Should SMEs spend on Data Backups?

Since Data is fundamental to the operation of the business, losing it can have severe implications and can potentially ruin your business. Imagine that one simple cup of coffee spilled on your laptop can destroy the whole database of business contacts, sales records or projects you’ve been working so hard on… if that is the only place you store your data.

The large companies invest heavily in protecting their data by backing it up, using a variety of products and technologies. But how well protected is the data of small and medium-sized companies?

The numerous researches show that most of small to medium businesses even though they realise the potential threat of data loss, don’t do enough to protect themselves against it.

When it comes to day-to-day backups, most business owners look for a “set it and forget it” system that will allow them to get on with the running of the business. As a result, they often hand their data to a “trusted” IT supplier without questioning what they will do with it, how it will be stored and whether it will be retrievable when it is needed the most. Many business owners will not even know whether they have a backup system in place and, if they do, how well it protects them. Some had never tested whether they could retrieve all the information held on their backups.

So when you run a small or medium business and can’t afford wasting money how do you strike a balance between absolute security, peace-of-mind and avoiding the cost and hassle?

The good idea is to start with planning a backup strategy. There are a few questions to consider which will determine the plan.

1. What needs to be backed up? As a first step, decide what the “critical data” is and what you are obliged to keep. For most companies this includes emails, customer data and financial data which should be backed up every day and must be recoverable.
2. Once you know what requires backing up, you’ll need to determine the systems and hosts where it’s located and what type of data it is.
3. How often does it need to be backed up? This depends on how often data is updated and how critical it is for the business.
4. How long should data be stored?
* For data files that change frequently, only the most recent files are worth keeping. As the previous data becomes obsolete, you can overwrite and reuse the tapes.
* For the full set of files on your system, you should store the files in a secure, off-site location. By having this complete file set, you can recover the entire system in case a disaster destroys the originals.
* For certain types of data (tax records, contracts, personnel files, patient records, and so on), you may need to archive data for a specified time period to meet specific legal and audit requirements.
5. Does data need to be stored in more than one place? If there was a flood, fire or power outage at the primary storage site, should your data be safely stored at a second location to ensure no downtime?
6. What kind of security the data requires? Should it be encrypted?

By ranking the importance of your data and eliminating the unnecessary data from the backup efforts, you can save storage space and cost of your solutions.

The next step is finding the backup techniques and technologies that best align with the business needs and that automate as much of your backup efforts as possible. For instance, it may be worthwhile to consolidate data on fewer servers to reduce backup management efforts. You may benefit from using backup/recovery solutions that are bundled with a storage appliance. Or perhaps you should opt to outsource backups entirely. Consult with an expert if you don’t understand this process.

Two most common approaches are online backup and traditional tapes backup. Most of businesses in the UK are still using tapes backup. It is cheaper, it could be fully automated and run in-house. And providing that best practices and security polices are followed (that you don’t write backup on the same tape for years and store it under your desk) it is rather reliable.

But any method is only good if it gives you complete and fast data recovery.

When choosing backup provider the most important is to make sure you will get reliable customer services. Would you actually be able to speak to someone in the middle of the night if you needed a lost file restored from a tape immediately? If you need to retrieve large volumes of data, stored off-site, your backup provider might need to physically ship data to you. How long that takes can cost you a lot in money and lost business. Online backup generally provides faster recovery.

If you decide to choose online provider, consider reliability of the company, research their clients and their experiences. How good is their online support, and mostly important how are they dealing with security issues. Since the data being backed up is sensitive, (why else would anybody bother to back it up?..) it must be well protected.

Play it safe
Losing data is a risk we all take when we rely on technology. But the loss of data doesn't have to mean catastrophe. With a bit of preparation and foresight, if disaster happens, you can have your precious data back and keep running…