Why Might You Lose Your Data?
Before we discuss preventing data loss, it’s imperative to understand how you’re at risk of data loss. Here are the many reasons why data loss can happen within a professional environment:
- Hardware failures – your hardware, such as your servers and disk drives, could fail due to wear and tear, physical damage, or technical issues. If this happens, all the data stored on these devices will be irrecoverable.
- Software failures – your software could fail due to corruption or incompatible software updates. These bugs and glitches could cause data erasure, and you may not be able to recover your data without a proper recovery plan.
- Human error – accidentally deleting data or making formatting errors is extremely possible. When data is deleted permanently by accident, it is impossible to recover it without systems in place.
- Cyberattacks – a cyberattacker could initiate a malware attack, corrupting your data and making it illegible without a cipher. Or, they could hold your data for ransom, blackmailing you for financial gain. Data backup plans render you impervious to such threats.
- Natural disasters – fires, floods, and earthquakes can all damage your hardware and cause the permanent loss of data. A disaster recovery plan will ensure you have a failsafe to restore your essential data in the event of a natural disaster.
There are numerous potential causes for data loss and deletion within a business. When you have a data backup and disaster recovery plan, however, you have a failsafe to ensure your business operations can resume even minutes after data loss. Ensuring this plan is foolproof and secure is a top priority.
What Are Data Backup Strategies?
Data backup strategies involve the establishment of both off and on-site data backup storage. It determines when data backups happen and which data is critical to your business operations. Below is a list of some of the top considerations you must make when establishing your data backup plan:
- Identifying critical data – identify the data that’s most critical to your daily business operations so that you can prioritize it in your backup plan.
- Define the frequency of backups – when should your data be backed up? Determine whether an hourly, daily, or weekly backup plan is needed to keep your business operational in the event of a disaster.
- Determine storage location – you should have both on-site (cloud-based) data backup, and off-site data backup, which involves investing in a server in an external location.
- Automation – you should establish an automated system for data backups, eliminating the potential for human error, as employees may forget to backup their data regularly.
- Testing – you should regularly test the backup plan to ensure it works, eliminating the possibility of data recovery failure.
When you have data stored in multiple locations, the chances of losing it become extremely slim, and having a data backup plan can eliminate anxieties regarding the loss of critical data.
What Is A Disaster Recovery Plan?
A disaster recovery plan is more comprehensive than a data backup plan, as it considers all the possible threats and disasters that could halt your business operations. Here are some of the main aspects considered in a data disaster recovery planning:
- Risk assessment – your disaster recovery plan should outline both man-made and natural risks posed to your data. This can include cybersecurity attacks or natural disasters like hurricanes and flooding.
- Business impact analysis – the disaster recovery plan should provide a detailed account of how any risks would affect the core functioning of your business and the level to which they would impede business operations.
- Defining recovery priorities – based on your impact analysis, you can identify priority areas, and the risks which would impede your business operations the most. Then, you can begin crafting recovery protocols and procedures that would prevent the impediment to your daily operations.
- Data backup and protection – as we discussed earlier, mitigating the effects of a disaster on your business often involves data backup and protection measures.
- Alternate site location – should your business premises be destroyed, you must identify an alternate site location to host your business operations. You should consider your technology needs at this alternate site so that you can restore your data in this locale.
- Documentation – you should create documentation denoting each step in your disaster recovery procedure and which steps should be of urgent priority.
Your data backup plan is essential in ensuring your disaster recovery plan works. Both plans can be arranged using either internal or outsourced IT teams, which means that small businesses don’t need to hire an internal IT team to protect their data.
Choose Tech Masters Inc. For Data Backup And Disaster Recovery Plans
By implementing reliable data backup and disaster recovery plans based on your unique business needs and priorities, you can rest assured knowing your business will be able to resume operations in the event of a disaster. Monitor and test your data backup and recovery plans regularly to ensure they are completely sufficient.
If you outsource your data backup and disaster recovery plans to a managed IT service, you can reduce the burden on your team or even increase your data reliability without hiring an internal IT team. Contact Tech Master Inc. for exceptional managed IT services, including data backup and disaster recovery provision.
