Antivirus protection is the bare minimum when it comes to IT security. However, many businesses aren’t aware of that. If you’ve read about the various big breaches that have occurred to major companies, you know how detrimental it can be to their reputation and more importantly how costly it can be to recover. Having a keen understanding of tech security as well as a backup strategy is vital for being prepared.
Better Safe Than Sorry
As you develop a backup strategy and schedule, you must always remember to plan for the worst. While you hope that this new methodology will minimize the potential of data being lost, you can never be too sure. That’s why it is ideal to work with a service provider such as Secure Data Recovery, who offers solutions for data recovery in Montreal. They essentially help you to recover data from a hard, drive which can save you time and money.
On-Premises and Remote Backup
There are approaches you can take when it comes to backing up your data – on-premises and remote backup. While you should consider implementing both strategies for the best protection, let’s take a look at how each approach works:
On-premises – This is the process of backing up your data to a secondary hard drive, shared drive, or other media. This approach means that the data will be within your physical reach which would be ideal for data that needs to be easily accessible. Obviously, this approach does not come without some risk. Having the backup information physically available to you means that the data can still be stolen, or compromised by a natural disaster.
Remote backup – Remote backup is when your computer is automatically programmed to send data to a remote data backup center in intervals. This requires specialized software that gets installed on all the computers within your network. You then set up a backup routine that will specify how often the files should be backed up and more importantly which files should be backed up. This approach is ideal in that the data can be restored even if your physical computers or technological devices are stolen or damaged.
Best Practices for Backing Up Your Data
Now that you have an understanding of the various approaches to backing up data, let’s review some strategies that will help minimize the potential for risk.
- Create a Written Backup Plan – Draft a backup plan so that you and your staff are aware of what is to be expected. This plan should include things like what type of information needs to be backed up, where it’s going to be stored, how frequently it should occur, and who’s in charge of the backup.
- Determine Where Backup will be Stored – For on-premises backup approaches you’ll need to specify where the data will be stored. You should make sure that you place all external storage devices in a secure location. It should also be entrusted to only a few people to minimize the risk of the data being compromised. A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is having two sets of backups that are entrusted to two individuals in the office, stored in two separate locations. This way, if one source falls through you have another you can turn to.
- Find a Trusted Data Center – For remote data backup approaches you’ll need to entrust your data to a third party provider. You’ll need to do some research to determine which service provider will be best. There are several data centers out there that can help to store, manage, and monitor your company data.
- Test Your Backup – Creating a plan is not enough, you must implement it and test it several times to ensure that it will work should disaster actually strike. You don’t want to find out the hard way that your backup actually wasn’t a backup at all. Try to restore a few files on a different computer to see how well it works.
- Educate Your Staff – After you’ve created the plan and worked out all the specifics on which approaches you will take as it pertains to backup you’ll need to educate your employees. Human error is one of the biggest factors when it comes to security breaches and therefore you want to minimize the potential of that happening by informing them.
Consumer information, financials, and even trade secrets are company data that should be protected at all costs. While you may have taken the necessary precautions to safeguard your computer network from viruses, malware, and other online attacks, you must go a step further and create a recovery plan should those protections fall through. Both on-premises and remote backup solutions will make recovering from a cyber disaster a lot easier.