Keep Your Business Afloat: Back Up Your System

March 31 is World Backup Day. Are you ready to secure your business with a backup and disaster recovery plan? If not, you’ve got some work to do. Data loss is becoming one of the biggest and most costly expenses companies face in the digital marketplace, and it’s only getting worse as the connected business world grows. World Backup Day might seem like a silly concept, but it’s important that businesses of all sizes, in all sectors, start paying attention.

What Causes Data Loss?

Contrary to what many people think, data loss isn’t always caused by cybercriminals in faraway places. The most likely culprit is in your own office — your employees. Every business using technology is at risk today. And taking chances on data loss in today’s market is simply reckless, especially because there are numerous options available to back it up.

What to Back Up

Consider everything that’s critical to your business. As a consumer, you know the heartbreak of losing your phone and saying goodbye to priceless photos that were never backed up on the cloud. The same goes for any business information that would be difficult or costly to replace, including software, contracts, customer information, analytics, historical data or any other documents that your company needs to keep to remain compliant in your industry. Taking the extra time to back up regularly will save you tons of time and money — not to mention legal issues — down the road.

Create a Reliable Backup System

The best backup plans don’t just include one backup; they include at least two for extra fail safety. That could mean storing one version of your data on the cloud and an extra version on an external device or data center. Breaches happen — the best way to minimize their impact is to maximize preparedness on the front end.

• Create a Schedule: Maintain a consistent schedule for backing up your system, and stick to it. Missing one day might not seem like a big deal, but it is if that’s the day your system gets breached.
• Make a List: You may not need to back up everything in your entire network. Make a list of business-critical systems and data, and make sure they’re all covered in the process.
• Revisit: The data that was most important to you a year ago may not be the most important information today. Be sure to revisit your backup and recovery process to ensure your coverage is up to date in terms of protecting today’s most critical components.
• Test: Don’t just trust that your backup system is working. Test it to make sure. Then test it again.
• Ensure Scalability: Make sure your provider can grow along with your business and offers a flexible service agreement for added or decreased storage.
• Know the Regulations in Your Industry: Every industry is different. Be sure to adhere to the compliance rules in your sector, maintaining all required records as long as necessary. After all, the only thing worse than losing data is getting hit with a compliance fine along with it.

With a wide range of cloud-based as-a-service providers, it’s never been easier to keep your data backed up and safe. And you don’t have to wait until World Backup Day to do it.

This post was brought to you by IBM Global Technology Services. For more content like this, visit IT Biz Advisor.