Let's talk backups.
Backups and Disaster recovery….not the most exciting subject and one that may make you cringe, but it should be front of mind for every business owner and to be honest every person using technology.
Long gone are the days of being complacent about backups. In the Cyber scam heavy world that we live in having a quality backup solution is an absolute must. Your business needs to be able to recover and recover quickly when the day comes that you are faced with data loss.
Essentially, any time that your staff can’t do their job due to missing/corrupt data, server downtime or unable to access resources, your business is either losing money or missing an opportunity to better serve your clients.
What are you protecting against?
Backups are there to provide your business a level of protection against
- Hardware failure
- Theft
- Fires and or smoke damage
- Power spikes or hardware damage due to electrical interference
- Viruses
- Ransomware or cyber attacks
- Flooding & natural disasters
- Malicious damage from disgruntled employees
The list goes on….
What should be included in your backup strategy?
A good backup solution should allow your company to be back online and cause minimal disruption to business function. It needs to be easy to manage, well documented, tested on a regular basis and most of all you MUST have an offsite/offline backup at all times.
Every business needs to evaluate the level of protection they need and what to include in their backup strategy, however below is a list of some common things that need to be included:
- Staff Data and Company Files
- Collaboration suite (Office 365 / Google Workspace)
- Servers & System State Data
- Server RAID Configurations
- Intranets or Internal company sites
- Accounting & Client management software – files & databases
- User emails & correspondence
- Website – files & databases
- Router & Switch configurations
- Phone System configurations
- Security System & CCTV configurations
Anything that if lost immediately affects company operation.
How should you backup your data?
Again, this has a lot of factors that must be considered such as your company, its size, the type of systems you use, how often your data chances.
However, when in doubt use the proven backup strategy of 3-2-1
3 x Copies of your Data
2 x Different types of media (Tape / USB / Cloud / NAS so on)
1 x Copy is offsite
And don’t forget, every backup you have must be encrypted.
At Runtime we work with you to design, implement and manage a backup regime to protect your business and to allow you to focus on what you do best – serving your clients.
Don’t live in fear or put it off until it’s too late.
Send us a message or call on 1300 730 331 to discuss how we can take the worry out of disaster recovery.
