It is common practice to insure your most valuable possessions, your home or apartment, and you vehicles. It is important to make sure that which is important to your is protected. If taking these steps is commonplace for what’s important to you, why not protect your business? It is estimated that 75% of all small businesses will experience some sort of disaster, whether caused by nature, human error, or some other type of event, and a quarter of these businesses never reopen following them. A big reason is that critical and unrecoverable information has been lost. These are some signs that investing in disaster preparedness is crucial for the cyber security of your business. Let’s learn more about why you should invest in disaster recovery.
Signs You Should Invest in Disaster Recovery
Making a Plan for Data Backup
The recent cyber attack at Sony Pictures Entertainment, which stole data and then wiped software and data from company computers, is just the most recent reminder of the importance of having a data backup plan. Although Sony is a large company, it didn’t have sufficient backups for its data. It will take a lot of time and money to put everything back together, if even it can be. Don’t let this happen to you. Be prepared with Working Nets guide to making a plan for data backup.
Determining What Needs To Be Backed Up
Begin by prioritizing the importance of your data. Some data, might not even warrant being backed up. Other information, like databases of critical data, should have multiple redundant backup systems, that go back for multiple backup periods. Determining the importance of your data, and what needs backing up and what does not, is entirely up to you.
Part of Sony’s current problem is with restoring its data. They aren’t sure how far back the data backups might be corrupted, so newer corrupted backups are dangerous to use. This is an extreme example, as most businesses aren’t likely to be the targets of such extensive cyber attacks, but does prove a point. Depending on the importance of the data, you might want to keep older back ups- just in case you are hacked and you can determine that newer backups might be compromised as well.
How Often, and When, Should it be Backed Up?
How often and when you should backup your data is largely dependent on how important it is, and how often it is edited.
Your most important data should be backed up every time a significant edit is made. Lower priority data can probably be backed up weekly or monthly, depending on the frequency and importance of edits. If they’re data bases that might change entirely over the course of the day should be updated daily. Others might need their updates over the course of the day, or a month.
You should also consider entire system back ups weekly. If your system’s run on the weekend, this can be set to be done automatically at odd hours, so it doesn’t affect business too much.
What type of Backup will You Use?
Another important consideration of your plan for data backup is what type of backup you will use. The type of backup media you will use depends on several factors, the capacity, reliability, speed, and cost. The capacity is how much the back up medium can store. The reliability is how consistent and effective the medium is at meeting its own specifications. The speed is how fast the medium can backup and recover data. And finally the cost you need to consider is how much money your business will have to spend to buy and maintain this backup solution. You will need to make the choice of what backup system you want to use based on a balance of those four factors.
Get your Data Backed up With Working Nets
Need help figuring out a plan for data backup and recovery? Working Nets assures that we can keep your vital business data is kept secure if disaster strikes. We have knowledgeable experts on staff who can make sure that your IT needs are covered and that all of your information is safe. To talk to someone about data backup and recovery for your small business, give us a call at (443) 992-7394. We’d be happy to assist you with your professional business networking needs.
You can also visit WorkingNets.com and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+
All About Data Backup
Computers are as much a part of our everyday lives as eating and sleeping. It is almost 100% guaranteed that you will interact with a computer or other piece of technology at some point every day. In fact, a recent survey showed that you’re likely to have just as many electronic interactions as you are to have face-to-face interactions in today’s world. This statistic is even more prevalent for small businesses that require a lot of technology to operate. If you think about it, nearly everything that you do for your company requires you to use a computer of some sort. This brings us to our first point.
Why is Data Backup Important?
Have you ever thought about all of the information stored in a piece of equipment that can easily fit on your desk? Now, have you ever considered what would happen if that piece of equipment was destroyed or decided to fail one day? You could lose relevant financial information, client information, and more. Data backup is important in a few different cases:
- Your computer fails
- Your computer is destroyed in a disaster
- Someone steals your information
- Your data becomes corrupted
If any of these things happen, you want to know that your data is in more than one place; you also want to make sure that the second place is safe, though. That brings us to point number 2!
How Should I Back Up My Data?
There are many different options for backing up your important data. It all depends on what technology you know how to use and what you think will work well for your company. The following options are some popular data backup options:
- The Cloud – It sounds a lot more complicated and ethereal than it is. Saving to the cloud basically means that you’re saving to a remote database that you can access from any computer. Using a cloud computing service will allow you to back up and share information.
- External Hard Drive – The only problem with external hard drives is that they also have the ability to crash and are susceptible to physical disasters. If you do back up to an external hard drive, it’s advisable that you password protect it and store it somewhere different than your primary computer.
- Flash Drives – If you need a quick way to back up your data and take it with you somewhere, a flash drive is the answer. It doesn’t offer as much space as an external hard drive or cloud computing service, but it essentially does the same job. Flash drives are tiny, so you also have to be careful not to lose it.
Backup and Recovery Experts
Data protection and recovery is crucial. Working Nets assures that your vital business data is kept secure if disaster strikes. We have knowledgeable experts on staff who can make sure that your IT needs are covered and that all of your information is safe. To talk to someone about data backup and recovery for your small business, give us a call at (443) 992-7394. We’d be happy to assist you with your professional business networking needs.
You can also visit WorkingNets.com and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+
Source: Technology.Pitt
