Get Ahead of the Competition by Never Falling Behind: Why a Great Backup Solution is Critical

April 10th, 2018 by admin

Most people think of backups as a pass/fail situation. But the truth is, there’s a wide spectrum of quality when it comes to these critical solutions. You may have a passing-level solution, but do you and your company have A-grade backups? Here, we discuss some of the benefits and features that set the excellent backups apart from the good ones. We’ve heard an awful lot about backups in the last decade, and for good reasons too! A study by the University of Texas reported that 43% of businesses that suffered catastrophic data loss never reopened, and 51% closed within two years. We’ve seen high-profile data loss incidents like the British Home Office’s missing thumb drive, resulting in the loss of 84,000 prisoner’s data in 2008. Or when Amazon’s cloud storage failed in 2011, taking an entire week before customers had all their data back. And who can forget back in 48 BC when the Library of Alexandria was burned to the ground, and there was no backup solution at all! Alright, so unless you’re on the wrong side of Caesar’s armies, you probably won’t have your data pillaged. However, equally disastrous events can happen to you or your company’s data. The quality of your backup solution determines the damage that your organization will take.  

How Solid Backups can Save Your Bacon:

 

Minimize downtime with fast recovery

The best recovery plans can get you up and running again in hours, whereas poor or no backup solutions can cost your company thousands, just in lost productivity time. Inefficient recovery means no work can be done for days.

Prevent onsite disasters from becoming catastrophic to your data

Well infrastructured backup systems will be able to get you back on your feet reliably and completely with off-site redundancy. This means natural disasters, vandalism, office fire or other similar tragedies will not destroy your data; the backups you have in a safe, off-site location (or cloud) will remain unharmed.

Quick fix human error with accessible data

Human error is the leading cause of data loss and happens relatively frequently. The best backup solutions are accessible enough that your backup team or manager can easily locate and restore a few specific files quickly and reduce the common micro-disaster of an individual's lost work.

Avoid data breaches with secure backups

Backups are all about redundancy. If you aren’t careful, that might mean added security vulnerabilities. When deciding how to manage your backups, it’s important to make sure your data security isn’t compromised, even though it exists in twice as many places and is being handled more frequently. Good backup systems will have a secure process of storing and transferring large amounts of data.   So remember, not all backup solutions are created equal. If you’re unsure about how well your plan is protecting you, consider some of the points here and decide if it needs improvement. If you don’t have a plan, you might use these as a launch pad to find a great one.       -Kender Ostlund

Posted in: Protection, Technology, Toolsets