World Backup Day is March 31st, each and every year. However, while there is value to having a dedicated holiday to raise awareness of the needs of backup, it should not be the only time it is considered. Let’s go over the importance of proper backup practices, just in time for the holiday, so that you can establish the backup that your business needs.
What is a Business Backup?
Let’s respond to this question with a few of our own: how reliant are you on your business’ data, and what would happen to your business if you were to lose that data? The answer to the first question should be a very obvious “very.” The answer to the second is equally obvious: “nothing good.”
Your backup is meant to prevent you from ever having to find out that second answer firsthand. The idea of a backup is simple: with an extra copy of your data squirreled away for safekeeping, you don’t need to panic if something happens to your original copy. What that something could be, we’ll touch on later,
What Does a Proper Business Backup Look Like?
We always recommend that a business’ backup be considered redundant—in a good way. Rather than something being unnecessary due to its repetition, its repetition is its strength. In this context, having a redundant backup simply means that you have multiple copies of this backup.
We always recommend that you have multiple copies of your data backup, stored in numerous different places, in different formats. This is commonly summed up as the 3-2-1 Rule:
At least three copies of your data, stored in at least two different formats, with at least one copy stored in the cloud.
This helps protect your backup from any event that might impact your local files. So, if your office experiences some kind of disastrous event, you won’t find all your backups destroyed or damaged as a result.
To truly be redundant, it also helps to keep multiple versions of your data, just in case an attack of some sort manages to infiltrate your data and you want to restore your data from a clean version.
These kinds of backups should be taken periodically—ideally, every 15 minutes or so. That way, you’ll lose a minimal amount of data should a disaster take place between backups.
Why Might a Business Need a Backup?
There are a great many reasons that a backup could prove useful. Naturally, your mind might go right to the largest disasters: fires, floods, and other such things that would completely wipe a business off the map. However, disasters large and (relatively) small can all result in data loss—data loss that your backup can help you avoid. Whether a device fails, ransomware encrypts your entire network infrastructure, or a disaster occurs, a proper data backup can do a lot to resolve your potential data loss issues.
Whether It’s World Backup Day or Not, We’re Here to Help
Backup practices are important all year round. That’s why NIS is here to help you prepare a data backup or review your existing strategy. Give us a call at (304) 781-3410 option 2 to get started now.
