Insurance is an important investment that protects you against risk. When it comes to business risks, you can’t buy insurance to guard against the loss of data. Instead, you need to build your own insurance with a robust backup and recovery strategy.
Multiple Threats of Data Loss
There are several ways a business can lose data, including:
• error. Employees make mistakes. A critical file can be accidentally deleted. They can accidentally write over important data or enter bad values. A processing error can load the wrong file into a system and update records with wrong values.
• deliberate tampering. Some data destruction is malicious, not accidental. Ransomware prevents you from accessing any records. Disgruntled employees can deliberately delete or overwrite important data. Hackers who gain access can make changes to files.
• physical loss. Data can be lost when a laptop or mobile device is lost or stolen. If that’s the only copy of your data, not only is it lost to you, it’s potentially under the control of an adversary. Data can also be physically lost if the only copy of it is on a device that malfunctions or becomes corrupted.
When data is lost, there are significant costs to the business. You may experience downtime, meaning no new business is taking place and technology employees are focused on bringing systems back up rather than on new projects. You disappoint customers who experience delays in receiving service or are given incorrect information. Your reputation may be damaged, making it difficult to gain new customers. There may be direct financial costs, if you choose to pay a ransom to attempt to recover from malware.
Backups Reduce the Risks of Data Loss
The best way to reduce the risk of data loss is through developing a comprehensive backup strategy. This requires:
• choosing a flexible backup tool. Backup decisions include how often to create the backup and what kind of backup to create (a full backup or one that copies just incremental changes).
• deciding where to store the backup. You need to store backups where they can be accessed easily in a hurry, but also where they’ll be accessible if your main site is unavailable. Storing backups in more than one location or in the cloud reduces that problem.
• coping with large data. Backups tend to grow in size, and you need a strategy to make storage media available. Big data projects need big data backups. In addition, long-term archival storage of data needs to be planned for.
• testing recovery. Having copies of data doesn’t add value if you don’t know how to restore it. Working through the recovery process is a vital component of implementing backup solutions.
Once you’ve got a reliable backup and recovery solution in place, you’ve taken a big step to reduce the risks and costs of lost data. Contact VAST IT Services to learn more about what’s needed to implement effective backup solutions and achieve business continuity.
