10 reasons to remotely back up
If your company permanently lost all data, it would have a 60 per cent chance of going under. Did you know on average, it takes 21 days and £12,000 to recreate just 20MB of lost accounting information? It is crucial to your business’s survival to back up data and form a disaster recovery plan, now more than ever.
What is remote data back up?
It’s essentially an insurance policy for your company’s day-to-day and organisational information. As you work, your data is sent over a secure line to a protected databank, and can be retrieved in part or in whole, at a later date.
You have a 1 in 25 chance of having your laptop stolen, broken or destroyed, every year.
No matter how careful you are, it can and does still happen. When an MI5 agent’s laptop was stolen in 2009, the counterintelligence agency assured the public that the data was encrypted. Aside from password protecting and backing up data, it’s a good lesson to use a virtual private network (VPN). The laptop would act as a terminal, not holding vital data as it would securely log-in to the company’s network after authentication.
50 per cent of critical corporate data is stored unprotected on desktops and laptops.
Without password protection or even encryption of the data, the possibilities of damage aren’t just caused by undercover spies and petty thieves, but users on a network with access to files in the common drives.
The cost and time to recover a typical SME’s data.
One Megabyte (MB) is about 500 pages of text. With this in mind, think of the costs:
19 days and £10,700 to recreate just 20 MB of lost sales data
21 days and £12,000 to recreate just 20 MB of lost accounting data
42 days and £61,000 to recreate just 20 MB of lost engineering data
10 years later and 500 times larger…
Did you know your computer stores 500 times more data compared to 10 years ago? This increased capacity amplifies the impact of data loss. If your company uses computers and servers older than five years old, with today’s demands on the hard drive and CPU, the chances of disk failure are higher.
Only 34 per cent of companies actually test their tape backup.
Of the 34 per cent of companies that test their tape backup, 45 per cent find failures in recovering data. Think of the 66 per cent of companies that have never tested the system they trust to recover their company from disaster. When was the last time you checked tape drive?
60 per cent of SMEs collapse after losing their data.
According to a recent report by the National Computer Security Association, within six months, 60 per cent of SMEs dissolve after permanently losing their data. It’s a sad and avoidable statistic that can be combatted with a disaster recovery / business continuity plan.
Only one third of companies have a disaster recovery plan.
Does your company have one? It should form part of your systems and training process within the company. You can start today by jotting down the following considerations: how can the company continue to operate without data (do you have backup, printouts, etc?); what information is essential and what can be replaced?; how much money does the company lose every day it’s down?; How can you decrease the likelihood of a disaster (how often is the equipment checked and tested)? What steps should you take to resume business as normal after a flood, server failure, etc? Remember, essential data is more than just documents and spreadsheets. Think of the configuration settings, user names, passwords, serial codes and licenses, to name a few.
Tape backup went out with Windows 98.
It’s widely agreed by businesses to be unreliable, prone to failure and not secure. Added to this, how often is the tape changed, duplicated for contingency, taken off site, stored in a secure place, password protected and tested? An automated off-site online backup system also removes the chances of human errors.
66 per cent of small businesses are worried about their disaster recovery plan.
The 66 per cent of small businesses that have a disaster recovery plan and data backup are worried that it has significant vulnerabilities. The concerns include equipment reliability, security of data, and staff. It’s not wise to make one person responsible for the entire recovery of your IT infrastructure. If they were to leave or go on holiday, it would cost your company a lot in wasted time and money.
22 per cent of computer users would like to back up their data.
22 per cent of computer users would like to backup their data and won’t get around to it. With over 17years experience in writing disaster recovery plans for our clients, we know the best time to back up your data will always be now.
Research supplied by On Line Computing
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As cloud services become more common place and internet connections more reliable (despite the best efforts of nPower Roger!) more and more business applications can be run in the cloud giving off site data and application advantages. When moving to such services (we provide cloud CRM, Accounts and ERP services) make sure your provider is doing what they say with their network and data back-ups
Offsite backup is the single most important factor in modern business continuity arrangements. Clouding your data is now so cheap and easy to secure that it just makes sense.
Regarding Exchange and SQL, we cloud both of these and have separate backups running to ensure continuity including but not limited to clustering. That said we do keep some mission critical infrastructure here such as SQL, but this is backed up to… our ReadyNAS and backed up offsite… into the cloud.
IMHO offsite backup isn’t the first step but the single largest leap a small business can make… That said, whilst you do this you need to ensure that you secure the system correctly and this is where things can get tricky, but there are enough off the shelf solutions to make this viable for most company directors.
A good article and comments so far.
As an industry veteran with over 10 years experience in this specialism, I would add that it’s very important that you choose your provider carefully. Here are a few commercial tips:
1. Services exist for business and consumer markets. They vary significantly in terms of quality of service and ability to deliver support when you need it most. Make sure that you deal with a specialist supplier that you can at least talk to on the phone, that doesn’t baffle you with techno-babble, and that is prepared to put time into helping you get things setup properly. Also, check what support you can expect when you need to carry out a restore. There is nothing worse than trying to solve a technical problem on your own when you are under pressure, with only time delayed emails to a remote support desk for company.
2. Find out where your data is being stored. If you are a business storing personal information about clients that is governed by the Data Protection Act, you could be breaking the law by sending the data to a non EU country even if it is encrypted. If the data storage facility is located outside the EU, check that the provider has a current EU Safe Harbour agreement in place. If you are bound by FSA rules, check with them first as some organisations are not permitted to send data outside the UK. I know that this may sound like legal flim flam, but significant fines have been imposed on a number of institutions recently for failing to obey the rules.
3. Find out what your options are for getting your data back in a hurry. Ideally, the service should offer options for both on-site and off-site copies, storage in two off-site locations (preferably not the supplier’s offices), online restores, and the ability to have your data couriered to you securely on a disk.
4. Find out what procedures the supplier has in place for when they have a bad day. In other words, what steps do they take to make sure your data is secure, up to date and available for when you need it. Check what resilience they have in their infrastructure to cater for component breakdowns, etc.
5. Most reputable providers are happy to offer trials of their services. Some just let you get on with it, whilst others will go the extra mile and work with you to identify exactly what needs to be protected.
In summary, choose someone that you have had an opportunity to speak to and that you feel comfortable working with. After all, apart from your staff, your data is the most valuable irreplaceable business asset.
I hope these pointers help.