Small businesses to large conglomerates have one thing in common: they all generate, use, and save data. As your business will rely heavily on data, performing the proper data management practices is key to business growth and success.
Surprisingly, 75% of small businesses have no recovery plan for a data disaster. With the increasing reliance of companies on cloud services, there’s a higher need to strengthen data protection and management, since cybercriminals discover more sophisticated ways to attack and steal data.
User and system errors can cause unexpected data loss. Ransomware, phishing, and other malicious attacks can erase your business’s data in the blink of an eye—making data backup and recovery essential in the event of a mishap.
Data Backup And Recovery: What They Are And Their Importance
While creating a data backup and recovery solution is an urgent call, learning what these terms mean first and how they’re important to your data management plan is essential. Data backup and recovery aren’t synonymous terms, but they’re both vital to company systems.
Data backup refers to making copies of your files and data intended for safekeeping. It can be kept in hardware, cloud, or both. Data backups can prevent cyberattack costs, given that these attacks cause harm that could result in significant losses.
Meanwhile, data recovery is a practice of restoring lost data in the event of a data failure. A successful data recovery process will produce clean, corruption-free, and ready-to-go files to push your business back to work.
In this short guide, you’ll learn how to build your data backup and recovery plan, so let’s get started immediately!
Costs Of Data Backup And Recovery
Before the data backup takes place, your service provider will need to find the right backup solution for your needs, which depends on two major factors: the recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO). In quantifiable terms, they define your tolerance for lost data and downtime, respectively.
For low-level data backup solutions, you might need to pay USD$1 per gigabyte of data, while comprehensive solutions cost USD$2 to USD$4 per gigabyte each month.
Since recovering data is much more challenging than backing up, expect data recovery to be costly. A data recovery expert may charge between USD$100 to USD$300 per hour to recover your data, and the price will depend on their skills and experience.
Tips When Creating A Data Backup And Recovery Strategy
1. Utilize Automated Scheduling
Backing up the data you have right now doesn’t ensure a complete backup procedure. You’ll need to back up your new files from time to time, and you might forget to do so sooner or later. To ensure that you’ll save weeks or months’ worth of data, take advantage of automated scheduling.
Many cloud storage services offer automated software where you can choose when to delegate files for backup and recovery, then keep them synced to your chosen media and location.
With automated scheduling, there’s no need to check your data and arrange them for backup, which could take a significant amount of time.
2. Create Multiple Backups In Multiple Locations And Media
Files and data are critical to your operations. Therefore, you should know that backing up your data in one location isn’t enough. There could be a chance your cloud storage provider will also be a victim of cyberattacks, destroying your backed-up data. A disaster like a fire or an earthquake may also destroy your files if they’re only saved in your data center.
With this in mind, your best choice is to back up your data on all options: using a piece of hardware, software, and cloud storage. Essentially, hardware involves the use of external servers and hard drives. On the other hand, you can use backup software that stores multiple copies of your files in different locations. Lastly, save and store your files in offsite servers through the cloud, which you can access anytime and anywhere.
3. Test Backup And Recovery Measures Regularly
Building backup and recovery plans are one thing, but ensuring they truly work is another. After all, you can never be too careful or systematic when performing a backup solution. For a more realistic situation, it’s best to test your recovery process as if a data disaster is happening. The recovery environment should be pared down according to what you’re testing to confirm the functionality of the solution once data is restored.
Conclusion
Technical failures, cyberattacks, and natural disasters are unexpected events that can impact your business operations in various ways, compromising the safety and security of your company’s data. Thanks to an effective data backup and recovery plan, you can minimize downtime during these events and proceed with your business as usual.
