In this day and age backing up your IT system is crucial to the success of your business.
There are several reasons you should ensure you have a working backup solution in place for your business’s IT.
I’m going to outline in this article why it’s essential that you back up your data.
I will also mention the number one thing most IT companies miss when backing up client data.
What does a backup solution do for my business?
Regular daily backups are a must for any business. If you are a one-man band or an enterprise, you should have a backup solution.
For most small businesses, this is usually a system that will replicate data stored on physical computers and servers to a secure location.
Most modern-day backup systems employ a two-tier or even three-tier backup solution.
First, the data is backed up onsite to a secure storage device, the data is then backed up to a cloud or private offsite data centre.
Why is it so important?
These backup solutions are used to recover data in case of an accidental deletion of data or a hardware failure.
The most common scenario is if a user accidentally deletes files or a folder.
Other common scenarios include the physical hard drive inside a computer failing.
Data can be quickly restored from a backup that is done daily on an automated schedule.
Another more common scenario is when there has been a cyber-security incident on the IT infrastructure.
If a system has been infected, files are then encrypted by the virus.
A ransom is requested to unencrypt the files.
While you could pay the ransom there is no guarantee, the files will be unencrypted.
The ideal solution is to recover your data from the backup.
The restore
That brings us to the restore.
Almost all backup solutions will confirm if your data has been backed up successfully with an email or alert going to the IT provider in the event of a failed backup.
However, the most common thing that is missed in most backup solutions provided is the manual check of the backup and if it can be restored.
There are a number of reasons why the backup might not restore correctly.
The worst scenario you can face is having to recover a backup only to learn that the backup is not restorable for some reason.
Ask your current IT provider if they regularly perform test restores and get them to provide evidence of this process.
Better yet get in touch with us, and we’ll carry out a full review of your backup system!
