!

I want my instantaneous access to information about bombs, adult media and Viagara without a prescription. I want to download music and not pay a dime, not to mention movies and software. I had "The Passion of the Christ" on DVD before it was even in the theatres. I want more popcorn Jiffy on the double. I want my MTV!

What is happening? What is happening to us?

I can't get a thing done these days without first making sure I'm not going to become a slaughtered lamb. And these days, my life is busy helping people fend off advertisers, hackers, and malicious "malware" programmers that live their meager live just for the sake of twisting society. If I could only get my hands on the creator of the Netsky virus...

"Work smarter not harder."

Have you ever heard that before? Of course you have. Today, the smart workers come ready. They are careful, especially in an office environment, but even in the home. There are methods to the madness; there are ways to go about your business prepared.

The first rule in American economics... "Why build one when you can build two for twice as much? Huh? Does that make a bit of sense? Actually in a network it does. If one fails, the other takes over. It is that simple.

I walked into a multi-million dollar business the other day as an analyst. I was just there to offer some recommendations, nothing more. A single hard drive failure and their entire operation would be in shambles. I really couldn't believe it.

With the absurd abilities of a moderately intelligent high school kid, it amazes me that some of our most successful entrepreneurs take unnecessary risks. A simple RAID installation, a hard drive mirror, a backup tape drive, and a professional firewall are all fundamental when planning to secure your future.

If a hard drive crashes in a raid array, one of the other drives in the array can handle the load until the failed drive is replaced. That is the idea! In a hard drive mirror, if the primary drive fails, a simple switch and you are back up and running in no time. Replace the failed drive and recreate the mirror. YES!

What about viruses, file corruption, or accidental deletions?

A tape drive system can quickly backup 40 gigabytes of information on a daily basis. Archive your backups. You lose a file, so what. Restore from backup. Of course, you should always use a solid Anti-Virus system as well.

Are there resolutions to the difficulties presented to our future? If we protect ourselves well enough, I guess we can limit our worries. I am not sure. But some things are still for certain. Death and taxes. Everything else is just a handshake. Make sure you keep your hands washed.

A Rule for the road:

If you are running backups on your network, and you have not tested the restore process, how are you sure that your backups are running successfully? Your disaster recovery plan should include a monthly test of your restore process.