TouchPoint Networks Blog Articles

Have You Tested Your Data Backup Lately?

October 19th, 2012 by admin

Is your company still sending a USB drive home with a staff member to occasionally backup your server?  How much business would you lose if your data was unrecoverable, and what kind of productivity would be lost in staff hours in trying to get the data back?

Businesses of all sizes think of backup many times as an afterthought, but more than ever before, today's market is pressing owners to reexamine the threats that could cause business interruption.

According to an information security breaches survey conducted by DTI/PriceWaterhouse, 70% of businesses that suffer a serious data loss are out of business in 2 years.

Many risks are unavoidable but technological advances have created a way for businesses to continue to run smoothly, even in the midst of uncertainty.

Organizations of all sizes are generating and depending on larger amounts of data that must be readily available and easily accessible.  Consequently, companies have to effectively manage more infrastructure resources, including servers, networks, and storage, to ensure data is protected in a timely manner while at the same time providing adequate performance and capacity and securing data for access when needed.   Unfortunately, the archaic data backup method for most companies is to backup vital information on a data tape, USB drives, external hard drives, or CDs/DVDs and let an employee such as an IT manager take it home for safe keeping.   Many businesses today believe these methods are a reliable method of backup.

We recently came across a very well-known business that routinely used these backup methods.  They finally put it to the test only to find out the data retrieved was 10 months old.  This would include critical data to any company including customer database and QuickBooks!

Today's latest technology enables the backup of information to take place on the “cloud” instead of servers on-site.   Therefore, if an event should occur the business can keep running as if nothing happened.

 

The concept of business continuity is experiencing a growth in popularity, and experts are attributing this primarily to its simplicity.  As a business owner, operating without a data backup solution in place is simply a risk that businesses should not be taking.  The pace of today’s business environment is faster than it has ever been, and business owners cannot afford to lose their valuable data.

All businesses face a certain degree of risk, but most intelligent business owners are looking to eliminate unnecessary risks as well as uncertainty.  Disaster recovery solutions provide business owners with a safety net that enables organizations to get back up and running before anyone notices that there was a slip-up.  Whether a natural disaster, virus attack or power outage, remote data backup provides businesses with the assurance that they will be able to compete in today’s markets.

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