Data backup is a must-have for every business, but it isn’t enough to just copy your data. You will need to have a data recovery strategy in place to ensure that your business can effectively respond after a data loss incident. Today, we’ll take a look at why considering your recovery strategy early is important, and how to prioritize it with everything else going on with your business.
Know it or not, your business takes in and creates a lot of data. Most of this data, like most items and information, isn’t worth much. Some of it, however, is crucial to your business’ ability to operate. If a situation comes along where you are faced with the prospect of losing your data, it will be much better to have a backup plan in place than not.
Data backup is an integral part of any business continuity strategy, but there are so many different parts to it that it’s not surprising some slip through the cracks if left unchecked. If you’re not taking measures to keep disasters from derailing operations, you could lose everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve. We’ll discuss the critical parts of a data backup and disaster recovery system, including how and why you should test your backups periodically.
If you subscribe to Murphy’s Law, you understand why it is so crucial for every business to have a backup solution planned, put into place, and prepared for the worst. However, not every business should go about putting their backup strategy together in the same way. After all, their needs will be different, based on their industry, the data they store, and a variety of other factors.
Here, we’ll go over five steps you should follow to be sure you aren’t missing anything important from your backup strategy.
1. Figuring Out What You Need From Your Backup
Your first step is to determine what it is you will need from whatever backup solution you ultimately implement, because without this determination already made, you will not be able to narrow down your options enough to begin the process. Furthermore, it wouldn’t do to underestimate your actual needs and procure a solution that isn’t going to cut the mustard when you need it to.
The industry you operate within will influence the requirements of whatever backup solution you ultimately do select. Your particular vertical may inherently require vast amounts of meticulously organized data, which will mean you need a backup system that can accommodate that data in whatever format it is in. Is some of your data of particular importance? You may want to consider prioritizing that data, and finding a solution that allows you to do that. This includes also taking the potential risks to your data into account, including malicious actors and natural events, as you compose a list of security, usability, and reliability standards that your final choice must meet.
2. Establishing Your Budget
Now that you know your baseline requirements for your backup, you need to ensure that your business is financially prepared to implement it. Different approaches to backup will vary in cost and pricing structure, as well as potentially cost different amounts where employee training is concerned - after all, some options will require an employee to manage it, which will require an investment into properly training them to do so.
While it may be tempting to try and cut costs and minimize your investment as much as possible, this isn’t the place to do it. Your data backup, while it admittedly won’t generate you any profit, helps prevent your business from losing money through lost business and downtime.
3. Picking a Platform
It wasn’t too terribly long ago that keeping a backup just meant that you had an extra copy of your data saved in a spare hard drive. Now, there are more options to leverage.
For example, instead of a spare hard drive, there are software-based options available that act as a backup solution, as well as backup options available through cloud service providers. Many companies are now electing, however, to implement a hybrid solution. This combines the convenience of a software-based backup with the resilience of a cloud-based backup solution. Combined, this makes fully leveraging the capabilities of either backup method much easier, with practically ensured access to your stored data as needed.
4. Making a Recovery Plan
What good is a backup if it can’t be put into use, just because nobody knows how? No good at all.
This is why, in addition to your backup, you need to have a detailed plan written out that will allow anyone to enact it as needed. Make sure that this plan includes important details, like variables that could affect the recovery process, which data should be prioritized, and what to do after your data is restored. If there are other members of your organization who will have a role to play in the recovery process, they need to be familiarized with the processes and qualifications outlined within.
5. Testing it All Out
On a related note, what good is a backup if it doesn’t work? Again, it isn’t going to help you much, so it’s going to be pretty useless to you when you need it. In order to avoid heartbreak and devastation when you only discover a failed backup when you’re relying on it to work, you should regularly test your backup solution.
There are a lot of things to consider when testing your backup: that it works, that you can restore your data back from it successfully, that your employees know how to handle it, and that you’re testing it regularly to make sure something doesn’t go wrong.
BEI has quite a bit of experience in assisting small and medium-sized businesses with their data backup and recovery needs. To find out how we can help you, give us a call at (844) BIZ-EDGE.
A justifiable fear drives the data backup market. With all the emerging threats coming from the web, it’s hard to imagine that any company that uses the web for more than just email wouldn’t have a strategy in place to quickly replace lost data. A high percentage of small businesses fail as a result of data-loss incidents so when it comes to the continuity of your business, how you recover your data can be as important as protecting it in the first place.
March 31, 2018 is World Backup Day. Data is a commodity, but unlike other commodities--it can be replicated without hurting its value. As a result, data backup has become a critical need for the modern business. World Backup Day has been created to remind people to protect their assets by backing up their files.
Data Backup is now a mission-critical process that is neglected far too often, unfortunately. In fact, studies show that 30 percent of people have never backed up their data - despite being inundated by a myriad of situations where data could be lost, stolen, or corrupted. With 113 phones being stolen every minute, and 1-in-10 computers being infected with viruses and malware every month, protecting your data has to become a priority. Frankly, data is a very easy thing to lose without the right precautions in place, which is precisely why World Backup Day was created to promote data protection.
Nobody wants to see an organization fail, and the statistics for a business’ survival after a data loss event indicate that if you are not strategically protecting your digital assets, your company is one situation away from catastrophe. Maintaining a comprehensive data backup can negate the effects of such an event, allowing your business to bounce back.
In order to do so effectively, however, there need to be certain standards met by any backup solution your business puts in place. They include:
Redundancy
It isn’t uncommon for businesses to streamline their operations, eliminating redundancies wherever they can. When it comes to data backup, the opposite is actually preferable. To optimize your data’s survivability, your backup should consist of more than one copy of your data - safety in numbers, so to speak.
Frequency
Of course, there’s a limit to how useful an older data backup will be for your business. The progress that would be lost between the time of the backup and the time of the data loss incident would be less effective than one that is current. The best data backups are taken frequently enough to protect your progress without causing downtime.
Off-Site
Your backup won’t do you much good if the same disaster destroys it along with your original data. To keep this from happening, you need to make sure that your backup is kept separate and disconnected from your network.
Your business needs its data in order to be successful. Observing World Backup Day is a great opportunity to ensure that it will be safe. Visit the official World Backup Day website for more information.