Backup Strategies to Prevent Data Loss

In the harsh reality of today’s digital business landscape, businesses can experience catastrophic data loss in many ways, ranging from natural disasters to cyber attacks. Should you suffer an unexpected data loss, your competitive advantage lies in how quickly you can get your operations up and running without experiencing major downtime.

In this blog, we’ll take a brief look at the various dangers to business data and how you can prevent them with the right backup, as well as different ways of backing up data and the advantages of using a robust business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) solution.

Why Do You Need Data Backup?

Before we look at the different ways of backing up data, you need to know why your business requires data backup. Businesses commonly encounter the following data security threats to data in their everyday operations.

• Cyber attacks: As technology progresses, cyber attacks continue to evolve as well. The growing threat of ransomware is a proof to that. According to a recent Verizon report, 27 percent of malware incidents can be attributed to ransomware attacks. While antimalware and antivirus programs can certainly offer protection, businesses need to think about what might happen in case of an unavoidable security breach and eventual data loss when formulating a data security strategy.
• Natural disasters: Natural disasters such as floods, fire, and earthquakes pose a big threat to the traditional form of data storage and security.
• Hardware issues: With traditional data storage methods, data is stored in a physical location on hard drives and backup appliances. Any hardware issues arising in these devices can pose a serious threat to your valuable data.
• Human errors: According to Verizon, as much as 30 percent of data loss incidents are caused by internal actors, (i.e., human error). This could be attributed to anything from poor password practices to falling for phishing scams.

All these factors indicate that data loss can happen to any organization irrespective of their size or the security precautions they take. What you need is a solid data backup solution to make sure that your lost data is not completely unrecoverable.

How to Back Up Your data

With regards to the best way of storing data, both cloud backup and on-site backup appliances are well worth considering. This is because both have their own advantages and limitations. On-site storage devices are faster, giving organizations full control over their data. However, they’re also prone to physical mishaps and hardware issues. Cloud-based backup, on the other hand, isn’t vulnerable to natural disasters but requires a lot of bandwidth to backup large files.

The ideal backup strategy is one that combines both these approaches, with multiple copies stored in different locations. It’s considered prudent to always have at least three copies of data – one production copy and two backup copies on two different media (internal hard drive and removable storage media) along with one off-site copy (cloud) for disaster recovery. Ultimately, the more copies you make, the higher your chances of recovery after a loss.

Advantages of BCDR Over File-Only Backups

In crude terms, data backup is simply the process of making copies of your files and storing them. However, when you shift your focus to the concept of business continuity, you must think in terms of Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). RTO refers to the maximum time an application can be down without affecting the business. RPO refers to the maximum amount of data that can be lost without harming the business.

A good Business Continuity Disater Recover (BCDR) solution provides you with the following benefits:

• Significant reduction in RTO and RPO
• Ability to predict business restoration following an unexpected disaster
• Reduction in downtime and associated revenue losses
• Lower interruption to critical business processes
• Avoid compromise to business reputation
• Ability to customize disaster recovery as per your needs
  
  

Best Practices for Data Backup

While incorporating an effective backup strategy, you need to implement the following best practices to limit data loss:

• Increase frequency: Digitally-run businesses are required to back up their data multiple times a day. Doing it once a day, at the end of business hours, is no longer sufficient, especially with the number of threats gunning for your data.
• Use cloud backup: Cloud backup comes with a multitude of benefits such as easy recovery, easy scalability, better cost efficiency and more.
• Use the power of automation: When you automate your disaster recovery process, you can bounce back from serious disasters and continue business operations without suffering too much downtime.
• Determine your retention span: Retaining all data backup versions forever is not a feasible solution for most small businesses. Therefore, you need to determine the duration for which you will retain your data. This requirement will vary based on your industry, needs, and compliance regulations. You need to develop a solution that ticks all parameters.