World Backup Day is March 31st. Only 15% of organizations back up data multiple times a day. Depending on your organization’s needs, this could be a problem. Furthermore, many organizations do not have a plan or proper management for their backup. Read on to learn more about backup and what it can look like for your organization from a backup and storage expert.
Why Backup?
It is important to keep your data protected, and having a backup copy of it is essential. If you have a storage issue, backing up information can be the difference between staying in business and closing for many organizations, such as those in regulated industries, or where information is essential to business operations. Cyberthreats are another big reason to keep your data backed up – malware increased 358% in 2020. If your organization is hit with an attack, it can take some of the burden off of you if your stolen information has an additional copy.
Determine – What is good backup to your organization?
Bailey recommends that management define how long your organization needs to keep data (whether according to compliance or to what your business decides it needs). Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to keep data as long as you think; storing 10 years worth of data may be too expensive and difficult to manage depending on how much is kept, for example.
It is important to discuss the pros and cons of keeping your data for a defined amount of years, including the cost, how often you will need access to the backup of your data, and how frequent your backups should be. If you are a healthcare organization, or a financial institution, for example, backing up multiple times a day likely makes sense, as you are harboring highly sensitive information that would cause major problems for your business and clients if you lost access. Other organizations with less sensitive information may only need to backup once a day, especially if they do not have compliance regulations they need to follow like those in the healthcare and financial verticals.
It is also essential, Bailey notes, to understand that Disaster Recovery and backup are not the same. Disaster recovery is a specific plan for disasters only, whereas backup is an important element of your overall storage strategy.
BaaS – Backup as a Service
Backup as a Service is a general term, but what it comes down to is leveraging a company to manage backup and potentially control costs.
BaaS fits into the 3 2 1 of data protection, a best practices or guideline for keeping data safe:
- 3 copies of data (production copy, local backup, backup somewhere else, ie the cloud)
- 2 store data on 2 types of media (if you have an issue with one kind of media, you have another kind available to access your data)
- 1 offsite copy (of your data, so that if an on-site issue occurs you have a backup).
“The idea of the 3 2 1 of data protection is to eliminate single points of failure,” Bailey explains.
The “1” of the 3 2 1 can be difficult to implement for some businesses, however. Having an offsite copy, especially for small and medium sized businesses, can be hard to set up and manage. BaaS helps with this, by managing the backup and storage of your data for you, so that someone with in your IT department does not have to manage storage hardware, patching, and more, and can implement best practices with their experience so your data is stored optimally and securely.
Backup helps your organization’s most valuable asset stay safe, and gives you peace of mind. Even if you are utilizing backup today, make sure you have a proper plan surrounding your data storage so that you can properly leverage what works for your business.
