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Backup Disaster Recovery (BDR) Plan: Preparing For A New Year

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Businessman hand using laptop with backup disaster recovery concept

Reviewing your disaster recovery plan is critical in keeping your network up and running.

Every business needs to be properly prepared for anything these days, including disasters. There will be plenty on the line for your business if a disaster strikes. If a disaster does strike, you could lose sensitive data that you may not be able to get back. If a disaster does strike, will your business be ready to handle a data loss incident?

People from all parts of the world have made their resolution as the new year was set to begin. One of the best ways your business can enter into the new year is to have an effective and efficient Backup and Disaster Recovery(BDR) plan that will greatly minimize any downtime and keep your business safe from any events that you cannot control. We want to help you create a BDR plan that will meet all of your business’s needs.

An Effective BDR Plan

Many small business owners do not always understand how valuable their business data is, but it is a very valuable asset to the business. This is why it is so important that you are able to protect your business data at all times. One of the best ways to do this is to find a BDR solution that will provide you with the tools and resources you need to restore your data. In addition, all of your data will not be created equally. You will find that some of your data will have a high value and others will not. If you want to build an effective strategy that will protect your business from any unfortunate data loss, we recommend that you sort through your data so you can determine what data you will need at all times and what data may not be as useful as the others.

Improving Your BDR This Year

We know that everyone wants to strive for better each year, and it should be no different when you have a business. Implementing an effective Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan this year is a great way for your business to improve this year. We know it can seem like a daunting task when it is time to implement the strategies that fit your business, but we recommend that you try some of the following guidelines and suggestions:

  • Make sure you are communicating with your IT team to plan the right recovery strategy for your business. You will need to have a plan that will fully outline your goals, missions, and objectives.

 

  • Find the right Backup and Disaster Recovery(BDR) platform that will give you every opportunity to back up your data without having long wait times and downtimes.

 

  • When you find the right platform and implement your platform, we encourage you to test your backup on a regular basis. When you regularly test your backup plan, you will be able to determine its efficiency and effectiveness. With a regular test, you will have the assurance you need in knowing that your BDR plan will be ready to roll when you need it.

Every year, small businesses, mid-size businesses, and large businesses are hit with threats, malware attacks, viruses, natural disasters, and more. Also, some businesses lose data due to a human mistake. Unfortunately, many of these businesses do not have the proper Backup and Disaster Recovery(BDR) plan, which will result in a significant amount of downtime as the business tries to recover its data.

We know the new year has just started and you have so many things on your plate already, but we encourage you to make room for BDR. We want to make sure your business’s data is available at all times, even when disaster strikes. For more information on our Backup and Disaster Recovery(BDR) solutions, please do not hesitate to contact us today.

Six Ways Backups and Data Recovery Can Save Your Business (Part 2)

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Data recovery on keyboard

Your business deserves a life line

Welcome back to the second half of our two-part article on backups and data recovery as an incredibly versatile set of solutions. The beauty of building a layered and comprehensive set of backups with smooth recovery procedures is the ability to recover from almost any setback that even remotely relates to your files. Last time we talked about a few of the often unconsidered risks to your files like failed software updates, failed services, and employee mistakes. These less flashy but far more common risks can put any file system at risk if there’s no way to restore mistakes and failed processes. Backups allow you to restore files back to a previous whole and working state. Automated backups can also help you track down exactly when and why a file corrupted or was changed. Let’s pick up where we left off at how backups can be used to quickly recover from and completely shrug off ransomware attacks.

4. Ransomware Attacks
The current generation of hackers have a personal favorite form of attack that not only ruins your day but also has a chance of getting them paid. You’ve probably heard of ransomware in the recent news because it has been used to terrorize a large section of the computer-using population world-wide. While the exact programs evolve like the yearly flu, the method involves infecting your network, maliciously encrypting every file, then demanding ransom payment in crypto-currency. Rather than paying them or losing your files, you can simply wipe the network and implement your data recovery procedures from a recent complete backup. This method also works for almost any other kind of malicious virus, spyware, Trojan, or malware attack.

5. Programming Errors
When programmers and the IT department make mistakes, the consequences often have a much greater effect than the mistakes of a single employee on their personal system. In many cases, a change to the way the company network or proprietary programs work can cause an error left undetected for days or weeks at a time. Here is where having a collection of regular backups is incredibly helpful. No matter how far back the error was made, a good data recovery system can restore the system to its pristine state before the oversight, allowing your team to fix the problem without a massive loss of data.

6. Device Failure
No matter how convenient remote servers and huge hard drives are, there is one final fact about computing that many people forget. Computers are physical objects and data is stored on disks that can break, fry, melt, warp, scratch, or otherwise become unreadable and unusable. While there are extensive recovery procedures that can sometimes extract data from dead equipment, you can be back to work almost instantly by loading a recent backup onto a new machine and reinstalling it into the company network in the old computer’s place.
The data used, processed, and stored by your company is important for continued functioning and any loss of data can set you back by days, months, or even permanently depending on the value and replicability of the data. Fortunately, there’s no need to risk losing your valuable digital assets, because even software installations and settings configurations can be saved. With a complete data recovery plan, you can restore a single document from backup or reinstall an entire computer after a malware attack, and clone a computer with all its data for new team members. Cloud-hosted backups are an important part of a comprehensive business continuity plan as they can be used both for asynchronous disaster recovery and for hot-loading a second environment while the first is repaired.

For more information on backups and cybersecurity, contact us today!

Six Ways Backups and Data Recovery Can Save Your Business (Part 1)

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Backups and Data Recovery concept on laptop with business man drinking coffee

Having a plan is crucial to business survival

Data loss in the business world is not something to take lightly. Whether you save things on the cloud, on local company servers, or in personal devices, data is everything to a modern business. Every company has an impressive number of files to defend ranging from your own financial records to the regulation-protected personal information of your clients. Working with computers makes this vital data easy to collect, store, manage, and analyze but it also makes it more accessible and easier to destroy than paper documents. Fortunately, you can make sure your data is safe from both mistakes and attacks the same way you would with paperwork: with backups. When considering your backup and data recovery plan, it may help to think about all the things you might have to recover from. Your business needs a comprehensive business continuity plan is ideal and cloud-hosted backups are an important part of any contingency plan because they can help your business recover and survive through different kinds of disaster.

1. Failed Software Updates

Most businesses use some combination of business management software through which they run almost all internal data. An ERP to manage your assets and inventory, a CRM to store and track all your client and sales data, and your finance department’s preference of economic software all hold vital proprietary and personal information that is necessary for the company to continue functioning. You rely on this software to store your data and make sure to update regularly. However, sometimes an update goes sideways, causing partial or complete corruption of the data stored by the program. Instead of trying desperately to piece together the garbled database entries, a backup can simply bring back the program and all its data to its pre-updated state.

2. Loss of Service

Does your business rely on B2B SaaS services? If so, consider how much are you trusting them to keep important company data safe. Even if they are entirely reliable and trustworthy business partners, it’s a risk to put the responsibility for your data security on anyone else because you never know when the other company might face some massive interruption of service or loss of the data they store. While their services may be incredibly valuable to you, make sure that any important data being stored by another company is also backed up somewhere safe that you have control over. This way, if you suddenly lose access to your B2B services, your company can access its data and serve its own needs until your business partner gets back on their feet.

3. Your Own Mistakes

No long-term computer user has gone through the years completely mistake-free. We’ve all typed something in incorrectly, mis-clicked a menu-button, and slipped up right before an auto-save. Many of us have accidentally hit ‘save’ at the wrong moment or inadvertently copy-pasted over something that does not have an ‘undo’ function. In that moment of panic as you realize that important data has been permanently altered in error, having a complete recent backup is a huge relief. With a comprehensive data recovery system, you can quickly access the file you accidentally altered and be back to work in minutes instead of scrambling for a way to revert your changes.

A good backup and recovery plan is an incredibly important aspect of modern business. Everything from minor employee mistakes to hacker-inflicted destruction can be quickly and smoothly recovered from with the right layered backups and practiced recovery plans. Of course, this is only the first half of our two-part article. Join us for part two next time and we’ll talk about how backups can also help you in the face of ransomware, bugs, and device failures! For more information about how to build the right backups infrastructure for your business, contact us today!

Archives are Great, Backups are Better (Part 2)

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