Backup & Recovery

How Often Should you backup up your data?

This is a question we get asked often, and we always ask right back: "How much data are you willing to lose?".

Backups are done in times increments, so ask yourself: if 15 minutes' worth of data suddenly disappeared, 1 day's worth or a week's worth, what impact would that have on your business?

Different types of businesses would have different reactions to this especially businesses whose backbone is defined by their data, which could be updated on a minute-by-minute basis (ie. financial businesses).

Now consider how much time you want to spend getting it all back. Let's say your device sadly turns into an expensive paperweight, or your hard drive fails and all the data is impossible/ difficult to recover, so you revert to your backup 15 minutes ago, however it takes an hour of man-hours to that back, so your downtime would be 1 hour and 15 minutes.

This is why it's important to have a robust disaster recovery plan.

Storage

Storing your data is as important as backing it up. You need to ensure you have the right amount of storage available otherwise you could be thinking you're well covered, disaster suddenly strikes, and you only have data from 6 months ago because your storage solution was inadequate.

Different types of Backups

The two main types of data backups go as follows:

• Full Backups - This would mean that you would have a complete copy of all data available. This would mean a minimal RTO (downtimes) however, a full backup would take longer and require more storage space.
• Incremental Backups - This would mean that it would only backup the changes since the last backup. It also means that it can run as often as needed, and a lot less storage is required.

Different ways of storing the backups

Backups can be stored two different ways, which one you prefer depends on you and your business. They are:

• Cloud - This requires a monthly fee for your data to be hosted
• Local - You own all the storage that your data gets backed up to you pay a larger upfront cost, and the cost of running (this includes the expertise to manage it), but it's something that you own completely.

What's better? There isn't really a "better", it really comes down to what suits you and your business, as well as an element of personal preference. At the end of they day, your data is being backed up, and that's the important part.

However, with cloud, you'll need a constant, quite high quality, broadband connection to make the backups, especially if you decide to do full backups. But you don't need to manage it with a professional, google or Microsoft has plenty of those! You'll also need to change subscriptions and plans should the size and data demands of your business change.

Local is best if you have a business with access to IT expertise in this area and you prefer your data being held locally.

How Backing up data can make your Business Resilient to Cyber Attacks

Crypto-Lockers, or ransomware in general, typically involves making your data impossible to retrieve by encrypting your disk. The way to unencrypt your disk, the attacker will say, is to pay a ransom.There's no guarantee of course that they will uphold their end of the bargain and payments can just lead to further extortion. More and more companies are publically adopting a "never pay" policy regarding ransomware. Not only does this decrease the chances of being targeted, it also demonstrates a level of data-backup that the companies have. If, for some reason, the company were to be victimised by ransomware despite their committal to never paying, they could simply isolate the incident when the software was installed, and revert back to before the incident.