The Importance of Backups for Your Business
In today’s digital age, businesses rely on computer systems and data storage to run their operations. As such, it’s crucial to have a backup system in place to ensure that critical data can be restored in the event of data loss or another negative incident. Immutable backups are especially helpful for businesses, as they are completely separate from a potentially impacted IT environment and cannot be changed. Hackers often target mutable (changeable) backups, leaving businesses with no means of recovering their data.
What are Backups?
Backups are copies of data stored on workstations or servers that can be used to restore missing files or data. Businesses should back up any critical data that’s essential to their operations to ensure that they can recover from any data loss incidents. When used as a noun, the term to use is “backup”. The activity of making copies is referred to by the verb phrase to “back up” or a person is “backing up” a system.
Looking at real-world examples, if you’re a design company that uses CAD software and CAD files, it’s crucial to keep those files backed up because they’re pivotal to your business. Another example is backing up QuickBooks databases to ensure that financial records are protected and can be restored if necessary. Other types of content to back up include:
- Business critical files and documents
- Customer and client data
- Email accounts and messages
- Website and database files
- Operating system and application settings
- Configuration files and system images
What Happens If You Don’t Back Up Your Data?
If data is not backed up, businesses are at risk of losing critical data and operations can grind to a halt. Common causes of lost data include:
- Cyberattacks
- Accidental deletions
- Hardware failures
- Natural disasters
There is no way to retrieve data lost if there is no available backup. Recovering deleted or encrypted files is almost impossible without a backup. In situations like these, businesses will have to rebuild their entire infrastructure, which can be time-consuming and costly.
Why Does Redundancy Matter?
Redundancy is the practice of having multiple layers of backup to safeguard businesses from any technical issues. Having multiple backups, such as a local backup and a cloud backup, provides redundancy and protects against data loss incidents. The 3-2-1-1 concept of backups describes this.
Implementing redundancy ensures that businesses have backup systems in place should one system fail. It adds an additional layer of protection and gives businesses more room for error, allowing them to recover from data loss incidents more quickly and efficiently.
Get Started
In summary, backing up your data is crucial for your business. Implementing a backup process does not take much time and money. Doing so protects your organization against data loss incidents.
Businesses should also consider implementing redundant backups to ensure that they have multiple layers protection. If IT leaders or company owners encounter difficulties in setting up backups or need a service provider to help with backups, Airiam is available to provide support and assistance. The solution we provide for fully managed backups is AirGapd™. Airiam is holding an upcoming webinar on the topic as well.
Protect your business’s critical data today by implementing a backup and redundancy system.
