Both Backup and Disaster Recovery are Important

Every business owner wants to protect their data. Even if they don’t pour money into doing so, they typically still understand the importance of it. That’s why three-out-of-every-four businesses perform a backup at least once per week. It’s still good to be reminded how to make sure your backup can work for you. Let’s go over a few basic considerations to make if you want a data backup that you can trust.

Protect Your Backup

Your business’ backup can be viewed as an insurance policy, but if it isn’t secured, it could be just another piece of a string of errors that takes your business down. In order for your backup to be a reliable contingency, you need to protect it. In order to do that, we suggest using the 3-2-1 rule as a base. That is: three copies of your data, with two being stored and attached to your network, and one saved offsite. 

The backup and disaster recovery system makes this extremely easy. The device is attached to your network and backs up your data incrementally. This means that after the first backup is taken, only changes are backed up. This does two things. First, it allows for backups during the work day, in increments as small as every 15 minutes if you so choose. Secondly, it gives you an option to recover recent changes, a major benefit since most backups you will restore are because of user error or power failure. 

So once you have your BDR in place, you will need to do two things to ensure that your business is ready for a data loss disaster:

1. Understand Disaster Recovery
   How quickly do you suppose your business could return to full operation after a data loss event? Sometimes it’s not an easy situation. That’s why you should come to understand disaster recovery. That means understanding the variables that go into it. To keep your business resilient, you will need to understand what to do in the event of a data loss disaster, how much data you need in order to sustain or restart operations, and how long you can be down and still have your business survive.
   
   
2. Test Everything
   Just imagine your frustration if you took all the time and effort and expense of putting together a comprehensive continuity plan with a full-featured data backup system only for it to fail because you hadn’t bothered to test it. Every piece of your IT security and data protection strategies have to be tested regularly.

If you would like to talk about data backup or the protection of your company’s digital assets, don’t hesitate to reach out to the IT professionals at k_Street Consulting, LLC today at (202) 640-2737.