Most companies leverage their IT environments to support business operations. Losing availability to mission-critical systems and data can negatively impact operations and a company’s ability to service its customers. An extended outage can cripple an organization and potentially put them out of business.
A defined backup and recovery plan that encompasses the complete environment provides a crucial level of protection for an organization’s operational efficiency. We’re going to look at why your company should have a backup and recovery plan and offer a simple and cost-effective option for implementing the data protection it needs.
Why a Backup and Recovery Plan is Essential
A company needs to take multiple measures to protect its IT environment from a wide array of potential dangers. The actions include keeping external threat actors away from systems and data resources by building firewalls and implementing strict authentication policies. Internal threats also need to be addressed with data handling policies that ensure sensitive and valuable information is treated appropriately throughout the organization.
Companies need to protect data resources from unexpected events initiated by internal or external factors. A backup and recovery plan helps protect a company from many types of threats including:
- Ransomware and other types of malware that can compromise data or cause outages to business-critical systems;
- Data loss caused by unintentional mistakes or deliberate and nefarious activities;
- Unexpected hardware failures;
- Natural or man-made disasters that impact a data center;
- Faulty system or application updates that result in data corruption.
How a Backup and Recovery Plan Promotes Operational Efficiency
Let’s look at some scenarios where having a backup and recovery plan is instrumental in maintaining an organization’s operational efficiency. The absence of backup and recovery capabilities could be devastating in any of these situations.
- An employee inadvertently opens a phishing email and introduces ransomware into the IT environment. The ransomware attacks a server running an essential customer-facing application. Without an effective backup and recovery solution, the affected company may have to pay the ransom demands to regain access to its compromised system. A backup allows them to recover to a new piece of hardware and maintain business operations.
- An experienced system administrator attempts to install some security patches on a business-critical server. A problem is encountered during the installation that crashes the system. Fortunately, the system was backed up before the patches were installed and a simple recovery restored the affected server. Business operations can continue after the recovery while the team investigates the reasons for the failed patches.
- The server responsible for handling sales and customer support requests experiences a hardware failure. Without backups, a new server would have to be built from scratch without recently entered customer information. A backup allows the IT team to quickly recover to a new machine and restore customer access to the system with a minimal outage.
- A new contractor inadvertently deletes a critical database containing financial and customer data. Without a backup, this information is lost with catastrophic ramifications for the business. With a backup plan in place, the deleted data is easily recovered before the loss impacts customers or internal operations.
- Backup and recovery plans can address issues other than data loss and cyber attacks. Programming teams can use backups to quickly deploy test and development environments that replicate current production systems. This ability streamlines software development and enhances a company’s competitive posture.
- Backups and the ability to recover their data are required to comply with regulatory requirements when handling sensitive information. For example, companies need to be able to recover health-related data to achieve HIPAA compliance. They also have to store backup copies offsite, away from the original data.
Developing a Robust Backup and Recovery Plan
Traditionally, companies had limited options available to them for developing a viable backup and recovery plan. An organization that wanted to protect its data resources had to construct an on-premises backup infrastructure. This can be a challenging and complicated undertaking that presents companies with the following disadvantages.
- Building an on-premises backup and recovery infrastructure can be costly. It typically requires dedicated hardware, software, and media for storing the backups. Additional transportation and media storage costs are incurred if backups are kept offsite for resiliency or regulatory compliance.
- Managing the backup and recovery infrastructure requires manpower and technical skills that may be lacking in a small business. Inefficient management reduces the effectiveness of the backup and recovery plan. The plan may not provide the expected recovery performance when it is needed most.
The Benefits of Cloud Backup as a Service (CBaaS)
Companies have a modern and efficient option if they want to avoid the expense and complications of implementing an on-premises backup and recovery plan. Cloud Backup-as-a-Service (CBaaS) offers a simplified method of backing up and recovering data over internet connections rather than to on-premises hardware.
Companies can expect to enjoy significant benefits when adopting the CBaaS methodology.
- No dedicated infrastructure elements are required when using a CBaaS strategy. Data is backed up to the cloud using internet connections.
- Backups are already stored offsite to provide greater resiliency and address regulatory requirements.
- Recovery is streamlined by eliminating the need to locate backup media and potentially transport it to an alternate site.
- Backups can be fully managed by the cloud vendor or a managed services provider (MSP).
VAST Has Your Back with Multiple Backup and Recovery Solutions
VAST offers its customers a range of backup and recovery solutions to align with their company’s business objectives and requirements. The backup and recovery offerings available from VAST include the following solutions.
- A managed CBaaS platform that effectively backs up any type of IT environment. This fully managed solution is built on Druva’s cutting-edge backup and recovery technology and can protect a company’s on-premises and cloud infrastructures.
- VAST can deploy, support, and manage Veritas backup and recovery technology for your company to ensure your valuable data is protected.
- VAST partners with Cohesity to offer customers a managed solution taking advantage of the Cohesity Data Cloud.
We’ll work with you to find the right backup and recovery solution for your budget and business requirements. Give us a call to start protecting your operational efficiency and valuable data.
