When was the last time you checked your backups?

We always get a number of different responses when we meet a potential new customer when we ask “When did you last do your backup and when was it last tested”.

Typical responses include:

“I don’t actually have an answer to either of those questions”
“Backups are a little ad-hoc”
“We backup to google drive/dropbox/the cloud”
“I don’t think we’ve ever tested our backups…they just work don’t they?”

Unfortunately, a lot of business large or small don’t think about their backups until their systems fail and they have a disaster.

Questions

There are a number of issues you need to be thinking about when you are looking at your backup procedures:

  1. How often are you backing up your data
  2. Where are you backing up your data to?
  3. Have you got your going data offsite?
  4. If you are backing up your files to the cloud from your desktop/laptop using Dropbox/Google Drive etc.
    1. How would you recover your data if your laptop and replicated files were infected?
    2. When was the last time you scanned your devices for viruses/malware/Trojans/malware?
    3. Are all staff educated about the risks of viewing and opening email attachments from unknown sources?
  5. Have you tested your backup recovery process to ensure that you can actually recover all your critical data in the event of an emergency?
  6. How long does the restore process take? (the time to test this isn’t during a system failure)

Answers

The best way to ensure your backups are up to the task and ready for a disaster scenario is to

  1. Ensure you are protected against threats that may cause the need to recover data.
  2. Run regular backups relevant to the type of backups medium you are using
    1. Tape rotation – Grandfather Father Son tape rotation
    2. Disk/cloud – snapshots of your data on a regular basis (from hourly to daily) that meets your recovery time objective
  3. Have in place a tried and tested disaster recovery process
  4. Ensure you backups are taken off site! We know the likelihood of a major disaster occurring and taking out all your onsite equipment as well as your backups are small, but how much is your business worth to you, and what would you do if it did?

Contact us to discuss your Backups Strategies and to help your implement a tried and trusted Backup and Disaster Recovery process

Backup Restore

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