The Importance of a Good Backup Strategy

One of the lowest rungs in many SMB’s IT budget is a proper and reliable data protection strategy. In a recent poll of small, medium and large business, almost half (49%) of small business reported they do not have a daily backup strategy. This poll was conducted throughout Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia, but here in America the numbers are most certainly the same, if not higher.

This is despite the fact that nearly half of all participants had experienced data loss in their workplace in the past two years, and 36 per cent felt that data loss could have a significant impact on their business.

The excuses as to why a business doesn’t have a back system in place are as numerous as the businesses themselves. “We’ve never had a problem.” “We have a system, but we always forget to change the tapes/discs around.” We can’t afford to put in a system for backing up.” In today’s data driven business climate, it amazes me people fall back on these excuses. Think about every program you use each day. Think about all of the irreplaceable documents, emails, accounting and databases (just to name a few) that you and your staff use. If you don’t have a good backup system in place, a Disaster Recovery Plan, and regular testing of both, all of your data is a risk, and in the event of a catastrophic failure, it is gone forever. Viruses, malware, rogue or uneducated employees and hardware failure are some of the most common causes for valuable data to be unusable or inaccessible. Even completely innocuous things like OS deterioration and program corruption can cause issues with data consistency. Unfortunately, there is often no sign that something is about to go wrong. One minute everything is fine and the next-it’s not. Backup systems don’t have to be expensive. For a few hundred dollars and the cost of a full test every quarter you can feel secure about your ability to recover from catastrophic failures. Your data is one of the most important pieces of your business. Audits, adherance to the laws, record keeping and basic peace of mind are all good reasons to protect your data.