4 reasons you should be bumping backups to the top of your to-do list

It might sometimes feel like the IT industry are nagging at you for this, but there’s very good reason for this! If you think this article isn’t going to apply to you then read on, you’re absolutely its intended audience.

 

Keep your data safe

This is the one everyone thinks of first, and it might seem like a bit of an obvious and unhelpful one. The saying ‘once bitten, twice shy’ comes to mind, with a lot of people only starting to research their backup options once they’ve suffered some form of data loss, but I don’t know about you, we’d rather avoid getting bitten in the first place!

There are a whole host of reasons you might lose data, ranging from falling victim to cybercrime with someone infiltrating your system and stealing your information, to a fire in the office taking out all of your computers and lots of things in between. Not having a backup solution that suits you and your business could cost you a lot of money – especially with data recovery services being extremely expensive and offering no guarantees that you’ll get what you’ve lost back. But there are wider implications you may not have thought of too, like losing your staff’s time to work they have to repeat.

 

Make sure your backup has a backup

If you’re only keeping physical copies of your data on a server in your office, for example, this one’s for you. Backups work in much the same way as security, in that you can build protection by adding extra layers.

If you only have an onsite backup solution, what happens if your premises suffer a fire? You’ll lose all of the IT equipment with information stored on hard drives, as well as your server. What happens if someone steals it? You can solve these problems by having a hybrid backup solution, and also utilizing backing up to the cloud which is separate from your premises. It’ll just give you that added layer of protection, and ensure that you’ll always be able to access your data in the event of an emergency.

 

Disaster recovery is nothing to be afraid of

You may have heard the term disaster recovery before, and promptly ignored it. It sounds a bit scary. It’s not though, we promise! Disaster recovery is merely just a planning for how you can fix things and quickly get back up and running after something bad has happened.

It involves thinking about what you would need to restore after a disaster – would a backup of critical data be sufficient? Or would it take too long for your IT provider to reload your system with all of the programmes, software and settings you use without a full backup? Thinking about these questions is important – could your business cope with a week of downtime while everything is returned to some sort of normal? Or would it cope with a few hours downtime while your full system is restored from a backup?

We get it, it’s not nice to think about bad things happening, but things always run smoother with a plan.

 

Give yourself a better sleep at night

One of the worst parts of our job, is working with distraught business owners after they’ve been subject to a cyber attack which has not only affected their own data, but client data too. It’s awful. If you’re sat there thinking ‘it won’t happen to me’, you’re right. It won’t happen to you… until it does and you’re left dealing with the fallout.

 

Working with your IT provider to prepare for a worst-case scenario isn’t catastrophizing, it’s smart. And we’re here to help make sure you get your full 8 hours!  Book a call or drop us an email to [email protected] and we can discuss your business and which backup options might be right for you.