Tag Archives: Datto

Ten Disaster Recovery Statistics You Should Know

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): Businessman working on his laptop showing management of company data using cloud backup - concept of disaster recovery strategies

Have a clear disaster recovery plan for your organization.

Data loss is a serious problem that can have a devastating effect on businesses. In fact, data recovery statistics show that data loss can be extremely costly and time-consuming. Here are some of the most recent data recovery statistics that explore the reality of data loss.

  • Gartner found that 72 percent of organizations are not well-positioned with regard to disaster recovery capabilities, with 59 percent of respondents expecting budgetary increases for disaster recovery this year.
  • Companies without an effective disaster recovery plan stand to lose millions. According to Gartner, the average cost of IT downtime is $5,600 per minute (adding up to more than $300,000 per hour). For large organizations, that number tops half a million dollars.
  • Ransomware is a huge concern, and many people don’t realize that their disaster recovery plan may not work when they need it most. This adds significant risk to your ability to recover from ransomware if you are not prepared for the attack. In a recent study, IDC reported that 37 percent of companies worldwide were hit by ransomware in the previous 12 months. The average ransom paid was $250K, though some hackers asked for as much as 1M dollars.
  • Ninety-six percent of companies with a trusted backup and disaster recovery plan were able to survive ransomware attacks.
  • A disaster can strike at any time and without warning, so it is imperative that you have a plan in place to help your company recover quickly from these events. However, FEMA found that 20 percent of companies have no disaster recovery planning in place.
  • A report by the Ponemon Institute reveals that 93 percent of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster, filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. Fifty percent of businesses that found themselves without data management for this same time period filed for bankruptcy immediately.
  • Cloud backup can be an incredibly useful tool when it comes to data recovery. According to Statistica, as of 2019, 94 percent of the small-sized organizations who were surveyed worldwide claimed that they had used the cloud for data storage or backup.
  • A study by IBM on data recovery planning, including the cost and frequency of data breaches, showed a decrease in costs by more than 30 percent in organizations that embrace proactive recovery programs. The research shows that organizations who invest in automated disaster recovery have an operational edge over those without. They also maintain their business reputation and financial success, which is crucial for growth.
  • Disaster recovery planning is one of the most important aspects of protecting your business. But how often do you actually test your disaster recovery plan? A report by Statistica reveals that only 35 percent of respondents stated that their company tested its disaster recovery plan on a quarterly basis as of 2019.
  • A  report by UniTrends found that cloud-based Disaster Recovery-as-a-Software (DRaaS) will be used by 59 percent of businesses by 2021. Currently, 36 percent of businesses use this, and a further 23 percent plan to add the technology within the next year.

The above statistics are a wake-up call for many businesses. Having a well-designed and effectively maintained disaster recovery plan in place will substantially increase your ability to recover lost data, returning you back into normal operations as quickly with minimal business disruption.

SystemsNet is the trusted choice for complete network solutions. With almost 20 years in business, they’ve built a reputation as an industry leader and provide reliable services that meet your needs with tailored plans for any budget. Contact us for more information on our complete line of disaster recovery solutions for your business.

How Often Should You Take Backups?

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Backup files and data on internet with cloud storage technology that sync all online devices and computers with network connection, protection against loss, business person touch screen icon

We all get busy and backups is one of the last things on your mind, however its critical when disaster strikes

Backup recovery is something that every business should invest in. Not just because it’s a smart thing to do on every technical guide, but because disasters happen. Big disasters like floods and fire and ransomware along with little disasters like accidentally deleting a Client’s CRM entry. Even run of the mill software updates can corrupt all the data that your software supports. Backup recovery data makes sure that no matter what happens, you can roll back the clock a day, a week, or a month to the last time your data was complete.

But the functional question isn’t whether you should have backups, you should. The question is how often you should take those backups. What happens if your data is lost, and it’s been over a month of active project work and client data since your last backup? That’s an entire month of detailed work gone. On the other hand, you also don’t want to take backups of static assets so often that you fill your storage with identical archives.

So today, we’ve put together a quick rule-of-thumb guide on how often you should back up each type of your data.

Active Data – Continuous Version Control

The data you update every day should probably be backed up continuously. This is a special kind of backup known as version control, which not only takes ‘saves’ of your work but also tracks exactly when changes were made and who made them. Version control ensures that you can quickly and easily roll back any changes that don’t work, remove only the changes made by a specific person, restore versions that were completed minutes or hours ago if an ongoing project or client file is somehow damaged.

Continuous backups through version control give you the most fine-tuned ability to both edit things based on changes and to restore recent version after changes were made that did not ultimately pan out.

Ongoing Project Data – Twice a Day

Data that is updated as a result of an ongoing project may be more practical to uptdate once or twice a day. A database into which entries are added in chunks, for example, or an archive of paperwork for which only a few pages are added per day might be the type of data that you want backed up constantly, but not necessarily minute by minute.

Backups made once or twice a day ensure that your active files can always be restored to a very recent version, even if they are not the type of file that requires version control levels of detailed editing and constant tiny roll-backs.

Workstations and Hardware – Once a Week

Your workstations and hardware are often the hosts to a great deal of useful data, including the software and configurations that are loaded onto them. When you have a full backup of a device, you can reload it from a factory wipe or clone it onto a whole new device in a much shorter time than it would take to rebuild all the configurations, apps, and stored data files by hand. However, workstations and devices don’t change often or drastically enough to need to be backed up every single day.

Weekly is probably the most practical timeline for backing up devices, particularly if your team tends to store files locally and update their settings to streamline their work. A device backed up weekly can be quickly restored to it’s favored functioning state directly after a malware attack, update crash, or other general malfunctions that might require a restoration process.

Infrastructure and Settings – Once a Month

Finally, there are the big infrastructure backups. Your network and its configurations, for example, were not perfect for your business right out of the box. Your tech infrastructure and static company files were carefully built piece by piece and setting by setting until everything worked exactly the way it needs to for your business. It contains your tech stack, your network configurations, and all your security measures.

Backing your tech infrastructure and settings up monthly can ensure that even if you suffer a system-wide outage, physical disaster, or ransomware attack, you can bring the whole system back online. Even if you need all-new hardware to do it.

For more insights into smart IT management and data security, 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!