The Risks Of Not Backing Up Data
Just how prepared is your business in the event of an emergency?
In recent years, the threats of hacking and data theft have been widely discussed among IT professionals, as well as becoming a cause célèbre in the media. While businesses of all sizes have sought to improve their network security and reinforce existing firewalls, a less malicious (yet equally destructive) threat has been overlooked.
P.E.B.C.A.K.
Surveys have indicated that the majority of data loss is actually caused by human error. From deleting important files to accidentally destroying hardware humans are capable. Hard drives are prone to failure as they age, and other faulty components within a computer can corrupt or delete saved data. Information retained in one location is often referred to as a data silo, and the consequences of its loss can be shocking.
Be aware:
- Catastrophic data loss will force the majority of companies out of business within two years.
- 70% of businesses experiencing a major fire will cease trading within five years.
- 93% of companies that lose their data centers for at least ten days will go bankrupt within one year.
Emergency Preparedness
Data loss has the potential to bring down even well-established businesses. Yet a major survey in 2014 showed only a quarter of companies were prepared for data disasters. It’s probably fair to say that most of us give insufficient consideration to frequent data backups.
Just stop for a moment and consider what contingencies your company has in place:
What would you do after a fire, destructive virus or a power surge?
When were your email contacts last backed up?
How many copies of your accounting spreadsheets are in circulation?
How many days would it take to reinstate normal working conditions if your computer hard drive failed tomorrow?
These are sobering thoughts and it’s much better to be proactive in preparing for such a crisis than take action reactively.
Failsafe Procedures
However, having established the significant risks of not backing up data, it’s reassuring that there are easy (and relatively cost-effective) ways to ensure your firm is protected against disaster:
- Make regular offline backups.
Modern computers can export data rapidly via Thunderbolt (40Gbps), USB 3.1 (10Gbps) or FireWire (6Gbps). Transferring your company’s archives to an offline hard drive can be completed while you’re at lunch. - Back up to the cloud.
If your internet connection is fast enough for large uploads, regular backups to a file sharing platform like Dropbox will maintain a data resource. This cloud storage can be shared among multiple users, and accessed from anywhere. - Share files among multiple users.
Whether you’re using a collaborative file sharing package like Slack or a webmail account, placing data in the cloud can ensure backup files are always available – even if they’re not always the most up-to-date versions. - Use server mirroring.
This is a comparatively expensive option, but it means each network server has an identical mirror elsewhere. If the first server fails, the backup can immediately make a real-time copy of the data available. - Deploy clustering.
This was traditionally used for load balancing or parallel processing. Enabling several computers to work as one device is an increasingly popular way of making backups. You can simply harness the potential of existing hardware.