The importance of Backups

Imagine if your business lost all of your customer files, financial records and operations information. The cost is most likely a fair proportion of the annual turnover of the business. In the worst possible case it could also mean the total failure of the business.

Considering a business would insure itself against fire theft and flood, then surely taking out some insurance against data loss would also be a good idea. Fortunately the type of “insurance” we are talking about is entirely within the control of the business and its IT support people. We are of course talking about creating multiple and regular copies of the information. In IT terms it’s called backup. To neglect this is to put your business at risk.

What then is the best form of backup? Here are the seven golden rules of backup.

1. Just Do it. Whatever you do take action to have some kind of backup don’t put your head in the sand and pretend data loss won’t happen because it will.
2. Do it on a regular basis. For business a daily backup is recommended
3. Keep more than one backup. Have two or more devices to store the data
4. Keep at least on backup off site. Either take a drive or take off site or use a cloud storage option to save critical files.
5. Have a means of reporting or verifying the backup so you know each day when it is working
6. .Check the backups on a different device to ensure that the data is recoverable and it contains the right information.
7. If you are uncertain about any of the above involve your IT firm to assist. In all these aspects.

To inquire about implementing backup solutions please call us on (03) 9555 4986 for a free initial consultation.