Posted by: TAZ Networks on November 10, 2017 at 10:59 am
How to Manage Business Data Backup and Disaster Recovery
Put your business information in safe hands.
How do you manage your business data backups? What’s your disaster recovery plan? Does your business data backup and disaster recovery plan meet all your industry regulations?
Are you a little stressed thinking about it all?
Managing business data backup and disaster recovery can be overwhelming. After all, data is one of the most important parts of your business.
Think about it:
- Your product specifications are proprietary. They are used every day to make the items you sell, the reason you’re in business.
- Your accounting information tracks and forecasts the financial health of your business.
- Sales and marketing statistics determine what’s working, and where you should direct your efforts.
- And don’t forget customer data. Every name, address, phone number, email, web site, purchase history – and at least some of it is probably protected by privacy and security laws and regulations.
What if you had to rebuild any of these databases from scratch? How long would that take? Would you even be able to rebuild after a major data loss?
This is why, more than products, even more than the customers and clients you serve, your business information is the most important asset you have.
So, let’s look at a few options for managing your business data backup and disaster recovery.
Business Data Backup Basics
How often should you run backups? The simple answer is a question: How many staff-hours of work can you reconstruct and still stay in business? Fifteen minutes? An hour? A day? A week? The maximum amount of worktime data that you can rebuild and stay in business should be the minimum frequency for data backup.
Backups should also be verified and tested regularly, to ensure they are working properly and that your data is safe and recoverable when needed.
Data Storage Options
USB hard drives. Once a day or once a week, an employee physically takes your backup media – usually a large-capacity hard drive – and makes sure to place it in a safe offsite location. This solution, while inexpensive, has the same problem as any physical media: it can be lost, stolen, or destroyed. Your data is only as reliable as the employee assigned to switch the drive. What happens the day you go to restore a file and find that the backup is missing or damaged? What if the swap wasn’t done?
Cloud backup. Many managed services providers recommend offsite backup to their clients as a more secure and convenient solution versus hard drives. Cloud backup is flexible and reliable. Business size doesn’t matter as much as having a reliable internet connection. Restoration can begin as soon as compatible hardware is available. With the right security infrastructure, cloud backup is often more secure than physical hard drives.
Business and Disaster Recovery (BDR) device. How long can your company afford a down server? If you lost your server, how much would it cost you for each hour that you did not have access to vital data? A BDR can bring data back online very quickly, often under an hour. Much more than data backup, it is specifically designed as a failover solution, with options for replicated backups locally as well as off-site.
Outsourced Solutions
Business data management and protection can be a complex task. Partnering with a computer networking expert, however, can relieve some of the stress by providing a secure, managed solution to business data backup and disaster recovery.
Why outsource your data backup management?
- Get expert advice on the right backup frequency and method for your business and industry.
- Focus on managing your business by allowing an expert to manage your backups.
- Plan ahead with confidence under a monthly rate plan instead of worrying about a huge, unforeseen data recovery bill.
Ready to learn more? Click here to read about business data backup and disaster recovery options offered by TAZ Networks, or fill out the form on the right to request a consultation.
Managing business data backups and disaster recovery doesn’t have to take up a large part of your day. Get the right solution with TAZ Networks.