You must consider a series of worst-case scenarios if you want to protect your business in the long run. While various factors such as physical security, employee training, and network security can help you mitigate the majority of issues you face, what happens when each of these efforts fails? You know what they say--prepare for the worst and you’ll never be surprised by a data loss event again.
With a quality data backup and disaster recovery solution, you’ll be prepared for whatever life throws at your business. Larger companies generally don’t have as much to worry about, as their budgets are more flexible and can accommodate the spending required to ensure business continuity. Yet, smaller businesses can take advantage of these benefits as well, and it’s all thanks to managed IT services. The same backup and disaster recovery services that large enterprises take advantage of can work for your business, too, and it all starts with a business continuity plan. Here are four major concerns that any SMB should take into consideration for preserving their data infrastructure.
Firewalls
Do you store your business’s data backups in a location where they’re not protected by security solutions? If so, you’ll need to reconsider how you store your data backups. Firewalls are designed to keep threats from traveling to and from your infrastructure, and if the data that you’re storing your data backups in isn’t adequately protected by them, you’re going to have a bad time.
Antivirus
The same can be said for an antivirus solution, which protects your data by eliminating threats to it. All it takes is one threat to corrupt your business’s computing infrastructure. Think about what would happen if your data backups were to be corrupted by some ransom strain of malware. Would you be able to restore a backup like that in good faith that it wouldn’t pose a threat to your organization? Probably not--and you shouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. Implement an enterprise-level antivirus solution so that you don’t have to worry about whether your data backups are any good.
Backup Tests
Let’s say that your business experiences a data loss incident. You try to restore your data as soon as possible, but something goes wrong. The data is corrupted. It’s not as complete as you’d like it to be. Regardless of the reason, your business is down and out because you just assumed that your data backups would work as intended. You should be periodically testing your data backups to ensure that they will work when called upon.
Use Automation
The chances of your business’s data backups not working as intended will be drastically reduced if you remove one of the most unpredictable parts of it--the human element. Tape backups require your employees setting tapes to run backups at the end of every day. A cloud-based BDR, however, will accomplish the same goal automatically and send the backup directly to the cloud. There is no room for error here. Everything is handled seamlessly and without human intervention.
Does your business have a comprehensive business continuity plan? If not, be sure to give us a call at (518) 203-2110. Our trusted technicians can help you build the perfect backup solution for your business.
