Importance of Backup Strategy
Does your business have a backup strategy in place? Almost every small to medium business owners doesn’t have a backup strategy to their business.
It always goes to their bottom of their never-ending to-do list, that’s because they haven’t experienced any systems failures yet.
In fact, you should do it other way around, if you only have time to do one thing today, verify that your backups are working and up to date.
Data loss will happen, it can happen due to accidental deletion of file or any unexpected reasons like hardware failures, theft, natural disasters and more.
So, it’s always best to have a backup strategy for your business.
The taught of writing one for yourself without the knowledge of computers can be intimidating and you might think cost of paying a third party to provide a backup strategy can be off-putting.
Don’t worry Setup4 consultants understand the importance of backup strategy and we do it for a very competitive price.
Call us today and find out more.
How often should you backup data for your business?
It is one of the important questions that every business must consider on their backup strategy, and since each business is unique, every business will have a different strategy according to their recovery needs and objectives.
A simple backup strategy for almost every business.
We call this strategy a 3-2-1. It is much simpler and effective. This means, businesses should have 3 copies of their data, 2 of which will be local I.e., in your office, and 1 copy will be stored offsite in a remote location.
Copy 1: (Business location)
It will be the Live data you and your team members use in daily basics
Copy 2: (Also in Business location)
This backup data should be stored on a separate storage device like USB, NAS, or a local backup server.
Copy 3: (Outside of Business location)
This is a backup that is secured offsite. When disaster happens, in one of many forms, you’ll still be able to restore your data quickly and get back to business fast.
Now the million-dollar questions, every business owner should be thinking,
- who should hold the offsite data copy?
- When was the last time a backup is performed on that particular device?
- How old is that device? Does it support current technologies?
The offsite device if not maintained correctly, no superhero can recover data that isn’t working in the first place.
You might say it is hard enough to run a day-to-day activity in business but, there is an automated, convenient and affordable solution to manage your offsite device.
Introducing Cloud Backup Solution
In layman terms, A cloud backup is a futuristic data storage in a very secure vault of storage devices known as Datacentre. It backs up your data to a secure offsite location.
We install a backup software application on your servers and configures it to automatically upload an encrypted copy of your data regularly via your internet connection to the datacentre for a safe and secure storage.
There are really good advantages of cloud backups for businesses.
- It is really Convenient for ongoing management and restoration of your data easy.
- Reliable: You don’t have to be dependent on anyone. No reminders of daily backups and no human error ever.
- Secure: When uploading your data, cloud always encrypt the file and upload it to a secure datacentre
- Affordable: You don’t have to pay for the expensive hardware, cloud backups leverage your existing IT equipment.
- Automated: Enjoy the peace of mind that comes with a fully automated offsite backup that works 24/7/365.
What Data Needs to be Backed up Daily?
Backup every single file of your business. Everything and anything that is remotely related to your business should be backed up.
At Setup4, we suggest you spend 5 minutes writing a list of every resource that your team uses.
After that, send it to your IT partner and check what all is backed up to servers.
In our backup strategy, we always have
- What data is backing up
- Recovery time in the event of disaster
- If data failure occurs, how long does it take to back you again
- Office 365, If you’re using one for your business
- When is back up happening?
Common Question we get!
Do we need to back up our cloud services like Office 365 Subscription?
Definitely, if your business is using Microsoft 365 you should have a third-party backup in place.
Keep in mind, Microsoft is not responsible for your data, if one of their servers lost or destroyed by natural or man made errors you will lose all your OneDrive files, emails and more.
Your Microsoft 365 doesn’t use 3-2-1 strategy, all their files are on cloud only also called single point strategy which is very vulnerable to data corruption.
Based on your business, we will create a different RPO (Recovery point objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective).
RPO refers to the time to which your business recovers to the very second to a disastrous data loss and RTO refers to the time in the future at which your business will be up and running again.
At Setup4, we will create a RPO & RTO guide to establish what your business requirements are when a disaster happens.
We will be your important-final piece of backup strategy, to make it happen automatically.
We monitor, audit, test and update the IT environment of the business every single day.
We can predict the issues proactively, so we can suggest modifications to improve your IT environment.
You’ll get a lot of other benefits having a cloud backup solution. It is very reliable and more security for your business.
No more manual backups and reminders, You can focus on your business and leave IT to us.
