Data backup and recovery is a series of processes intended to create, store and retrieve copies of data in order to protect companies against the loss of that data.

Did you know that 39% of small and medium businesses don’t have an incident response plan?

There are numerous principles to consider when putting together a company data protection policy.

In essence, there are two key considerations:

  • Location
  • Data Classification

Not all data changes at the same rate, it is useful to consider this fact before selecting a backup type.

For the purposes of this article, let us assume all types of data are equally important. Keep reading to learn more about how you need to backup your data and what you can do before getting started.

Location Of Your Data

A 3-2-1 strategy is an approach to saving data that has at least three total copies of the data, two should be locally stored. These two copies should be on different mediums.

Your final data copy should be offsite. 

This way, you’re covering all your bases. 

Local Backup

Local backups are when data is stored and kept at the same location, usually, on an external hard drive, CD/ DVD or Network Attached Storage (NAS). 

Local backups provide protection from accidental mistakes or deletes. Having the data backups more easily accessible means they are easier to restore.

Offsite Backups

Keeping data at a different physical location from the source is known as an offsite backup. The backup is usually done locally at first but once the storage medium is brought to another location, it becomes an offsite backup.  

The staff could perhaps, take a backup hard drive home, to another office building or maybe even to a safety deposit box at the bank. Not only can data threats be software-based, but offsite backups offer extended protection against fire, theft and other natural disasters too.  

Cloud or Online Backup

These are backups that are set up to be ongoing, either running continuously or set frequently to storage space that is always connected.  

This type of backup does not involve human intervention to plug in drives and storage media for backups to run. It is commonplace nowadays to find this on offer as a subscription service. 

With the data centers usually being located away from the source being backed up and the data is sent from the source the natural disasters are mitigated.

Data Classification

Not all data is equally important, not all data is required to be always accessible. It is for this reason that many companies will have a hybrid of backup solutions. 

The more sensitive and private the data is the more resilient the backup and restore solution should be. 

Companies that spend some time classifying data and applying the correct backup type to that data will, without doubt, gain significant savings both from a cost of storage perspective and from the time to restore.

Types Of Data For Backup 

The last part of your backup journey is to simply return to the start, understand the types of data you house and how it needs to be backed up and protected. 

Once you have a full understanding of all the data that your company houses, internal and customer data, then you’ll be able to build a comprehensive solution to cover all your needs. 

The best thing to do though is to partner with a qualified, reliable, managed IT company to assist you with this process. Check out our website to learn more and contact us if you have any questions.