Data loss can have severe consequences for your business. It can paralyze your operations, lower productivity, and disrupt the flow of revenue. Worse still, it could lead to your customers losing trust in your company or filing lawsuits against you. Regulatory bodies may also impose penalties upon your organization if your business belongs to a highly regulated industry. To mitigate the risk of data loss, your business must have a data backup plan.
A data backup plan contains guidelines for how your business should create duplicates of important files, including how frequently the copies are created and where they are stored. It ensures that should your company suffer a data loss event, most or all crucial business data will remain accessible. This will reduce downtime and enable your business to quickly resume normal operations.
For you to develop an effective data backup plan, make sure to follow these tips:
Don’t just set it and then forget about it
The data backup process can be either manual or automated. Automating backups mitigates the risk of human error and ensures that duplicates are created consistently. However, some businesses make the mistake of setting up automated backups and then assuming the solution will work perfectly at all times. Although automated backups do function quite well on their own, they still need human input — albeit minimal — to verify that all crucial files are duplicated and stored correctly.
Know the risks
Some businesses and industries are at a greater risk of losing data than others. For instance, the healthcare sector is a common target of ransomware attacks, which are a frequent cause of data loss. Understanding the risk factors your business faces will help you develop a data backup plan that works. You’ll also be able to implement appropriate measures that will reduce the chances of data loss occurring in the first place.
Understand your objectives
Creating backups takes up business resources. For example, you’ll need to spend money on backup software and storage space. Because of this, you need to clearly understand why you’re duplicating your business’s data. Are you doing it for compliance, business continuity, or both? Knowing your objectives can guide you in everything from choosing the right backup solutions to identifying which files you can afford to lose and which ones you should create copies of.
Consider endpoints
An endpoint can be any device that communicates with a network, such as a computer or mobile device. As most endpoints can store crucial business data, they should be covered in your data backup strategy.
In a traditional office setup, you usually only have to worry about backing up data on your office computers. But with the popularity of remote work and bring your own device arrangements, you now have to consider backing up data on more devices. These include your employees’ personal laptops, smartphones, and any other device used to process your business’s data.
Observe the 3-2-1 strategy
The 3-2-1 strategy offers an important guideline in effectively storing backups. It requires you to keep at least three copies of crucial documents in two storage formats, and one copy must be stored in a server located off-site. Off-site storage ensures that should your area be hit by any disaster, the server containing your files will be unaffected.
The cloud is one of the most popular off-site storage options available today. A first-rate provider like Complete Technology uses multiple off-site cloud servers, each of which is protected by multiple advanced cybersecurity solutions to prevent cyberattacks. Anything stored in the cloud can be accessed anytime and anywhere using an internet-connected device, making this solution particularly ideal for companies with remote workers.
Regularly test your data backup plan
You need to test your data backup plan regularly to confirm that it works as needed. Otherwise, your business could end up like GitLab, which lost more than 300 gigabytes of data in 2017 because of a faulty backup process. In describing the error, the company’s blog said, “ “out of five backup/replication techniques deployed, none are working reliably or set up in the first place.” They also admitted that one of the factors that led to the incident was the lack of testing.
The consequences of data loss are grave, so you need to protect your business by developing and implementing a data backup plan. Our experts at Complete Technology will be more than happy to assist you in creating a backup strategy that suits your business’s needs. Just reach out to us today to get started.