You always hope that you will never need to use your backups, but in a disaster, you certainly will be grateful you have them. From hurricanes and fires to your everyday accidental file deletions, disasters can come in all shapes and sizes. Even viruses can cause a disaster on your network. Many businesses fall victim to ransomware attacks that can encrypt your critical business data and make it impossible to access.
A good backup strategy can save your business from all of these types of disaster. So, we’ve compiled a list of a few things to consider when building your backup strategy.
Are They Secure?
Business owners are usually less concerned about viruses and ransomware when their backups are secured. Simply having the backups isn’t enough, you need to have the right security measures to make sure your files are safe in case of a security breach.
Ransomware searches the network for vulnerable files and folders. Without the proper security measures in place, this could extend to your backup files as well. If ransomware infects your backup files as well as your standard data, you may not have a way to restore your data.
Are They Replicated?
Relying on just one set of backups is a recipe for disaster. Local viruses aren’t the only things threatening your business data. Hardware failure is incredibly common.
Duplicating your backups to a secondary location can protect your data in the event of hardware failure on your primary backup device. If possible, the backup data should be in a different room than the server it is backing up, and better yet the replication should be to an offsite location.
Are They Offsite?
Much like replication, storing your backups in the same location as the data it is backing up will not protect it from a natural disaster.
In Southern California, the threat of fires is very real. When a fire hits the server room or your office, everything onsite could be destroyed. Having an offsite backup of your data is the only way to make sure your data is protected.
Do They Fit Your Recovery Objectives?
There are 2 main objectives when putting together your backup strategy.
1 – Recovery Point Objective: This is how much data you could stand to potentially lose. Is it 24 hours’ worth of work? Is it 15 minutes? This should help you decide how often you are backing up.
2 – Recovery Time Objective: Discovering this will help you figure out what kind of tools and utilities you need to have in place to make sure you are back up and running as soon as you need. Essentially, it’s how long you can potentially be down before it starts affecting your bottom line.
Discovering these objectives will help you ensure that your backup strategy fits your goals.
Are They Tested?
The only real way to ensure that your backups are functioning properly is to test them on a regular basis. Testing your backups should be an essential part of your backup strategy. Simulating a disaster can help you figure out where your backup strategy is lacking and help you fix the problems before you actually need to use your backups.
Backups are one of the most important parts of your entire IT strategy. If you are unable to say yes to any of these questions, make sure you find an IT Support provider that can get your backup strategy up to speed.
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