These days any and all businesses are vulnerable to data loss no matter their size or what type of data information drives their business. A backup solution is something you can’t afford not to have in place. But unlike the past, when the backup was all about floppy disks and backing up onto CDs, the technology of backing up data has grown more complex.
What’s the best way to establish and implement a backup strategy for your business? The first step is understanding the importance of a backup plan and the second is knowing that hiring an IT consultancy could help you make some of the important decisions about backup and finding the best solutions to protect your business from data loss.
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Why Backup Is Important to Your Business
The entire purpose of backing up is to have a copy of your data that can be recovered, so you have electronic copies of all your important information. Without a backup, it’s going to take you a lot longer to rebuild your data and get your business fully functional once again. You want backups that are going to put your business back to as close to the current state it was in just before data was lost.
What Are You Protecting Your Data From?
Your computer system can crash entirely without any warning at all as the result of software or hardware failures. Here are some of the top reasons for data loss:
Hardware Failure
According to TechRadar, the most common cause of data loss or corrupted data is due to hardware malfunctions or hardware failure such as hard disk drive crashes.
Human Error
Mistakes are made, such as the accidental deleting of an entire folder or physical damage to a computer storage device. And sometimes these human errors can lead to data loss that needs to be recovered.
Malware and Viruses
Data breaches are one of the top reasons for data loss. The results of a 2018 study by Ponemon report that the “global average cost of a data breach is up 6.4 percent”. For any business, malware and viruses can steal and delete information or slow down your network system so that it’s almost non-functional. Even though your business should have protection in place to guard against these malicious attacks, new viruses and risks are being developed every day by hackers. If malware or viruses damage your data, data that is backed up is the only way to recover from an attack.
Power Loss
Loss of power can shut down your computer system and network without any warning. This can lead to the loss of any data that wasn’t saved and can also corrupt files. Even if you don’t suffer data loss from a power outage, it can damage computer hard drives. If your business experiences frequent power surges and outages, regular backups are your insurance that hard drive loss won’t put your business at risk.
What Needs to be Backed Up?
Your data and business files are an integral part of your business. Without this information, your business is at a standstill, and if you suffer a data loss, it could take you weeks if not months to fully recover. What information should you be backing up? To keep your business safe, you should be doing a backup of your entire computer system. This includes email, financial records, customer and product information, your business plan, payroll information, just to name a few.
How Often Should You Back Up Data?
Every business needs to have a backup plan and strategy. How often you back up your network and data will depend on what type of data and information your business is generating. Some companies will update data and files once or twice a week. For these business doing a backup once a week may be enough. Other businesses generate new data daily and even hourly. If this is your business, you’ll need to schedule backups that adequately protect your data.
Types of backup
Onsite
Choosing onsite backup means that you store your data onsite at your business. One of the advantages of this type of backup is that you have access to your data at all times. Data is stored on inexpensive hard drives that are easy to install and use. Most external hard drive backup systems will come with backup software – you can either manage the backup of your own data or hire a professional IT team to do the backups for you.
Cloud
Cloud storage is becoming increasingly more popular among businesses for data backup. It’s an effective way for smaller to mid-size companies to store data remotely. Your data is easily and quickly accessed through any device and from any location. One of the biggest benefits of using cloud storage for backups is that it has more space than other network servers and because your data is stored on more than cloud server, there is little to no risk of data loss.
Small Business Trends predicts that by 2020, 78 percent of small businesses will be using cloud storage to back up their data and information. Don’t let data loss affect your business operations. Losing files and data means losing money and time to recover and restore information that’s essential to the running of your business. Protect yourself by having a regular backup schedule in place so you can safeguard your important business data.
