Avoid Heartbreak: Invest in Solid Data Backup Solutions

You were working on that massive project for a major client. It had taken you the whole day to put it together, research the aspects of it, and put it into a professional, but fancy format.

Then the program crashes. For no reason at all, it just forgets all the work you did between your last save, which was a few hours ago. You cross your fingers and toes that the recovery aspect of the program works, but there is never a guarantee.

The heartbreak associated with the loss of important data and time is something most people have experienced at least once (and once is all that is needed to restructure your saving process).

Now, take that heartbreak and multiply it by the size of your business. This is what it may feel like if your entire company’s data suddenly was destroyed.

A major disaster that results in data loss can close the doors for good for about 25% of businesses.

The protection of your data makes the difference between smooth business functions and the potential being ruined. According to the Institute for Business and Home Safety, a major disaster that results in data loss can close the doors for good for about 25% of businesses. This may result from a greater focus on maximizing normal IT functioning, rather than preventative measures. Supporting this, a Forrester report showed that server virtualization and IT consolidation were higher priorities for the companies surveyed than business continuity planning. 

Although data backup does not have to be your only top priority, safeguarding your digital treasures is an investment worth making.

Here are a few of many methods you could choose from:

• Cloud backup: With data always available whenever and wherever to your employees, the cloud offers various and customizable settings for data backup, which can sync painlessly and routinely as needed.
• On-Site Backups: Protect your data across multiple platforms with on-location solutions.
• Redundant Backups: These solutions are like hording in various locations. If one location’s data is destroyed, the data located in another place still exists, ensuring business continuity.    
• A Managed Service Provider backup solution: Hiring an expert MSP, like NSI, takes the backup burden off of your employees’ plates and ensures successful implementation and maintenance. (Keep an eye out for our next blog in this series, which will delve deeper into this topic.)

As a side conversation, you may wonder if tape backup or external hard drives would be a viable method for business protection. The short answer is: not entirely. Although they may act as a temporary precaution or work in the short-run for very small businesses, if anything should happen at your location, your data and its backup could be destroyed simultaneously.

In addition, backup tapes, CDs, and external hard drives also take time to not only sync with your systems, but also may take more time than you can afford to restore to your systems back to normal.