Backup Considerations (Part 1)

There would be few exceptions if I were to make the bold assertion that every business large or small relies, to greater or lesser extent, on the availability of the information they hold electronically on their computers or servers within company networks, workgroups, single PCs or based “in the cloud”. It wouldn’t be too much of a jump in imagination to foresee the possibility of your business losing this critical information to any number of potential hazards that prevail in the modern world of commerce; it’s well documented, you have heard of it happening…it is real. Whether its origin is a faulty piece of hardware or software, a grudge-bearing former employee, industrial espionage, extortion (such as ransomware) or some kid in his bedroom killing your server because they’re bored and they can, it’s all at risk and it’s all of the time from a veritable plethora of malignant entities or unfortunate and unforeseen circumstances. You might also say to yourself – yes all of these things happen but, because I am possessed of a modicum of common sense and a touch of business nous, massive and catastrophic loss of data is not happening on my watch and I have made provision for this either myself or with my IT department or external provider, to make backups. For anyone in this position, that’s not really the end of the story. Those who have not yet made provision still have an interesting journey to make and as likely as not they won’t worry about this until it’s too late to do something about it – it’s a tough lesson to learn. Let’s have a look at a few of the main points in ensuring our data framework has an acceptable level of resilience. There are a multitude of factors that once identified/defined all contribute toward the creation of a formalised data disaster recovery plan and one of the foremost of these is an absolute appreciation of what it would mean to your business were you to lose access or reference to some or all of the data that you have taken years to accumulate and structure – I mean just stop and think about it for a minute, what are the business implications? Disastrous, right? That’s the first fundamental step. You have to acknowledge the value of your unique data set, make provision to protect it and make it recoverable. You also have to acknowledge that this will not generate revenue for your company directly, but it is as much a part of the fabric of your business as you, your staff and your customers and worth taking very seriously indeed. In future posts we will explore this landscape in a bit more detail together and attempt to de-mystify and engage you in the process of building an effective data preservation strategy…