About Regular and Redundant Backups
Making regular and redundant backups is a simple practice you can implement to help protect against data loss and ensure the continuity of your business.
Regular and redundant backups are designed to provide a dual layer of protection:
- Regular backups guard against the potential for a loss of data that would be difficult or impossible to replace.
- Redundant backups protect against the possibility that a primary backup system fails or becomes corrupted.
Taken together, regular and redundant backups are one of the best ways to secure and protect the data your business needs to survive.
Risks of Data Loss
Data loss poses a significant risk for modern businesses. Corporate, customer and employee data systems are all vulnerable and face a broad range of risks from threats such as thieves, hackers and disgruntled employees, to natural disasters such as fires and floods. Failures of hardware, software, networks and cloud systems can all lead to a loss of data.
Data loss can cost businesses weeks or months of work, which must be redone, if it can be redone at all. Without frequent backups and redundant backup copies, data loss can result in significant delays and work stoppages, endangering business continuity.
Benefits of Regular and Redundant Backups
Implementing regular and redundant backups at your business boasts big benefits, helping to:
- Ensure smooth operations
- Minimize disruptions
- Prevent work stoppages
- Protect continuity
- Provide peace of mind
It could be the difference between a minor delay and a complete collapse of operations.
Tips for Implementing Regular and Redundant Backups
- Choose a strategy—Customize a backup plan to suit your needs. Consider your options for types of backups, frequency, number of copies, storage medium, location and retention.
- Pick a type—Use full backups (saving everything), incremental backups (saving only the most recent changes) or differential backups (saving changes since the last full backup).
- Determine a frequency—Regular backups can be taken monthly, weekly, daily and in real time. Choose a frequency that is at least as often as you are comfortable potentially losing your work.
- Automate backups—Take advantage of professional tools and services available and automate the process of making, securing, storing and managing the copies of your data.
- Plan for redundancy—Expect to keep a minimum of three copies of your data: primary data and two backup copies, preferably with one segregated from the network and one stored offsite.
- Consider retention plan—Pick a data retention schedule that suits your needs. Depending on storage space and budget, you may keep some data for weeks, months or years.
- Use data encryption—Safeguard data backups with encryption technology at the time of copying for added data security, particularly if you will be storing your data offsite.
- Test for recovery—Regularly test backups to ensure your data is recoverable in the event of a data loss. Develop systems to help minimize downtime and ensure continuity.
About CyberLock Defense
CyberLock Defense is a one-of-a kind cyber liability insurance policy that provides protection against the rising costs of cyber attacks, including social engineering, cyber theft, ransomware and more.
With flexible limits and affordable rates, this coverage is available for a wide range of small businesses.
Learn more at CyberLockDefense.com.