An individual, a small business or a larger corporate organization, all of us have data. It may be cherished photographs from your 16th birthday or the contact details of your first-ever customer or your employee names or your company’s registration details or even the list of your product prices. From storing these data on piles of papers, we’ve moved to a better and efficient way of digital storage. But the risk of losing the data still exists. And Data Backup is crucial.
Humby coined the phrase ‘Data is the new oil’ and we can’t agree more. Data is indeed a valuable entity that drives profitable activity. So losing data (without a data backup) means more than just losing money or customers, it means losing value.
If you think your data is safe in the hands of your devices, you ought to rethink your belief. Why?
Reasons To Have Data Backup #1 – Technology Fails
We’ve embraced technology over the last two decades and now, almost all businesses are dependent on digital devices while being paper-free. Along with digital storage, we must also learn to embrace data backup.
Most of your business data must be stored somewhere you think is safe on your computer. Have you considered the possibility of cyber-attack and ransomware? Probably not. Ransomware attacks have grown by 350% in recent years. Losing your digital data is as probable as spilling a mug of coffee on your business papers.
Moreover, your desktop computer, your laptop or your hard disk don’t last forever. They can crash, they can stop working or they can suffer power surges.
Reasons To Have Data Backup #2 – Human Error
We’re not all perfect. We make mistakes. We, including your employees, are human and make human errors. Your finger might hit the delete button by mistake or you may accidentally enter the wrong data.
There are chances you might leave your laptop in a public place or it can be stolen during your commute to work. Most studies put the data loss rate due to human error at around 25%. The good thing is that these errors can be reversed with data backup.
More than 20% of businesses that suffer data loss lose customers as well. The threat of losing your business data is always rising. Having a data backup and recovery solution in place is more important now than ever.
Reasons To Have Data Backup #3 – Physical Disasters
Just like how humans are not perfect, our mother nature is unpredictable as well. Natural disasters, fire breakouts, extreme heating and electrical faults can happen anytime anywhere.
This will ultimately lead to data loss if you don’t have a data backup plan. Trying to resume your business operations without any data can be another disaster itself. Among businesses that suffer attacks or breaches, nearly a quarter of them lose significant business opportunities following the data loss.
Having cloud storage solutions for data backup resolves all data loss worries. It also gives your business a competitive advantage over the rest as you can access and manage your data from anywhere.
Data Backup Solutions For Your Business
More than half of businesses that are victims of a cyber-attack or data breach suffer losses in brand reputation, customer loyalty, and customer trust. Luckily, some solutions protect your data from being at risk.
1) Local Data Backup
If your team uses desktops or laptops, ensure they keep another copy of business data locally (hard drives, tape drives, USB flash drives or external drives). This ensures that data backups are available locally when you need them. However, this must not be your only data backup plan.
2) Online File Storage
After the worldwide lockdown, your business must have gotten used to the ways of the Internet. There are storage and sharing services available online like Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive to mention a few.
Online file storing/sharing services are great when you have a limited amount of data as these services come with storage restrictions. These services are safer than local backup or no data backup. Although they are limited in terms of file versioning and lack automated backups.
3) Cloud Storage
Cloud storage backup works in a way that you can store as many copies of your data as you need. Your data will be stored in a cloud-based server, which is an offsite safe and secure location. It can be accessed via the Internet and offers a tremendous amount of security to your data.
The 3-2-1 Data Backup Rule
The cloud allows you to keep multiple data backups effectively. The 3-2-1 rule states that you should have 3 copies of your data all the time. You must keep it backed up on at least 2 different types of storage and have at least 1 copy of the data offsite.
Data backup isn’t an option. Protecting your business data and information is a must in today’s day and age where data loss breaches are common. The amount of data your business stores will continue to grow and sadly, so will the chances of data loss. Keep multiple backups, choose physical backups and cloud backups, be armed to fight any data loss thrown at your business.
