Data Back Up and Recovery Services
Data is one of the most important parts of any business. It's a critical element in every part of your company. Yet, it's something that's usually taken for granted until it's gone. Without a data backup and recovery plan, your business could come to a standstill in the event of a hardware failure, human error, or data breach.
Understanding Data Backup and Recovery
Data backup and recovery encompass more than just backing up files on an external hard drive or local server. It's a process and strategy that works in the background to not only ensure your data is safe in the event of a disaster or breach, but provides a recovery plan for getting your business back online as quickly and efficiently as possible.
It may be surprising to hear that, even with a recent backup, it can still take hours or even days to recover. A disaster recovery plan maps out what data should be restored first to keep the core portions of your company running with as little delay as possible.
The Value of Data Backup and Recovery
Every single business, including small businesses, needs data backup and recovery services. Every minute your business is down due to a loss of data is a profit loss. For small businesses, the average cost of a breach is $108,000. The 2021 IBM and Ponemon Institute data breach study found the average overall cost rose from $3.86 million in 2019 to $4.24 million per breach.
Think about the value of your data and what it means to your business. If it was deleted or placed behind a paywall in a ransomware attack, how much would that cost you? Consider that this lost data could include financial transaction data, strategic information and human resources, and customer records, just to name a few.
Breaches, human error, and natural disasters happen when you least expect it. They also happen to businesses of all sizes, and in all industries. This is why every business needs a backup and recovery plan.
Benefits of Data Backup and Recovery Services
You already know your data is valuable. Having reliable data backup and recovery services allows you to protect the data your business needs, and the data your customers and staff entrust to you.
Knowing that you'll able to restore your data when the worst happens out of nowhere gives you peace of mind. It will also drastically reduce downtime--time when new customers may be searching for you, or employees need access to company apps and data. The quicker everything goes back to normal, the less costly any data loss or breach incident becomes.
With data backup and recovery services, data backups are performed regularly-daily, at minimum, and even multiple times per day for businesses that are transaction-heavy, or other tracking-worthy data points change frequently. If something goes wrong, your most recent backup will include the latest version of nearly all your data. This makes it easier for your business to bounce back after an incident.
Working with recovery services, your business can recover in stages, starting with what's most important. This reduces your downtime.
Of course, it's important to understand that data backup and recovery services are just part of a larger data security strategy that every business should have in place.
In a perfect world, you would never need to use your backups; however, the fact is, even if you implemented all the security measures defined by your data security strategy and achieved end-to-end protection, human error and natural disasters can render such measures useless. Additionally, cyberattacks keep getting increasingly more sophisticated, so clearly every business is still at risk.
However, if you have already taken proactive data security measures against such attacks, perform data backups regularly, and have a team that can provide you with recovery services, your company will be covered, even if the worst happens.
Finding the Best Solution
Businesses often make two mistakes when it comes to a backup and recovery strategy:
- Backups are stored on-site
- Only having one copy of their backup
The best solution includes three components:
- Automatic backups
- Off-site storage
- Redundancy
Why are these important?
- Backups need to be done automatically because relying on memory to remember to manually back everything up every day will inevitably lead to missed backups.
- Your on-site backups could be destroyed or erased in the event of a natural disaster or breach at your primary company location.
- If the on-site copy was the only one you had, you wouldn't be able to recover if that one copy were to be ruined for some reason.
Cloud-Based Backup and Data Recovery
Using cloud-based backup and data recovery is a great way to both store your data off-site and add redundancy. With a cloud-based solution, the cloud services provider maintains all the servers and storage hardware and also sets up redundancy by replicating your data. You never have to worry about hardware failures, hackers locking you out of your servers, physical damage to your equipment due to a natural disaster, or even whether an employee accidentally deletes the wrong thing.
Your data backups remain safe and secure. Whenever you need access, your data is there and ready to be restored.
Since you don't have to buy your own servers and hard drives for local storage, you save money. You only have to pay for the storage you need. Plus, as your business and data needs grow, cloud-based data backup and recovery scales with your business.
Let an Expert Handle It
A managed data backup and recovery service provider like GSDSolutions can handle all of this for you, from setting up a backup schedule, ensuring your data is stored securely offsite, to adding redundancy to your backups. When you free yourself from all those tasks and leave it to the experts, you'll have more time to focus on the things where you can really add value to your business.
Need Help with Setting up a Data Backup and Recovery Strategy?
Give us a call today at (650) 282-7695, shoot us an email at mailto:info@GSDSolutions.io, or click the button below to set up a free, no obligation consultation to discuss your data backup and recovery needs!
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