Ransomware attacks, human errors or hard drive failures – too many things can go wrong regarding digital data safety.
According to statistics, over 30% of PC users lost their data due to unexpected events at least once. Such loss can have detrimental effects on your business if you hold sensitive personal data and essential operational data of your enterprise.
An estimated 60% of companies that lose their data are likely to close down within six months after the disaster.
That’s precisely why having an intelligent data backup plan is not a luxury but a vital business necessity. Most small and medium companies rely on outsourced IT support to get digital management consulting and professional data backup solutions.
Hopefully, you still don’t know how the second one feels since an estimated 60% of businesses that lose their data are expected to close down within six months after the disaster.
That’s precisely why having an intelligent data backup plan is not a luxury but a vital business necessity. Most small and medium companies nowadays rely on outsourced IT support to provide thorough digital transformation consulting and professional data backup solutions.
Backup and disaster recovery are two different terms that go hand in hand. People sometimes refer to them as BDR. They both aim to recover disrupted business operations promptly.
Backing up your data means you create one or more copies of it in another location to protect it. In essence, you can restore backup data in case of software failure or accidental deletion.
A disaster recovery plan is a set of systematic actions that will give you access to your virtual workstation and ensure business continuity after:
- Natural disasters
- An unexpected outage
- A cyber-attack
- An equipment failure
- Others
Why are data backup, recovery and planning important for your business?
Lacking a business backup strategy and a good plan can result in unexpected data loss at any time. What would be the critical impacts of such an event?
This will result in the following things :
- Financial loss due to decrease in purchases, extended downtime, or total inability to maintain operation.
- Legal penalties due to data theft and GDPR concerns associated with it.
- Reputation issues due to corporate irrationality towards customer experience and data security. The smaller the business, the greater the consequences of a damaged public image.
- Data and process recovery will take longer than expected.
- Complete inability to retrieve some of the information.
The picture isn’t pretty. In all cases, you will lose time and money before you bring your business up and running again. According to statistics, the average cost of one-hour IT downtime equals £247,000.
That’s why it is very wise to plan and invest in a backup solution and a complete disaster recovery plan.
Key terms you must know
A good BDR strategy requires specific objectives in case of a disaster. If you plan to implement a BDR plan for your business, you need to know some key terms and abbreviations before that.
Such as :
- Business continuity – refers to the planning and ability to restore business operations and critical data in case of unplanned downtime or accidental deletion.
- Recovery time objective or RTO – how much time it will take you to restore business processes without any losses.
- Recovery point objective or RPO – how much data you are willing to lose in case of an outage.
- Backup window – the scheduled hours for running regular backups.
- Remote data backup – off-site backup (for example, backing up data from remote or home offices).
- Failover – a disaster recovery solution of moving your data and tasks, for instance, from one server to another.
- Failback – switching back to the primary system, part of disaster recovery solutions.
- Restore – when backup data is transferred back in the place of the original data.
- Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) – as the name suggests, somebody (a third party) provides disaster recovery services to you.
Prioritise apps, data and workloads for your BDR
Each business is specific in its niche and needs a different disaster recovery process. For example, an educational institution will prioritise something different from an online clothing shop.
As a business owner, it’s essential to rank and classify your workload, apps, and data, reflecting on their importance. If a natural disaster or an outage should occur, the backup or disaster recovery plans will work towards continuing the most business-critical processes.
Other steps in creating a data protection strategy
Other things to consider when creating disaster recovering strategies are what deployment options and technology you will choose in case of database corruption. You can choose from cloud-based or on-premises solutions. Both of them have their advantages and disadvantages. You can, of course, choose a hybrid approach.
On-premise backup infrastructure can be costly, but maybe you prefer it if your business is related to strict privacy and personal data regulations. Restoring data with such storage systems is an instant process.
The downside is that if a regional disaster occurred (such as a power outage, earthquake, etc.), it would compromise your entire data centre and disaster recovery strategy.
A cloud backup involves duplicating data and using cloud services to store it as a precaution. Cloud backups are based on cloud infrastructure storing all your data remotely. By choosing this method, you are independent of on-site problems, such as a flood, for example.
Cloud computing can expand with your business, offering scalability. The cons of cloud storage systems include bandwidth, speed and internet connectivity dependence. Deployment option technologies might include traditional tape, snapshot-based replication, continuous replication and others.
Don’t wait for a disaster to happen
Backup systems, data protection and disaster recovery plans are essential for businesses and organisations.
To retrieve lost data, restore the working process, and not permanently lose customers, you need the IT resources and tested disaster recovery plan in place beforehand. So how can the enterprise backup software provided by Network Fish protect your valuable data?
How can we help your business?
Network Fish will create, update or evaluate backup solutions and data management systems. We will design, deploy, and test a professional and secure disaster recovery strategy, transferring backup data and automatically offloading tasks.
We are ready to deliver a meaningful and thorough set of cloud backup solutions for small businesses in the UK and worldwide.
Microsoft Office 365 Backup: safe, intelligent, trustworthy
As of 2020, Microsoft Office 365 has about 140,000 monthly active users in the UK alone, primarily small and medium-sized companies. However, Microsoft’s End User Agreement doesn’t state they backup your data.
Following the Office 365 backup best practices, we offer you an end-to-end managed service that includes:
- Daily backup of your files, your progress, and your logs.
- Unlimited storage in a secured data centre based in the UK.
- Privately-owned cloud storage that guarantees intelligent diversification
- Complete data backup process tailored to your business needs, including provisioning, configuring, and monitoring.
SharePoint Backup
We will plan and implement a full SharePoint backup and restoration plan for your enterprise. The entire process will be guided and executed on our part – you will not have to install, manage, or monitor anything, ever.
Microsoft Teams Backup
Network Fish will safeguard your collaboration tool data so you can quickly re-access it after accidental deletion or data loss. Our SaaS backup service includes long-term retention for compliance or regulatory purposes.
Office 365 Email Backup
We will keep a copy of your email communication records updated daily. If anything happens to your Microsoft data centre, you can have everything back as it was.
Workstation Backup: from the user to the cloud
If your business requires you to store your data on a device rather than a platform, we will cover you with a full backup.
The business backup software provided by Network Fish will ensure swift recovery of all machine data, apps, and settings lost to ill-intentioned software, hardware malfunctions, theft or other disasters.
Server Backup: overcoming the disaster
You cannot predict an emergency. All you can do is prepare and plan to recover quickly – something we can help you with. Our disaster recovery solutions will help you quickly pull your business together after unexpected events: compromised servers, hardware malfunctions or sudden crashes.
Put simply: our enterprise server backup software will keep a copy of your files, tools, apps, and settings. You can have your server data back if your server gets compromised or malfunctions.
Why Us?
Network Fish is an IT solution provider with over two decades of experience in the market. Thousand of business owners rely on our backup and disaster recovery strategies. Our highly experienced IT engineers will handle your data reliably.
Our core belief is that mobility, collaboration, and security are the pillars of successful businesses and organisations. We believe that customer needs come first. That is why we go through the process in collaboration with you, tailoring your backup and recovery solution.
If you don’t want to expose your business to threats, reach out to us for professional guidance, service, and support. You will get three business data copies – on two different mediums and one copy off-site.
You can contact our sales and support teams easily. If you choose Network Fish, you will get quick, reliable and professional services.
Three copies, on two different mediums and one copy off site. Are you following this basic rule? Because backup is the only tool to save your business from disaster.