Your business data is a critical asset that deserves professional protection. You might never have thought of it that way, but imagine all your data – from customer records to your business’s financial information – was lost or published. If that would be a problem for you, it’s time to admit that your data is valuable and therefore worth protecting. You could be taking chances with sub-par backup, and we’d like to make the case for considering managed backups.
Your business runs on data
Small and medium-sized businesses like yours take many forms but create enormous value in the global economy. Without the data your business needs, from research to customer and supplier email addresses and phone numbers, product specifications, or any other information you use to operate, your organisation would be compromised. So, how do you ensure you can always access and use that data?
There are multiple ways to back your data up, including:
- Local backup on your network (such as servers, drives and USBs)
- Local backup appliance
- Cloud backup (including file sync and share)
- Tape-based backup
- Managed backup
All of these are designed to help your business survive events that can cause system outages or data unavailability or loss, such as:
- IT device failures
- Theft or loss of your IT devices
- Extreme weather or other events that limit access to sites (hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes, fires or COVID-19 restrictions)
- Data corruption issues
- Cyberattacks, such as hacks and ransomware
However, not all backups are created equal. Looking at each type of threat to your data you might come up against, we’ve shown how each backup mechanism stacks up.
How does your backup stack up?
Device failure
You rely on various critical IT devices, including servers, laptops, desktops and drives. However, IT equipment can fail for many different reasons, including overheating, fan or drive issues or firmware problems.
Backup impacts:
- If you’re using local-only backup, you may not be able to access your data
- Cloud backup may be difficult to restore to another device
- Managed backup restores your data easily and quickly to the device of your choice
IT theft
A common problem businesses face is device theft or loss — someone steals an employee’s laptop from a car or home, or a desktop gets lost during an office move.
You may not back up your data on every device, but you probably should.
Backup impacts:
- If the data isn’t backed up, you’ll lose it forever
- If the data is backed up, managed backup can restore that data to another device quickly,
getting your employee back on the job
Data corruption issues
Not all data is equally valuable. You rely on customers and other databases and probably back those up regularly. But what happens if a software application crashes and that critical data gets corrupted?
Backup impacts:
- Local-only backups may not be able to roll back time, making it hard to access an earlier version of your uncorrupted data
- Managed backup can allow you to restore access with minimal disruption
Extreme weather and natural disasters
Sometimes, we are subject to disruption due to weather and other events, whether it’s an office flooding or a server catching fire. During the pandemic, COVID-19 restrictions also kept employees and IT teams out of offices and sites.
Backup impacts:
- If you experience extreme weather or other events, you may not be able to access the data from onsite devices, and local-only backup won’t help.
- If you have managed backup, you can restore that data to the device of your choice.
Ransomware attack
Small and medium-sized businesses are increasingly targeted in ransomware attacks, as their security is typically less mature than bigger enterprises.
Backup impacts:
- If you’re using a local-only backup product, it will likely be infected by the ransomware attack and be totally unusable.
- Cloud backup will restore your data, but it may be a day old, meaning you lose a day’s worth of work, transactions or other data. You’ll also need to make sure you back up all your devices.
- Managed backup can back up your data several times a day, providing you with fast and easy access to your current work.
Why get managed backup?
In case you’re not yet convinced, let’s summarise the above: Only managed backup services will protect you from issues such as IT device failures, theft or loss of your IT devices, extreme weather or other events that limit access to your offices or sites, data corruption issues and cyberattacks, such as ransomware
Doing DIY backup with servers, USB drives or the cloud may work for a while, but over time it could expose you to issues that could harm your business.
With Numata Managed Backups you can quickly restore your data, keeping your business up and running, minimising downtime and protecting you against data loss.
