Data Backup – Essential For Business Continuity
New business owners have a lot of worries to keep them tossing and turning at night into the wee hours. One technology ‘what if’ is the loss of critical data to a server crash, virus, hard drive failure or a larger mishap such as a fire or flood.
Even though the threat of data loss is quite apparent to many business owners sorting out a disaster recovery plan are often very low down on the list despite its importance. Sadly effective data backup protocols are often ignored even though at the lowest level important documents could be backed up onto a pen drive or USB memory stick.
Sure, even memory sticks fail but at least USB memory recovery is a viable option as a simple form of data backup
Even if you do not have the time or budget to put in place a decent data backup regime simply copying essential data to an external hard drive is surely better than a lack of any sort of policy, of course the crucial element in an back up procedure is just that , it is a procedure and should be adhered to……regulary!
Then there is the important job of making sure that you can recovery your data easily from your backup as there is little point in having a system in place only to find that it does not work when you need it most.
As well as the potential cost of attempted data recovery when a backup has been found to fail , there is also the intangible (until it happens) cost of lost business due to system down time, and in extreme cases total business failure if legislation required business records to be kept for any length of time, which can be years.
Sadly for many businesses back up protocols will be left as a low priority until an actual data loss occurs and backup, just like an insurance policy is there for when you need it even though most of the time you do not.
As well as back up to external media offsite storage is also an option, however this methodology can be quite time consuming as data needs to be uploaded or downloaded en-masse which is very time consuming and consumes a lot of bandwidth.
Another option which is relatively new is an automatic real time backup using the internet. This consists of a program running in the background backing up data as you are working. This means you do not have to remember to backup up at regular intervals as it does it all for you once it is set up.
Online data backup is becoming a very favourable option for savvy IT professionals and local computer repair companies.
Of course a huge benefit is that if you need to access your data when you are away from your office, even if your laptop has been stolen or you simply didn’t bring it with you, you could access your data anywhere else in the world depending on your configuration.
The most important take away from all this is of course if you don’t have a data backup solution in your business get one before it is too late, and once you have one test it to ensure it functions correctly.
And of course an effective backup policy is far less costly than the costs of disaster recovery and data recovery .
