You Can’t Afford Not to Have a Proper Backup Solution
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. This is what it means to believe in Murphy’s Law, a rather bleak and somewhat nihilistic view of how the world works. Unfortunately, when it comes to your business’ important data, you have to subscribe to this mindset in order to prepare yourself for the worst-case scenario. Every business has its differences, but the end result will remain largely the same–a data backup system customized to fit your organization’s specific needs.
Your Backup Needs to Meet Some Prerequisites
There is always the constant threat of data loss looming over your business. Even though the idea might be terrifying, you need to consider all of the many possible ways that crippling data loss can occur. To combat these issues head-on, you should implement a backup solution that adheres to industry best practices. We’ll help you determine what your business’ requirements are for a quality data backup solution.
To Backup Your Business’ Data, You Can’t Rely on Tape
These days, it’s unheard of to run a business without some form of data backup and disaster recovery in place, no matter how basic or crude. In a worst-case scenario, you could lose so much more than just your business’ data. All of the future ramifications of such an event compound and can snowball into a situation that makes it borderline impossible for your organization to recover. Therefore, the best way to approach this situation is to make sure that it doesn’t happen in the first place.
A Physical Backup Has a Place in Your Overall Strategy
Physical data backup can be a key part of data backup and disaster recovery. Even if you utilize the cloud for your business continuity solution, there can be no discrediting the importance of having physical data backup. A simple physical data backup can be effective under the right circumstances.
You May Have a Backup, But Could it Be Better?
Data backup is important for businesses that want to keep their data safe in the event of a disaster scenario, but each organization’s specific needs will vary. One thing is important to keep in mind, though, and it’s that your business can’t afford to not have data backup. In other words, you need to be prepared for any situation so that you aren’t left wondering if you’re ready to deal with a disaster scenario.
You May Have a Backup, But Could it Be Better?
Data backup is important for businesses that want to keep their data safe in the event of a disaster scenario, but each organization’s specific needs will vary. One thing is important to keep in mind, though, and it’s that your business can’t afford to not have data backup. In other words, you need to be prepared for any situation so that you aren’t left wondering if you’re ready to deal with a disaster scenario.
A Physical Backup Has a Place in Your Overall Strategy
Physical data backup can be a key part of data backup and disaster recovery. Even if you utilize the cloud for your business continuity solution, there can be no discrediting the importance of having physical data backup. A simple physical data backup can be effective under the right circumstances.
Backup and Recovery is Essential for Today’s Business
How confident are you that your business could survive a worst-case scenario? Organizations should always be ready to go in case they are struck by overwhelming odds, be it a hacking attack or a natural disaster. How would your business respond to a disaster scenario? Do you have a business continuity plan put in place so that you can guarantee your organization survives to see the light of another day?
A business continuity plan consists of much more than just data backup and disaster recovery, though. It includes having a plan to keep mission-critical staff and personnel safe in the event of a disaster, as well as ways to stay in touch with your staff and get back in business as soon as possible following the disaster. If your business fails to eliminate downtime, keep key personnel safe, and restore crucial data, any random threat to your business continuity could put your future in jeopardy.
We’re going to discuss one of the most important parts of business continuity in detail: data backup and disaster recovery. With a BDR solution, you’ll be one step closer to keeping your business running following a crippling incident.
How Much Data is Being Backed Up?
If you ever need to ask the question of how much data is being backed up by your organization, you’re likely not backing up enough of it. You should be backing up all of your data, or as much is feasibly possible, so that you ever have to question whether or not a hardware failure robbed you of the most important data your business holds. Even losing something as simple as contacts can be a considerable annoyance, as you will then have to waste time collecting them all over again.
Traditional tape backup takes complete backups of your data, but it only does so on a limited basis. Catalyst Technology Group’s BDR solution can back up data more frequently, and only updates backups when files have been changed, making it a much more convenient and less straining solution for the average small business.
How Often is Data Being Backed Up?
Your data will only be so helpful if backups are only taken every so often. For example, tape backup only takes one big backup at the end of the day due to how it works. Since the process is rather intensive, it must happen after hours, lest it threaten your organization with downtime. This leads to a conundrum–take backups more often, or lose out on productivity due to your infrastructure being slowed or brought down by intensive, frequent backups.
A cloud-based BDR solution allows your company to take much more frequent backups without sacrificing uptime. Since the backups only occur for files that have been changed since the last backup was taken, they can happen more often–up to as frequently as every fifteen minutes. This lets you minimize data loss in the event of a disaster.
How Fast Can You Restore Data?
In the event of a data loss incident, there’s no time to waste. You need to get back in action as soon as possible so that you lose minimal time, resources, and assets. Yet, this is often more difficult than it seems, as you might not even have an infrastructure left to restore data to, if the disaster is bad enough. Even if you have tape backup, you’re looking at several hours or days to restore your business’s infrastructure completely, which isn’t an option if you’re looking to minimize wasted time.
Catalyst Technology Group’s BDR solution allows your organization to restore data directly to the BDR device, providing you with the opportunity to get back in business as soon as possible while worrying about replacement hardware later. This minimizes downtime and keeps your business active, despite overwhelming odds.
Does your business need a BDR solution? Catalyst Technology Group has your back. To learn more, reach out to us at (317) 705-0333.
Tip of the Week: The Basics of Data Backup
Data backup and disaster recovery are two of the linchpins of any business that relies on data and IT solutions storing information. Your business needs to have a plan for when operations are interrupted due to an unforeseeable data loss event. There are a few ways that you can keep your data backups as safe and efficient as possible.
Here are some of the basic conditions that you should attempt to reach for your business’s data backups.
Ensure Quality Backup Security and Safety
It’s important to view your data backup system as more than just an elaborate insurance policy for your business’s operations. The reality of the situation is that your data is arguably the most important part of your organization, as without it, you can forget about resuming business as usual. Therefore, it’s important that you keep your data as secure as possible from both cyber and physical threats, including hackers, natural disasters, and so on. Imagine that your data is safe and secure on-site, only to have it be destroyed by a flood or fire. Cloud-based backup avoid these issues by storing it online in a secure environment, away from entities that could cause it harm.
Keep a Disaster Recovery Strategy
Would your business be out of commission for a long time following a disaster scenario? Even if you have a data backup secure off-site, this means nothing if you don’t have a strategy to implement it as soon as possible. A disaster recovery strategy is of the utmost importance. By considering all of the details about a potential disaster recovery scenario, you can better prepare for situations where you’ll need to initiate it. This means that you can minimize data loss and time wasted due to downtime.
Test Your Backups Regularly
You’ll only benefit from your business’s backup and disaster recovery if it works as intended. Imagine that you experience a scenario where you need to deploy a data backup, but it’s corrupted and you can’t initiate it. This can really put a damper on your plans. You should periodically test your business’s backups to ensure that they actually work when you need them to.
Don’t wait until the last minute to prepare your business for a disaster scenario. To learn more, reach out to us at (317) 705-0333.
Data Backup is Much More Complicated Than It Seems
You must consider a series of worst-case scenarios if you want to protect your business in the long run. While various factors such as physical security, employee training, and network security can help you mitigate the majority of issues you face, what happens when each of these efforts fails? You know what they say–prepare for the worst and you’ll never be surprised by a data loss event again.
With a quality data backup and disaster recovery solution, you’ll be prepared for whatever life throws at your business. Larger companies generally don’t have as much to worry about, as their budgets are more flexible and can accommodate the spending required to ensure business continuity. Yet, smaller businesses can take advantage of these benefits as well, and it’s all thanks to managed IT services. The same backup and disaster recovery services that large enterprises take advantage of can work for your business, too, and it all starts with a business continuity plan. Here are four major concerns that any SMB should take into consideration for preserving their data infrastructure.
Firewalls
Do you store your business’s data backups in a location where they’re not protected by security solutions? If so, you’ll need to reconsider how you store your data backups. Firewalls are designed to keep threats from traveling to and from your infrastructure, and if the data that you’re storing your data backups in isn’t adequately protected by them, you’re going to have a bad time.
Antivirus
The same can be said for an antivirus solution, which protects your data by eliminating threats to it. All it takes is one threat to corrupt your business’s computing infrastructure. Think about what would happen if your data backups were to be corrupted by some ransom strain of malware. Would you be able to restore a backup like that in good faith that it wouldn’t pose a threat to your organization? Probably not–and you shouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. Implement an enterprise-level antivirus solution so that you don’t have to worry about whether your data backups are any good.
Backup Tests
Let’s say that your business experiences a data loss incident. You try to restore your data as soon as possible, but something goes wrong. The data is corrupted. It’s not as complete as you’d like it to be. Regardless of the reason, your business is down and out because you just assumed that your data backups would work as intended. You should be periodically testing your data backups to ensure that they will work when called upon.
Use Automation
The chances of your business’s data backups not working as intended will be drastically reduced if you remove one of the most unpredictable parts of it–the human element. Tape backups require your employees setting tapes to run backups at the end of every day. A cloud-based BDR, however, will accomplish the same goal automatically and send the backup directly to the cloud. There is no room for error here. Everything is handled seamlessly and without human intervention.
Does your business have a comprehensive business continuity plan? If not, be sure to give us a call at (317) 705-0333. Our trusted technicians can help you build the perfect backup solution for your business.