What is the importance of Data Backup and Recovery?
Data is one of the most valuable assets a business has. As companies amass increasing volumes of data and store them across the enterprise—from on-premises data centers to hybrid cloud architectures—keeping that information protected and consistently available is more critical than ever.
Threats to that data are on the rise. Phishing, ransomware, and other malicious attacks can wreak havoc on your ability to operate and result in financially devastating data loss.
Attacks aren’t the only threat to data. Simple user error can cause critical data loss. Natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, or fires can also disrupt power and damage data.
Every business needs a solid data backup and system recovery solution that can help it survive—or even thrive—in the face of unexpected events.
Data Backup and Recovery 101
Backing up your data entails making and storing copies of your business information. This includes application and product data, customer files, employee and supplier records, and competitive research. Recovery means taking those copies and restoring data when the original information has been lost or damaged.
You can create partial or full backups on a variety of media, including magnetic tape cartridges, CDs, hard drives or arrays, and solid-state or flash drives. Today, the cloud is becoming an increasingly popular archival destination for enterprise data backup and database backup.
Best Practices for Data Backup
- The 3-2-1 rule. For decades, IT experts touted the wisdom of the 3-2-1 backup rule: keeping three copies of your data on two different storage types and storing at least one of those copies in an offsite location. The idea was to ensure that you’d have at least one copy to use for systems recovery whether the data loss was a result of malicious activity, user error, or natural disaster. As cloud or online backups become more common, the 3-2-1 rule is evolving. For example, many experts recommend that if you back up data in the cloud, you should create two cloud copies that are separated geographically. Today’s businesses are mixing and matching local and cloud-based backup strategies to create a system that works best for their own needs. Saving backups to the cloud requires cloud storage, and a number of online backup vendors offer unlimited cloud storage when you use their backup services.
- What to look for in a solution. Some important considerations in choosing an enterprise data backup solution include ease of use, simple scalability, fast recovery times, system security, reliability of the vendor, and quality of vendor support.
- Make a plan and test it out. A smart data backup and recovery plan will define what data needs to be backed up and how often. Some temporary data, for instance, might not need to be backed up at all, whereas business-critical data might need to be backed up multiple times a day. Periodically test your recovery plan to ensure that data isn’t being corrupted or lost in the backup process. Two important metrics to consider and measure are:
A smart data backup and recovery strategy can keep your business up and running, even when the unexpected occurs.
