Loss of business critical data can have a serious impact on customer experience, day to day operations, employee productivity, and revenue. That’s why data backup is so important for your business.

Backing up data is the process of duplicating (creating a copies) of your data and or systems and storing on another media, preferably at an offsite location, so it may be used to restore the data in case it is lost or corrupted. Human error is inevitable, but if a file is accidentally deleted, it’s comforting to know that it can be recovered from a backup. Depending on the type of recovery plan, entire computer systems can be restored.

As the world of computing evolves, so does the type of devices and data you need to be backed up. Nowadays, we are able to backup numerous types of end-user devices like Desktop computers, mobile devices to servers, both physical and cloud servers. Additionally, we can backup services like Office 365, G-Suite.

Reasons Why Data Backup is so Important

10 reasons why data backup is important

1. Prevent data loss

Perhaps the single most important reason for backing up data is to prevent data loss. Errors and system failures are not uncommon, 68% of companies have reported losing data due to accidental deletion or hardware/software failure. Having a backup ensures you always have a plan B.

2. Competitive advantage

If a disaster occurs, you will need your systems back online and operational as quickly as possible. Businesses that fail to back up their data, are simply allowing competitors to take advantage of your misfortune and essentially win your business that you can’t fulfil.

3. Reduce downtime

Any form of IT downtime has a negative impact on a business. When something goes wrong you need a remedy that will remediate things as quickly as possible, thus proving the importance why having a backup is so important. Having a data backup you reduce the amount of time wasted trying to find missing data, keeping downtime to a minimum.

4. Essential to your disaster recovery plan (DRP)

An effective DRP will provide your business with a set of policies, tools and procedures to follow, that’s designed to protect your organisation and ensure business continuity. Data backup is an important component of any company’s disaster recovery, that enables your business to restore critical operations with minimal disruption.

6. Quick recovery

The human factor, people will make mistakes, it’s fair to say it’s when not if, and although seldomly deliberate, you need to be mindful of its possibility. Your staff are being increasingly targeted to open Emails containing viruses, malicious attachments or links to click. There are many ways to infect a network, but with a current backup, your business can rest assured that all is not lost. A simple restore from a snapshot taken before the virus happened can revert a major incident.

5. Archives

Constructive well planned Data backups forming a record of a business’s history, enabling them to develop archives over time. Depending on the type of business, you may be required to keep records for many years, as is the case in the finance, legal, government and healthcare sectors.

7. Avoid extra work

Errors, whether silly, negligent or oversights can cost a business dearly, with 41% of organisations losing productivity and money due to data inaccessibility. If you have backups you can swiftly recover information. If you don’t it may mean duplicating your workload, retyping entire documents and often missing things that were once included.

8. Auditing

Data backup is important to governing bodies. Tax authorities and regulators often carry out audits for various reasons. By having a data backup, you can guarantee that any financial, accounting or other regulatory information will be available.

9. Annual Reporting

Smart business decisions are made off the back of data-driven insights. By storing backups of information, you have a point of reference to draw comparisons and produce reports.

10. Peace of Mind

The final reason why data backup is important is simple – peace of mind. No more sleepless nights worrying what would happen if all that precious data got lost. The main thing that makes data backup important is disaster recovery (and business continuity). From a deleted business file to a company-wide ransomware infection that encrypts all files, having a data backup solution in place and managed allows for the faster recovery of information and assets. It enables you to restore deleted files and rebuild critical servers in a fraction of the time it would take to start from scratch.

No matter the type of business or the size, data loss can have potentially devastating effects. From reputational damage to downtime and lack of productivity, data privacy and compliance issues to loss of customer trust and loyalty – not having a backup could have long-lasting effects on business operations and integrity.

There several factors that drastically increase the chance of data becoming compromised, stolen, deleted or lost including:

· Cyber attacks such as Ransomware and Phishing

· Human negligence

· Human error

· Failure to backup systems regularly

· Malicious / Disgruntled employees

· Natural disasters

· Hardware failure

· Theft

· Software corruption

The consequences of not backing up data

Challenges to businesses with backup information

1) Have you got a reliable data backup system?

Is the type of storage/media you use for data backup reliable? How sure are you that the data is not corrupt? Older backup systems such as tape drives are extremely vulnerable if exposed to fingerprints, or if they get too close to magnetised areas, leading to data becoming unusable. The unfortunate result is you will not know the data is useless until you need to restore it.

2) Where should you store data backups?

Another challenge is where to store the backups. It’s one thing to have the data offsite, it’s another thing to have a disaster recovery plan that will get you up and running in the quickest possible time. Having a copy close by aids in a quick recovery, but having an offsite copy can be invaluable in the event of a disaster. Many businesses turn to cloud-based storage systems as opposed to physical locations as it guarantees accessibility from anywhere.

3) Have you got enough capacity to store your backups?

Another challenge is data retention. How long can the backups be kept with the chosen solution? Not all companies have embraced the cloud, and the majority of businesses who use older, on-premise technologies face the problem of storage capacity, therefore it’s important to rotate the backup data often.

· USB Thumb Drives

· External Hard Drives

· Network Attached Storage (NAS)

· Time Machine (Apple Mac)

· Cloud storage (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive)

Popular alternative ways of backing up

How can you ensure you’ve backed up everything you need?

1) Perform a data audit

To successfully back up all of your information you must begin by gaining an understanding of what you have and what is critical to your business. By performing an audit you can map out your IT infrastructure and your data estate. Your audit will need to cover:

• How does data enter your business and how regularly?

• What type of data do you hold?

  • Examples

    • Transactional data

    • Structured data

    • Operational data

• How much data do you have?

• What needs does your data serve?

• Where is data currently being stored?

• What departments have access to it?

• How much would it cost to replace it?

2) Prioritise the data you want to back up

Once you have an understanding of all the information you hold, you can then identify which data/files/systems need to be backed-up as a priority. These usually include things like your user accounts which include your documents, pictures, downloads and desktop folders. Alternatively, many businesses will choose to backup entire systems ensuring they have a failsafe option.

3) Backup your data daily

By understanding your data and identifying the most important parts you then need to ensure that the data is backed up regularly. Although 91 % of businesses back-up their IT components, only 46% backup daily, 28% weekly and 20% monthly. If you don’t back-up regularly it leaves gaps in the data available for recovery. Therefore, you must train your staff on why data backup is important.

Conclusion

Data backups are invaluable to your business. They are your plan B should the worst happen and a safety net for human error. Having data backups will save you time and money, give you a competitive edge and guarantee business continuity. Here are the key takeaways from our blog and the reasons why data backup is important:

1. Prevent data loss

2. Competitive advantage

3. Reduce downtime

4. Essential to your disaster recovery plan

5. Archives

6. Quick recovery

7. Avoid extra work

8. Auditing

9. Annual reporting

10. Peace of Mind

With so many backup solutions available it can be hard to choose the correct one for your business. You need to know exactly what data you have and how much storage capacity it will require. If you’re struggling to implement a robust data backup strategy get in touch with our IT Support team.