Tip of the Week: Three Essential Data Backup Practices

A good data backup protects your business’ information (and because of this, the business itself) from a wide variety of threats. Of course, to accomplish this effectively, a data backup needs to itself be secure and reliable. Let’s take a few moments and go over a few practices and policies you would likely find it beneficial to adopt.

Keep More Than One Backup Copy

We’re starting with the biggie here: your backups should have their own backups. You never know what could happen, and plenty of possible scenarios exist that could lead to a backup becoming unavailable. Maintaining a few copies will help minimize the chance that your data is rendered inaccessible to you. To fully accomplish this, it is also important that these backups are not all stored in the same location—particularly not in the same place as your original data—due to the possibility that a single disaster could corrupt or destroy them all at once.

Protect Your Backups

Too often, the concept of keeping a backup is discussed without attention being drawn to how critical it is that these backups are properly secured.

Consider what a backup is in its simplest terms: a spare copy of your data to replace the original should some or all of it be lost. Therefore, your backup will contain the same protected information as your primary data storage will. Ensuring your backups are protected by sufficient cybersecurity protections and are kept in a secure space is paramount.

Keep a Few Versions of Your Data

Nowadays, there is a trend for cybercriminals to show their hands early so they can rapidly secure a payout from their targets… but this isn’t always the case. While the rising prevalence of ransomware may lead to short discovery times, other threats are still out there that will lurk in a system for a while and cause damage over time. A backup will only do you any good if it hasn’t also backed up the aftereffects of such insidious attacks.

Unfortunately, keeping a sufficient backup will require a lot more strategy than simply copying a few files over to another drive. It can often be a complicated and (at least initially) time-consuming process. However, you shouldn’t let this keep you from making these essential preparations for your business’ wellbeing.

We can help. At SCW, we’re very familiar with the many considerations that go into a sufficient data backup solution and can help you to be sure that your business-critical information is always available to you. To learn more about the backup and disaster recovery services we offer, give us a call at (509) 534-1530 today.