Your data is the heart and soul of your business and it’s exposed to numerous vulnerabilities every day.
In fact, if you review Fortinet’s State of Operational Technology and Cybersecurity Report you’ll notice that 93% of organizations experienced an intrusion in the past 12 months, and 78% experienced more than three. Figures for malware and phishing attacks are on the rise. It’s also clear in the study that companies are exposed to risk a lot more than just losing data or money in the event of a cyberattack (hence why it is important to back up data.) Take a look at the following facts.
A Few Facts About Cyber Threats And Data Loss
- 9 out of 10 organizations experienced at least one intrusion in the past year and 63% had 3 or more intrusions
- The most common intrusions were malware at 57% and phishing at 58%, which was up from 43% last year.
- 42% experienced insider breaches, which is up from 18% last year.
Situations That Can Lead To Data Loss
Cybercriminals who deploy ransomware can hijack crucial information and extort substantial amounts of money to restore access to it.
Intruders might find a way to infiltrate digital storage accounts.
Malicious software can be utilized by attackers to compromise your computer system.
Essential data may be removed intentionally by a dissatisfied employee or accidentally deleted.
Data loss is often attributed to break-ins, as most stolen electronic devices are never retrieved.
A mere hard drive failure in a computer could potentially wipe out an entire data center.
Electronic device failures and the resultant loss of important data might result from natural disasters, catastrophes, or extreme weather occurrences.
Data Backup Essentials
Appointing a manager or supervisor as the data backup plan administrator to ensure one person is responsible for the establishment, upkeep, and occasional testing of secure data backups for crucial information.
Employing technology to perform manual data backups regularly, typically on a daily basis.
Establishing a recovery point objective (RPO) to outline a practical strategy for determining the amount of data your business can afford to lose without affecting operations.
Defining a recovery time objective (RTO) to provide a target duration from the moment data is lost until access to data backups is restored and operations resume.
Creating a backup policy that outlines the frequency of data backups and identifies the most critical systems and files to prioritize.
Why Is A Disaster Recovery Plan Crucial?
Backups are essential for business continuity and protecting sensitive data, but there is still the issue of what to do if servers fail or your cloud backup storage experiences technical difficulties. For this reason, you must combine a disaster recovery strategy with your data backup plan. By doing this, make sure that there is a system where you can get data if something goes wrong.
Periods of downtime could lead to significant loss of earnings, and having a backup plan in place can entirely mitigate any downtime caused by human error, system errors, malicious agents, or natural incidents.
Developing A Corporate Backup Strategy Can Guarantee You A Good Night’s Sleep
Creating a solid backup process takes time and resources, but it is much less expensive than the time-consuming process of recreating and storing data for which there is none.
The primary goal of a backup is to create a copy of the data that can be restored if the critical data fails.
Primary data errors can be caused by hardware or software issues, data loss, or human error like a malicious attack (virus or malware) or an unintentional deletion. Data may be retrieved from backup copies at any time in the past, which can assist a company in its catastrophe recovery.
1. Map Out Your Backup Strategy
It’s a clever idea to have a simple backup method plan even if you’re just getting started so that you have a general idea of what aspects to consider. Here are three questions you can ask yourself to help you come up with one:
What Information Should Be Backed Up?
You may be thinking of data management and how to back up every file that’s on your computer, but it’s a little more complicated than that.
Do you want to have data protection and keep every version of each file? If you have any data on external hard drives, will you want to make a backup of your social profiles or other data that isn’t stored on your computer?
Whatever you decide, make sure you always have a full backup and also always do a backup test.
How Often Should You Run A Backup For Your Data?
Important documents and files should be backed up at least once a week, if not more often. If most data changes are not that frequent, a periodic backup may be an option for you. Again, it is also important to have a full backup.
How Do I Keep Track Of My Backup?
Finding out that your data backup software has been failing at a time when you might have lost your data can be devastating.
If your backup software and backup storage have been working silently for months, it’s time to double-check that they’re still doing their job.
Testing the restore function on your backup storage allows you to ensure that all the data you consider relevant will be available when you need it most and give you continuous data protection.
2. Keep Physical Backups In A Remote Location
Keeping backups or data stored on-site can be extremely dangerous. If your entire system is hacked, or if a natural disaster destroys your entire facility, your data backup will almost certainly be damaged as well.
As a result, data recovery best practices suggest keeping backup data in a secondary storage location, whether that location is another physical location or the cloud. It can also be faster if you can backup only the data which will give you a faster restore in case you experience deleted files.
Schedule Backups Regularly
The longevity of your company depends on having recent, up-to-date backups. If you have been working with Microsoft 365 for a while, you may be advised to acquire a third-party backup solution for your Microsoft account.
This may be the best option because these backups provide a custom plan according to your company’s needs.
Time-based solutions, such as updating every day, week, or month, when creating a business data backup program, are some of the options available. Automating backups is a best practice to ensure that data backups aren’t overlooked.
3. Consider Encrypting Your Backups
If your data backup is not secured, it is vulnerable to being hacked if the data is stolen, lost, or otherwise compromised.
As a result, encrypted backups are considered one of the best data recovery practices. They provide an extra layer of protection and will give you peace of mind that your data is safe if you need to use your disaster recovery plan.
4. Develop And Adhere To Retention Requirements
Are you familiar with the data backup retention criteria that your company must meet? You must know which data backup retention provisions apply to your company in this new era of data privacy laws. Accounting firms, for example, must comply with the Canada Revenue Agency data security compliances.
The CRA guidelines define where these records should be kept, long-term retention requirements, and how to request permission to delete them before the retention period expires.
Knowing your data backup retention criteria will also help you reduce the amount of data you need to keep. Older, out-of-date copies, any file that is no longer in use, or any file that no longer supports the organization’s activities should all be removed.
5. Implement the 3-2-1 backup rule
The rule was first conceived by the US photographer Peter Krogh when writing a book about digital asset management in the early 2000s.
According to this rule, data should be stored in three copies or versions on two different pieces of media, one of which is off-site giving you redundant data. Let’s examine each of the three components and the issues they discuss.
3: The rule stated that data should be copied three times. The original or output copy should be the first, followed by two duplicate copies, for a total of three.
2: Make sure to have the two backup copies which are typically stored on separate removable media or in an online backup. The idea was that if one backup was compromised or lost, a second would be available. These threats may be IT-based, requiring data to be stored in a separate device or medium.
1: The final “one” refers to the fact that one of the copies should be kept off-site, so in case the first copy is damaged for some reason, the second copy will hopefully remain unaltered.
Five Business Data Backup Solutions
1. Cloud Backup Solutions
More organizations than ever are turning to cloud services for data storage, which has significantly increased in recent years. Whether a major firm is trying to preserve data in the cloud or a small business is, cloud backup services have been essential.
With cloud backups, you can rest easy knowing that all of your crucial company data is stored off-site. Data is easily accessible in case of a disaster thanks to the added protection and redundancy provided by cloud backup services. Because some cloud backup services provide unlimited capacity for unlimited users, they can be quite pricey.
2. Data Backup Software
While hardware appliances and external hard drives may be easier to set up than software, the flexibility and extra features offered by data backup software make it a vital component of many businesses’ data backup strategies.
This software allows you to specify the data and systems you want to back up, automate the backup process, and assign particular devices for different types of data.
3. External Hard Drives
Large-capacity external hard drives play a crucial role in the backup processes of numerous companies, especially when used in conjunction with archiving software. This software enables users to recover files from an external hard drive, reducing the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) to mere minutes.
As demand for your services and data volumes rise, a single hard drive may no longer suffice. In these cases, a more intricate data backup storage strategy called redundancy is often employed.
4. Hardware Appliances
Backup appliances typically boast extensive storage capacity and come with pre-integrated backup software. To use them, simply connect the appliances to the relevant systems, establish your backup policies, and the data will be transferred to the storage device. If feasible, install hardware appliances off-site or outside the local network infrastructure for added security.
5. Removable Media
Traditional and straightforward manual backups can be performed using removable data storage devices such as USB drives, DVDs, and Blu-Ray discs. While this approach may be suitable for the smallest operations, larger data volumes necessitate increasingly sizable discs, complicating the recovery process. Additionally, it is crucial to store data backups in a separate location to prevent loss due to disasters or on-site theft.
Web And Mobile Backup Apps
Online backup is very beneficial, as it allows users anywhere to see your data. Most online backup services will allow users to see or download files using web browsers, but the minimum.
Many even offer file-sharing options — the most effective even lets you specify a username for the account and the expiry time for the shared items.
Almost all online backup services tested offer iPhone and Android apps, but their functionality and quality can be very different. Some offer simple document and multimedia file archiving using the existing backups, while some offer full backups for mobile devices.
Restoring Folders And Files
Online backups are useless unless the recovery or restoration of your files is simple and easy. Backup companies will often provide searches to help locate files in backups. The ability to replicate folder-tree structures is incredibly helpful if you want faster recovery for lost files in larger quantities.
You should be reminded if buying plans that only cover a single computer you may have to transfer this account over if a computer is replaced.
Backup Performance
The speed of the online backup service varies by how quickly it encrypts, compresses, and uploads files on the server — especially if it requires backing up or recovery. High efficiency reduces the impact of networks and systems resources.
Take a look at the speed test results before evaluating your backup plan. Backup speed shouldn’t determine which of these you’re using, but fast upload speeds will likely reduce your backups.
Conclusion
At this point, you may be able to comprehend to the full extent why you need a business continuity plan that outlines your company’s backup strategy. If you need further help implementing it for your company, feel free to contact us, we’ll be happy to help.
