By Sarah Kuper
In the past five years, large-scale instances of internet and credit card hacking have created headlines and compromised sensitive data of large companies such as Target and Sony.
But the director of business development and general counsel for ShadowSafe, Tommy Mayfield, said corporations and non-profits of any size are vulnerable.
“Any business with electronic records or storage is at risk, whether it is a small dental practice or large hospital system,” he said.
The mission of ShadowSafe is to provide comprehensive data backups and disaster recovery.
Although cyber criminals are developing new ways to hack systems and extort money all the time, Mayfield is particularly concerned with the recent surge of ransomware. Ransomware is a type of software that will lock access to a computer system until the victim pays a ransom.
“If you don’t have a good back-up then you are forced to pay the ransom. Sometimes you have to pay but you still never get anything back. Our solution is providing the ability to roll you back to the time before you were affected,” Mayfield said.
ShadowSafe began with chief technology officer Larry Bates. Bates has worked with computers since before they became the business necessity they are today. After 35 years in the industry without seeing what he thought to be an adequate safeguard against data compromise, he founded ShadowSafe nearly 10 years ago.
Conversely, Mayfield has no IT experience to speak of, but rather sees the issue of data protection through an attorney’s eyes.
A Mountain Brook native, Mayfield has a law degree from the University of Virginia and or six years practiced at Maynard Cooper & Gale, one of Alabama’s largest law firms. He said he left the firm to look for something different and more entrepreneurial.
“It is a service a lot of small to midsize companies need, they don’t appreciate how vulnerable they are,” he said.
Mayfield looks at data back-ups and disaster recovery as another form of liability insurance.
He said there are people developing software to protect computers against hackers, but as fast as they develop solutions, hackers are finding ways around them.
Mayfield believes the only safe solution is comprehensive data back-up to ensure that, if anything were to happen to a businesses’ data, it would take minimal time to restore it.
ShadowSafe backs up not only data, but also operating systems and software so that a company experiences little downtime if it falls victim to a hack or hardware failure. ShadowSafe offers onsite and offsite back-ups and operates on a subscription model, with the monthly cost depending on the number of machines and total amount of data to be protected.
Though ShadowSafe has clients across the country, Mayfield said the company is focused on serving small to medium-sized businesses locally.
“We value the contributions local business makes to this community, and we want to help protect those businesses,” he said.
