Best Backup Strategies for Small Businesses
For every business, especially small and medium enterprises, you have to depend on various computers to store a large amount of important data like accounting and client information. So employing a small business backup solution should be your first plan of action to prevent data loss from ransomware, cyberattacks, accidental file deletion, and other threats. Be that as it may, in case you're not backing up your data appropriately on a regular basis, recovering it would be additionally challenging.
If you’re a small business, you need to consider:
- How frequently do you back up your data?
- Where and how are your backups stored?
- What are the recovery methods you should adopt?
- How long should we retain old backups?
While the answers to these questions partly rely on the unique needs of the business, there are some general guidelines that every company should follow. This guide will help your company develop and enforce a good backup strategy in place, or better yet, automate it. Here’s how.
Back up Data Frequently:
The more frequently you back your data up, the less loss you’ll suffer in between recovery points. With that being said, how recurrent do your backups need to be?
The present BC/DR solutions from providers take backups as frequently as 5 minutes to even 30 seconds. However, it doesn't mean you need to back up your data every 30 seconds. On the off chance if your business utilizes various types of servers, for instance, at that point some will require a higher backup frequency than the others. Some BC/DR solutions provide hourly backups, daily backups, and even several backups for each week depending on the kind of servers used by small businesses.
Specific Industries, for example, finance and healthcare, may need to back up information as frequently as possible to comply with administrative necessities. So, if your business is continually creating or altering large amounts of critical data, at that point you probably need your backups to be more real time.
Execute the 3-2-1 Backup Rule:
Setting up a useable – and extensive business backup strategy can be overwhelming, complex, and excessively technical. Yet, it shouldn't be.
A straightforward approach is sometimes the best. And the 3-2-1 backup strategy for your business, it doesn’t get easier and powerful.
Following the 3-2-1 backup strategy implies you'll have 3 duplicates of your information, 2 of which will be local, i.e., copy 1 will be your live data that your business and team members would access on an everyday basis, copy 2 would also be stored in your office- but this would be a backup of your live data and should be on separate storage devices like USB drives, NAS, or local back up servers.
There should be 1 duplicate that should be put away offsite in a remote location. This means that when disaster strikes, in one of its many forms, your business wouldn’t grind to a halt, you’ll be able to restore your data and get back to business instantaneously. However, you should also keep in mind that remote storage should not be utilized as an alternative for on-site storage.
To support you further, today’s leading small business backup solutions also offer hybrid backup protection, which stores backups in the cloud that acts as your strongest security against any form of disaster.
Test Backups and Restores Regularly:
Testing your backups regularly is the most significant aspect of disaster recovery. Without testing your backups regularly, your backup strategies wouldn’t be as successful. For example, traditional incremental backups may experience data corruption errors as they happen in backup chains when each new backup increment is added.
BC/DR suppliers have created new backup processes that limit these dangers. All things considered, you should be certain your backup will be available and usable when you need it.
You also need to be mindful that your backups are tested routinely to ensure that they are not corrupt. This essentially means, your backup framework must have an automated cycle that approves each new backup automatically and triggers an alert when there are any issues.
Maintain an Air Gap Backup:
Having an "air gap" backup means that you maintain one copy of your data offline. This copy needs to be disconnected from your network and the internet.
By doing this, you help avoid having your backed-up data corrupted or maliciously targeted by ransomware-type attacks.
The air-gap strategy goes hand-in-hand with the 3-2-1 backup schema. The "1" copy should be air-gapped.
Restore Data on the Basis of the Disaster:
Testing your backups regularly is the most significant aspect of disaster recovery. Without testing your backups regularly, your backup strategies wouldn’t be as successful. For example, traditional incremental backups may experience data corruption errors as they happen in backup chains when each new backup increment is added.
BC/DR suppliers have created new backup processes that limit these dangers. All things considered, you should be certain your backup will be available and usable when you need it.
A good backup solution will provide various means to restore information based on the circumstance. There should not be a necessity to perform a full backup restore just because one important folder goes missing.
- For individual files and documents, a file-level recovery will be the quickest and most proficient approach to restore the lost information.
- When you face extensive data loss, you'll presumably need to move back to the latest and the most recent recovery point, or utilize more specific restore options which restores just those files and records that have changed since the last backup.
- In situations where a secured machine is no longer bootable, a bare-metal restore may become your option.
Picking the most suitable backup strategy plays a vital role in limiting the consequences of disruption, and getting lost information back as fast and effectively as possible.
Next Step:
Once you have established your strategy, execute and test how well the strategy is performing, and check if it’s in line with your needs. Many small businesses have encountered bottlenecks because they assumed that their strategy was viable, and lost crippling amounts of data as a result
If you’re wondering where you’ll acquire the expertise, and the time to configure effective backup plans, our experts at Rebit can relieve you of those burdens. We become the ultimate failsafe, allowing you to go back in time with your computer. To cater to all your business needs, Rebit Pro uses CDP technology to automatically back up all changes that happens to your system every 30 seconds, waiting until the system is idle to avoid any performance impact. Our Network backup function which is virtually identical to a local backup will enable you to enforce the 3-2-1 back up strategy successfully. If a virus hits your computer today, you can just go back in time to yesterday (or whenever the last safe time was). It’s an extremely powerful solution that gives you true backup and recovery.
You can know more about the most effective backup strategies and solutions for small business backup, or if you just want help getting going, please contact our support. And should the worst case happen and you need to perform a recovery, we will be here at your time of need to help you get your data back.
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