Best Practices for Data Backup and Recovery Services
Data backup and recovery services are becoming increasingly essential in today’s digital economy. Companies need services that protect their valuable, industry-beating information.
Unfortunately, approximately 35% of companies experience irrecoverable data loss during regular operations, with costs averaging $4.57 million per firm. Furthermore, a staggering 94% of companies that lose their data never recover.
For these reasons, implementing effective data backup and recovery strategies is essential. But what works?
That’s the topic we broach in this post. We explore the importance of backing up data and the best practices services apply to ensure data integrity.
Importance of Data Backup
Backing up data is vital for businesses for several reasons. These include:
- Ensuring companies comply with regulations (specifically in regulated industries like healthcare and legal services)
- Facilitating business continuity, ensuring data is available to employees and executives to make decisions
- Reducing the risk of fallout from cyberattacks and irrecoverable loss of information (rendering ransom demands ineffective)
- Reducing data loss from other events, including natural disasters and on-site hardware problems
Ultimately, data backup and recovery services reduce risk. You can prevent disasters from derailing your enterprise and stopping it from functioning.
Best Data Backup And Disaster Recovery Strategies
This section explores various data backup and disaster recovery strategies to secure your enterprise.
Use The 3-2-1 Backup Rules
Start by using the 3-2-1 backup rule. This involves:
- Keeping three copies of your data – one on-site and two at different external locations (such as cloud server farms)
- Keeping data on two storage types (not on local storage drives exclusively)
- Keeping at least one copy of the data offsite and physically protected – to mitigate the risk of data loss due to fires and natural disasters
The 3-2-1 rule isn’t 100% effective but lowers risk as much as possible. Companies using it are less likely to see serious data loss.
Backup Regularly
You should also back up your data regularly (or get your recovery service to do it for you). Smart firms do it daily or weekly, depending on their operations.
Don’t wait a month between backups – that’s too long.
Secure Your Data
Securing your data should be another element integral to your backup and disaster recovery strategy. Use encryption when moving packets of information and send some data physically (i.e. stored on hard drives) to third-party locations. Ensure nobody can track your data’s origin or destination to avoid more destructive attacks.
Test Your Backups To Ensure Data Recovery
Testing your backups is also something you should do regularly. Check to ensure they work when you try to recover and restore information.
You can test backups in a real-world-like scenario by mirroring your network and seeing what happens when you restore it to an earlier version. Testing lets you find bugs and stumbling blocks in the way of effective solutions.
If that sounds too complicated, get a backup and recovery service to do the work. Get them to report to you monthly on your network’s status.
Pick A Suitable Retention Policy
Picking a suitable retention policy is another best practice for data backup and recovery. Determining how long you hold onto information allows you to perform a cost-benefit analysis on what to keep and discard.
Most experts recommend keeping data fully maintained for six months. However, you should retain historical data useful to your firm forever if it offers a market advantage. Many businesses preserve full backups for over a year, with some holding onto their data for much longer than that (including tech, healthcare, and finance firms).
Document Backup And Recovery Methods
Finally, documenting backup and recovery methods can ensure everyone in your organization stays on the same page. You don’t want people applying different strategies, leading to confusion and higher risk.
Always write down your backup policy in detail explaining how it works. Check colleagues know what to do by getting them to perform a backup and recovery procedure in real time.
Don’t store the policy online. Keep it in paper format at two separate locations, just in case you can’t access your systems.
Choosing the Right Service Provider
Implementing the above strategies yourself is complex and time-consuming. As such, most brands use data backup and disaster recovery services to do it for them.
But what should you look for in a great solution provider?
Great Customer Support
First, check the quality of their customer support. See if they can help you before a disaster occurs (to prevent nasty surprises later on).
Quality outfits are available twenty-four-seven, letting you phone them any time. Services can provide data recovery in the middle of the night, restoring systems before employees return to the office in the morning.
Extensive Backup Features
Next, look at the providers’ backup features – elements that improve their service. Look for version control (letting you choose which backup you select during recovery), automated backups, and data retrieval protocols. These features reduce the risk of data loss further and cut the amount of manual work data backup and recovery services use.
Positive Reviews And Testimonials
Like any company, it also helps to look at reviews and testimonials. A consistently positive reception usually means the outfit offers a decent service.
Scalability
Backup and recovery services should also scale with your requirements. If you require less, you should be able to use less, and vice versa.
Some backup and recovery services do well when data volumes remain low but find it tough when they rise. In the worst cases, you can find yourself having to wait for backups to occur, or they don’t happen at all.
Evidence Of Planning for the Unexpected
Finally, you want to see that data backup and recovery services plan for the unexpected. For example, you can check the provider’s track record on uptime and disaster recovery speediness (most brands will list these metrics on their websites). You can also look at their training and ability to anticipate what might happen next to harm your network.
Implementing a Backup Plan
To conclude, using data backup disaster recovery services is essential. Providers ensure data remains safe, even when you lose the original copy. Just be careful when choosing a partner: not all brands are the same.
