Does your backup and disaster recovery plan cover you as well as you think it does? It’s a question worth asking now, before you need all the data you’ve been saving.
We bring this up because there are thousands of businesses across California with inadequate backup plans in place. That leaves them vulnerable to all kinds of problems once the inevitable power surge or server failure comes along. Even worse, a lot of these companies have owners and executives who think they’re being protected. So, when something goes wrong they get hurt twice – first by the initial disruption, and then again (and much more severely) when they discover the backups they were counting on can’t save them.
To understand why this happens so frequently, and why it’s such an important topic for businesses of all sizes, let’s take a closer look at the details…
What Makes a Good Backup Plan?
In today’s digitally-driven world, the need for a strong data backup plan is just good common sense. But what makes a system sturdy and trustworthy? There are a lot of different factors to consider when putting a backup plan together, but here are a few top priorities:
- You have to ensure backups are running regularly, so you’ll always have up-to-date files to restore from if necessary.
- The backups should be tested at regular intervals to ensure all relevant data is being saved and can be restored quickly.
- Your files should be stored in a remote location, meaning they’ll be unaffected if something happens to your building or facility.
- All of your backups should be encrypted. That way, you don’t have to worry about outsiders hacking into your archived files and getting sensitive data they shouldn’t.
- And finally, you need to have a plan in place to restore your backups quickly and seamlessly to ensure your business isn’t disrupted if your main drives or servers go down.
These don’t represent all the things that matter in backup and data recovery, of course, but you could consider them to be strong starting points when building a strategy for your small or medium-sized business.
When it Comes to Backups, Half Measures Don’t Count
Contrast the points we laid out above with the way lots of business owners handle data backups: by saving files to tape drives, CDs, or external hard drives. Their approach might be faster and cheaper, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of protection or insurance.
If you are storing sensitive files on a drive within your office, you run the risk of losing your backups at the same time you lose your regular servers. And, you make it more likely that someone will steal your data or accidentally destroy the storage media. You certainly aren’t going to know whether your backups are useful, or have a plan for putting them back into place.
Add these risks together, and it’s easy to see why this kind of approach to backups can leave you empty-handed at the moment you most need extra copies of your files.
Are You Prepared for the Inevitable?
Technology is wonderful, but it isn’t invincible. In fact, you’d be amazed at how common it is for entire servers and networks to go offline because of what seems like a minor technical issue.
What about when technical issues are the least of your problems? Malicious software by cyber attackers such as Ransomware is becoming a more common issue than ever before. Designed to render your entire system useless, Ransomware holds your files hostage until you’re forced to pay a ransom to get your own data back. In this case especially, access to a reliable backup of your data stored remotely is the only way to ensure you don’t become a victim of this type of extortion.
The best way to prepare yourself, and your company, is to know that data loss is inevitable if you stay in business for long enough. When it happens, you’ll either feel safe knowing you have the right plan and protection in place, or left wondering why you didn’t act sooner.
Call the Fantastic IT team today to learn how easy it is to get the backup and recovery plan your company needs!