In our last blog, we looked at how data can be recovered in the event a drive is damaged or inaccessible. Rather than trying to retrieve data after it has been lost, a more effective and safe way to preserve your data is to back it up regularly. If you’re a small business, knowing how to safely back up your data can seem overwhelming and confusing. These 5 simple tips can help you protect your valuable business and customer information with effective small business data backup.
Get Professional Guidance
Small business data backup can be a complex process. Your back-up needs to be more thorough and secure than a personal backup, but also engineered according to the needs of a small business, rather than a large one. This is why getting professional guidance from an IT consultant is essential. As most small businesses don’t have IT experts on staff, outsourcing your backup solutions to an IT consultant provides a cost-effective way to get expert backup solutions you may not be able to otherwise access, tailored to your unique small business needs.
Create A Backup Strategy
With your IT consultant, one of the first steps you need to take is developing a backup strategy. This allows you to choose the backup techniques and practices that will be most suitable and effective for your business. Your backup strategy should include both local backups for your servers and workstations, as well as offsite backups that keep your data secure if all your local sources are compromised. Within the strategy you create, you will utilize a number of different tools, practices and solutions to keep your data safe.
Choose Easy Backup Solutions
There are a number of different practices and techniques for backup, and each have different strengths and drawbacks.
- Direct Attached Storage uses external drives and media that are directly attached to devices and workstations
- Network Attached Storage uses storage connected directly to the server
- Online Storage such as cloud storage, or private cloud storage
- Offline Media like tapes, DVDs and Bluray.
The right choice for your business depends both on your security and recovery access needs, as well as what systems you can maintain. Ad hoc options such as direct attached storage are often forgotten about, meaning the right file backup isn’t there when you need it. It’s often better to implement easier to use or automated backup to ensure you have an up to date copy of data at all times.
Keep Your Business Data Backup Safe
Your backup strategy should be one that keeps your backed-up data safe. Your small business should diversify backups so that if one copy is compromised, you can still retrieve data. For example, real time synchronization can be great for keeping a copy of your files current, but it can also mean errors are immediately transferred into your backup as well. Having an IT consultant analyze your business needs and develop a custom combination of backup practices to keep your business covered is the safest option.
Implement Practices For Servers and Workstations
Diversifying business data backups is why many IT consultants implement practices at both the servers and the workstations. This is a smart technique that ensures copies of local files and folders of day to day work are kept up to date, as well as a backup of the full system. Choose an IT consultant that uses diverse practices to keep all important data covered.
Backing up your small business data can be complex, but it’s essential to back up correctly to protect your business information. Talk to your local professional IT consultant about finding the right backup solution for your small business.
