Protecting business data is more important than ever. As businesses now deal with massive amounts of data and higher risk factors, enterprise backup and recovery are critical to protect that information.
According to a recent article from Enterprise Apps Today:
- 60% of businesses that suffer a data loss will close down within six months.
- Only 45% of businesses consider security budgets adequate.
- 96% of businesses do not back up their workstations
- Over 50% of businesses do not have a budget set aside to recover from data breaches.
- 93% of companies that experience a major data loss and do not have a plan for recovery will be out of business in one year.
What’s involved in data backup?
Data Backup and recovery are vendor-developed solutions that capture a point-in-time copy (backup) of an organization’s workloads in on-premises, hybrid, multi-cloud and SaaS environments. These solutions write the data to a secondary storage target to recover data in case of a loss.
Data backup solutions must be able to simplify data protection across complex enterprise environments. They must also ensure reliable recovery by protecting backup data against constantly evolving threats. They expedite and orchestrate data recovery responses to disaster and ransomware events.
Here are some important factors to keep in mind when selecting a technology partner to provide data backup:
Full-service Capabilities or Back-up as a Service
You’ll want to make sure you have full system and device backups for a quick recovery in the event of a data loss or similar event. All devices (including servers) should be backed daily, routers weekly, and network interface devices (NIDs) monthly.
Offline and Immutable Back Ups
Data Backup Assessment
Offline and immutable storage provides dependable protection against ransomware, natural disasters, outages, and more. This is especially critical now with ransomware being such a prevalent threat. In this backup environment, your data is is safer because it’s not vulnerable to virtual or physical tampering.
Before providing any backup services, there should be a data backup assessment of your network, infrastructure architecture, and related requirements. Assessment service includes developing a customized backup solution based on individual client needs. Pricing is typically set per TB of storage used.
Backup and Data Retention Frequency
The frequency of backups and duration of data retention services need to be flexible. Backup frequency is how often you create a copy of your data, which is usually on a different storage device or at a different location. The retention period is how long you keep the backup copies before deleting or overwriting them. Backup frequency and data retention can vary depending on the type, size, and importance of your data.
On-demand Data Backups
An “On demand backup” is a defined backup job without a schedule. Once the job is configured it will be provided in the job list. Whenever you want to execute an on demand data backup it can be done with one simple click of a button.
Hardware and Equipment
Your technology partner should review and ensure coverage is up-to-date on all CPU, memory, storage, and internet services original equipment manufacturer (OEM) warranties.
Reporting
Reports on backup services and results should be provided on a regular basis in a standard format.
Disaster Recovery
In the event of a hardware failure, human error, software malfunction, natural disaster, or computer virus “disaster” that makes client data inaccessible or unusable, you should immediately be provided data from the most recent backup.
Ready to Learn More?
If you have questions or want to learn more about the importance of data backup, visit our Backup as a Service page, read our blog post Six Benefits of Office365 Cloud Backup, or get in touch with us for a no-obligation consultation.