What value do you put on your data? If it were to get deleted, corrupted or stolen, what effect would it have on you personally and on your ability to do your job and run your business?

The scary fact is, a huge percentage of small businesses do not have any backups. Not even one.

So, how many backups do you have?

One? What if that fails or gets corrupted?

Perhaps you have two. Do you keep both at the office? What if there was a fire?

It is worth a bit of your time to check and to re-evaluate your backup method(s) and start with the old tried and tested 3 2 1 method:

3. Create three copies of all your data

2. Store them in two different ways

1. keep at least one backup off site

Why different copies and different mechanisms?

REDUCE RISK: Stored data will never be impacted by the same threats, ie. floods, fire, cyber attack, employee misuse, human error, etc.

BUSINESS CONTINUITY: No internet access – plug in an external hard drive or USB; Instant access from anywhere – download from the Cloud.

Different storage and backup solutions will provide very different levels of security, convenience and cost. Ensuring you have the right options is really important and a number of factors need to be considered, for example:

Have you thought about how often you need to backup?

Full backups of all your data take time (and large amounts of storage space). For small and medium businesses, full backups are recommended once a week and then daily incremental or differential backups.

Do you know how long you need to store your data for?

The best practice recommendation is to store data for 2 months to ensure complete data restoration in the event of an incident, especially if data is exposed to undetected malware (which can lurk in the background inactive for a while before creating havoc).

So, is 3 2 1 the answer for you?

In a nutshell, data protection and storage is a necessity for all organisations, regardless of size, but it is important that it meets the needs of your business, how it operates, where it operates and what threats are lurking out in the cyberworld. 3 2 1 is a great principle, it has been around a while now, but every business is different so it would be worth taking the time to talk to experts about what would work best for you.

Don’t be slack.

Get great backups.

More information speak to one of our backup specialists >

Topics: Data storage, data backup, cloud computing, Cyber security, data protection, data security