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A reliable backup solution should form part of your business continuity plans to ensure you minimise significant risk and can respond and maintain your business operations in the event of data loss or disaster.
Published on
1st July 2021
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With the heightened risk of cyber attacks to businesses along with other risks including IT systems failure, unforeseeable natural disasters or human error, the threat of data loss and business downtime are apparent and can affect businesses in many different ways, from damaging reputation to significant financial loss.
Business continuity planning should form an important part of your IT strategy, which amongst other essential IT services, must include a reliable backup solution and disaster recovery plan.
What is backup?
A data backup is a copy or archive of your business files and folders which can be restored in the event of data loss. The idea being that if your business is affected by an unforeseen event such as IT failure, file corruption, natural disaster such as storm or flood, or simple accidental deletion, you can quickly restore a previous version of those files and continue working from the point of your last successful backup.
What online backup options are available?
Backup technology has come a long way since the days of physical tape backups, which required IT technicians to programme or manually copy business critical data to a tape cassette on a regular basis. Whilst this backup option remains suitable for some businesses, there are many technical challenges to this method, including security concerns and room for human error. These challenges, together with the potential need to wait longer than necessary to restore data as a result of outdated technology can significantly impact the productivity of fast-moving organisations.
With the continued growth in the use of cloud computing, more business-critical data is being stored in the cloud than ever before so it is essential to ensure that your cloud based IT applications and data are secured.
Cloud backup
Moving to a cloud-based service from an on-premise backup solution is a simple alternative in the move to online backup.
By installing an agent on your business server and/or workstations, regular data backups can be taken from your IT systems and stored locally or within a secure datacentre, or copied to multiple data centres for extra protection.
To ensure the safety of your data, it should be scanned for potential viruses and encrypted up until the time that you may need to restore it.
Online backup for Microsoft 365
In recent times, the shift to remote working has resulted in the fast adoption of cloud-based IT services including Microsoft cloud computing services who offer Microsoft 365. Although data retention and backup services are provided to users as part of these subscriptions, there are notable limitations - For example, deleted data that isn’t restored before the expiry of set retention periods will be deleted and is no longer accessible by your business.
It is recommended that users of Microsoft 365 enhance their backup protection with online backup options that integrate with Microsoft 365 to provide unlimited storage and protection across the full Microsoft 365 suite.
Selecting your complete backup and disaster recovery solution
Whilst many businesses have separate back up and disaster recovery solutions, a recommended alternative is to use a complete backup and disaster recovery solution (BCDR) rather than manage different technologies.
A fully managed BCDR solution provides comprehensive data backup and data recovery, managed in one platform, enabling secure backup and quick retrieval of business-critical data in the event of data loss or disaster, using the most advanced technologies.
When selecting an online backup solution, it is important to evaluate the security of your business data and the process in place to ensure that your data is free from viruses before entering your backup system and safe from attack whilst stored there. Patented technology exists to ensure your business data is clean prior to backup and different encryption methods and restore request processes are available to protect your information further.
In addition, it is essential that you understand the process and time required to restore your data and the support available from your IT Managed Service Provider (MSP) should you need to start this process.
How We Can Help
Working with an industry leading technology partner will ensure you get expert advice on all areas of data backup. ITRM are a Microsoft gold partner and provide Microsoft cloud services along with a range of reliable, secure online backup services that integrate with Microsoft 365. Contact one of our IT consultants today to understand the best online backup options for your business.
