This blog post was updated on September 23, 2024
It was originally published on September 1, 2018
You see the term “Strategy” and may exclaim “not this again!”. But don't worry—creating an effective backup plan for your business doesn't have to be complex. In just a few minutes, this blog post will equip you with the insights you need to build an effective yet straightforward data backup strategy.
Before we begin, let’s quickly cover the basics…
What is a strategy?
A strategy is simply a plan that outlines how to achieve a goal using your available resources. In this case, the goal is an effective data backup and recovery solution. A backup and recovery strategy will involve setting the backup goals, determining the actions required to achieve those goals, and how the available resources will be utilized to carry out those actions.
Alright, so the next logical question that comes is:
Why do I need a strategy?
As a business owner, your resources are limited, so it's essential to allocate them wisely. While backing up everything in multiple locations sounds ideal, it's rarely practical. A well-documented backup strategy helps you prioritize resources, ensuring critical data is protected and providing a reference point in emergencies. Over time, this strategy can evolve into a best practice that adapts to your changing business needs.
With the basics of strategy covered, let's dive into what really matters: data backup and recovery. In the following sections, we'll address the most common questions businesses face when developing an effective backup plan
2. Why Does a Small Business Need a Backup and Recovery Plan?
Imagine running your business without a backup and recovery plan. What would happen if a disaster struck? Natural events like fires, floods, and earthquakes, though rare, can occur unexpectedly. While insurance may cover the loss of physical assets, your data—arguably one of your most valuable resources—would be gone. How would you restore your business to its current operational state without access to your data? Could your business survive the loss of critical customer records, financial information, or operational files?
Even if natural disasters seem distant, cyber threats like ransomware are a growing menace. In a ransomware attack, your data can be encrypted and held hostage, leaving you locked out of crucial systems and files. For a small business, this could be catastrophic. Beyond the immediate financial hit, the long-term damage to your reputation could be even worse. Customers trust you to keep their information safe, and a breach of that trust can cause irreversible harm, leading them to take their business elsewhere.
Without a solid backup and recovery strategy in place, your ability to bounce back from these scenarios is significantly weakened. Having a plan ensures that your business is prepared for unexpected disruptions, allowing you to restore operations quickly and maintain customer confidence. In today’s digital world, where data is the backbone of nearly every operation, being proactive is not just wise—it’s essential.
3. My Computer Data is Synced with the Cloud—Do I Still Need a Backup Plan?
Syncing your computer files to the cloud is a great way to protect your data, and services like Google Drive or Dropbox have made this process seamless. However, syncing files to the cloud doesn’t always mean you’re fully covered. Typically, these services only back up files that are manually synced, which leaves many critical elements of your system, such as operating system files, application settings, and non-synced local files (e.g. desktop items), vulnerable.
Additionally, what about your employees? Are they consistently backing up critical business data? Without a standardized backup process, important data could easily be missed. Relying solely on cloud syncing can create blind spots.
Another common issue is file size. Cloud services may struggle to handle large files efficiently, resulting in delays or incomplete backups. In cases where larger files are essential to your operations, relying on the cloud alone may leave gaps in your protection. Do you have a secondary backup solution for such situations?
4. What Do I Need to Back Up?
In an ideal world, you’d back up everything. The goal of any backup and recovery strategy is to ensure you can restore your business to its current working state after data loss.
If your business uses physical servers, backing up entire systems is crucial. These servers often host vital components like email, company data, and virtual machines, all of which are integral to business operations. With the right plan, this process is manageable even for small businesses. If backing up everything isn’t feasible, prioritize critical servers and systems to ensure your business can at least function at a basic level in the event of a disaster.
For businesses running on cloud infrastructure, you're a step ahead of those with on-premises servers. Cloud services like G Suite, Office 365, and Dropbox offer high availability and near 100% uptime, which helps safeguard your data during disasters. However, you’re not entirely in the clear. Cloud systems are still vulnerable to accidental file deletions, rogue employees, and even ransomware attacks. That’s why it's important to use cloud backup solutions like Spanning or Backupify. These services provide an extra layer of protection by ensuring that not just your files but also your settings and cloud systems are backed up regularly.
5. What Kind of Backup Should I Use?
There are three main types of backup:
Each method has distinct advantages and drawbacks. With on-premises backup, while you maintain complete control and quick access, the backup is at risk if a disaster (fire, flood, etc.) strikes your physical location. Conversely, cloud backup offers remote storage that protects against local disasters, but if you lose internet connectivity or the cloud service experiences downtime, accessing your backup could become difficult.
That’s where the hybrid approach becomes valuable. By combining on-premises and cloud backups, you add a second layer of protection. This dual strategy ensures that if one system fails, you have a fallback option, increasing your chances of recovery after a disaster.
6. Setting Backup Goals
When setting up your backup strategy, one crucial step is defining your backup goals. Think about whether your priority is restoration, recovery, or maintaining continuous service during and after a disaster. These needs vary depending on your business and service offerings. For instance, if downtime severely impacts customer expectations, you'll need a backup plan that ensures rapid recovery. Defining your backup goals will help tailor your strategy to meet both business needs and customer demands.
7. What Am I Protecting Against?
To create an effective backup and recovery strategy, it’s essential to know what risks you are safeguarding against. Some common examples include:
Data loss (e.g., accidental deletion or corruption)
System failure (hardware or software malfunction)
Application failure (losing key business apps)
Loss of physical location (due to disasters)
Business operation disruptions (loss of critical services)
Understanding these potential threats allows you to choose the right backup approach, whether it’s restricting access to critical folders, creating a full system image backup, or both.
How to Handle Data Recovery
A robust backup strategy is only as good as its recovery plan. When planning data recovery, two important questions arise:
How long can the recovery process take before it seriously impacts your business operations?
What needs to be restored first?
The acceptable recovery time, known as your Recovery Time Objective (RTO), will determine the type of backup you need. Systems with shorter RTOs may require more frequent backups or redundancy to minimize downtime. Identifying critical systems and prioritizing their recovery is essential for mitigating the impact of disasters. For example, if your business depends heavily on certain applications, you may need to restore those systems first to resume operations quickly.
By answering these questions, you’ll be able to create a recovery plan that meets your business’s specific needs, ensuring minimal disruption and a faster return to normal operations.
Conclusions
Most of us have experienced the frustration of losing a device at some point in our lives, along with the irreplaceable data it contained. While losing personal data is painful, we often recover, and eventually, it becomes a story we tell with a hint of humor. However, when data loss affects your business, the consequences are far more severe. A single incident can grind your operations to a halt, leading to devastating and long-term repercussions.
When you step back and assess the risks, it becomes clear that investing in a backup and recovery plan is not just prudent—it’s essential. A well-crafted backup and recovery plan forms a crucial pillar of any robust IT strategy. It safeguards against unforeseen disasters such as ransomware attacks, viruses, hardware failure, or even natural disasters.
By minimizing downtime, a comprehensive plan ensures your business remains operational and productive, even in the worst-case scenarios. The time and resources spent building a reliable and efficient backup system are a small price to pay compared to the potential costs of losing critical data and business continuity. Ultimately, such a plan provides not just peace of mind but also a lifeline to keep your business resilient and thriving in the face of adversity.
