With businesses both large and small now holding on to huge quantities of data as a matter of course, data backup software has never been so important.
Whether that be in the form of remote and cloud backups, or something else like an SSD (Solid-State Drive). The team here at Impress Solutions, providers of online backup services, wanted to look, firstly, at the different ways in which data can be stored, and secondly, just why it matters so much in today’s world.
The Different Types Of Backup And Backup Software
You can backup your company’s information using many different methods. Historically, common forms of data backup included optical storage methods (CDs being a leading example) and hard disks. Nowadays, just as common is remote backup services such as Google Drive or SSD options (the world’s largest of which can hold up to 100 terabytes). The form of backup you choose depends on many variables – the size of your business, your budget, the industry you’re in, to name but a few. One thing that’s certain is the need for at least some form of backup solution.
Four Reasons to Backup Data
1. Preventing Data Loss
The most obvious reason to utilise backup software is because you don’t want to lose your data! For a company to lose its data presents it with a potentially catastrophic problem. Data losses bring with them fiscal issues, potential legal ramifications and huge levels of stress. Not only this, but attempting to resolve such a data loss event requires an enormous amount of time. In the most simplistic terms, a large data loss can sink a business. It’s not even like data loss events are particularly uncommon, either. Data loss can happen for many reasons, it can be due to nefarious online criminals (see point 2), human error or even physical damage to your systems caused by the likes of flooding. The point being that it happens more easily than one might initially think.
2. In The Event Of A Cyber Attack
We’ve touched, in our previous blogs, upon the continual rise of cybercrime in today’s digitised world. Backing up data is especially important in the case of ransomware and phishing attacks. With ransomware becoming more sophisticated, the prevailing trend is to utilise the 3-2-1 backup method of data backup. This involves keeping three different copies of your company data (as a minimum), storing two backup copies on separate storage media, with one of those situated offsite. This method mitigates, at least to a large extent, the damage which cyberattacks can have on a company and its data.
3. Auditing
Having regular and reliable backups of your company’s data stretching years back helps ensure maximum transparency and accountability for a business. In the context of accounts and tax, for example, data backup makes sure that there’s always a clear paper trail throughout time that your business can wheel out, should it be necessary.
4. Damage Limitation
Here at Impress, we can think of very few reasons why you wouldn’t backup your data. This isn’t just because of how damaging failure to backup can be, but just as much because it’s now so affordable to backup your data. We firmly believe that the benefits to keeping your company’s information secure far outweigh any, relatively nominal, expenses you may have to put towards it.
Type Of Backup
Beyond choosing the backup software you’re going to use as a business, you need to also consider the type of backup you’re going to implement. After all, simply backing up your data once isn’t a viable option. As soon as you’ve backed up your data, that’s a storage of all the information prior to that save point, any data and information your business gains subsequent to that backup is therefore still at risk of being lost. This is why fostering a strategy of regularly backing up your information is so crucial.
There are several ways in which you can do this; you can either carry out a full backup every time, which takes longer to carry out but offers quicker data recovery if data is lost. Alternatively, there are incremental backups, which only store those changes made since the previous backup. Incremental backups are much quicker to carry out, however the data restoration process takes longer than with full backups. Further backup options include differential (similar to incremental backups) and mirror backups.
If you’d like to find out more about our remote backup and backup software solutions, then get in touch! Contact Impress Solutions today on 01708 759 760.
