Data backup is vital to a business, but its often “out of sight, out of mind.” If there is no major emergency requiring data to be retrieved, backups can often be forgotten and put on autopilot.

But as soon as one of those data loss emergencies occurs, any weakness in your backup and recovery strategy for your Marion, IN business becomes something that could cost you significantly.

There are several common mistakes that companies make when it comes to backing up their data. These include things like:

• Never checking their backup so they don’t see that it’s stalled or out of space
• Not testing data recovery regularly
• Mistaking cloud storage for a backup and recovery system
• Never backing up data that’s in cloud solutions (like Microsoft 365)
• Not backing up all devices (mobile and computers)

Those backup mistakes can be devastating to a business because it can lead to hours spent trying to recover or recreate data, or loss of important files altogether.

What are the Costs of Poor Backup Practices?

Companies can suffer both monetary costs and productivity losses when they don’t follow good backup practices or use the right type of backup and disaster recovery tool.

43% of companies never fully recover from a major data loss incident and end up closing.

Costs include (reference):

• Data recovery time (18.5 hours on average)
• Downtime costs (typically $8,000 for a small company to $74,000 for a medium company)
• Disaster cleanup costs (for ransomware, virus, etc.)
• Costs for files that can’t be recovered or recreated

How a Good Backup & Recovery Solution Can Protect Your Business

There are several facets to the best backup and recovery solutions that keep employees and businesses productive and save them time and money.

Some of the hallmarks of the best backup/recovery tools include:

• Ability to secure data through encryption
• Can backup all devices into a cloud-based environment
• Fast and complete data recovery function
• Ability to restore data to a new system easily
• Safeguards against data loss or deletion
• Gives you control over data retention time

Here are things to look for in a good data backup and recovery strategy.

Monitored Backup

If your backup system is just turned on and then forgotten about until you need it, there’s a good chance that you’ll be left with an unpleasant shock during a crisis.

The average failure rate for backing up all data successfully is 75%.

One reason that backup failure rates are so high for businesses is because they leave their backups unmonitored. That can result in files not being captured because of:

• Software conflict stops the backup
• Backup runs out of space
• Employee accidentally turns off the backup software

You want to use a backup solution that is continuously monitored so you know if any data isn’t being properly backed up and can address the issue before it results in data loss.

Recovery Testing

The important second half of backing up data is the recovery. If your data can’t easily be recovered or if recovery hasn’t been tested, it can mean excessive downtime while you figure out how to get your files from a backup to a computer.

Regular recovery testing not only ensures that backups are working properly, it also gives your employees the chance to become familiar with the process. So, when a real disaster occurs, they’ll be able to restore data swiftly, reducing your downtime costs.

Cloud-Hosted

If all your onsite computers and your onsite backup are taken out by an unexpected natural disaster, you can end up losing everything, including all your files (that you thought you were securing with a backup).

While, you can still use an onsite backup as a secondary option (which is a smart strategy), it’s vital that you also backup all your data to a cloud-hosted solution. This ensures that no matter what happens to your hardware or physical premises, your data can be restored via a cloud login to any device, any location.

Controls for Backup Increments

If you’re using a basic USB drive or external hard drive to simply copy your files over, not only will you be missing time-critical recovery features, you’ll also be missing the types of controls that help ensure data security.

You want a backup solution that allows you to control how long each snapshot of data is kept and to keep more than a day of data.

For example, say that you discover a ransomware infection on your system, and it encrypts all your files. You need to find a clean backup from four days earlier, before the infection happened. If you don’t have incremental backups that allow you to choose between backups from several dates, you could end up not having that clean copy.

The best backup solutions give you the control to save backups going back as many days as you like.

Let Skyline Business Technology Create Your Custom Backup/Recovery Plan

Not every business is going to require the same backup and recovery plan. Our IT experts can take a look at your operations and needs and devise a plan that’s efficient, secure, and keeps your business productive.

Contact us today to schedule a consultation. Call 260-225-3133 or reach us online.