Backing up is the way forward

Why are backups a necessity?

Backing up data has always been important and led to the introduction of World Backup day, yet, as Gijsbert Janssen van Doorn, Technology Evangelist at Zerto explains, “while the day has only grown in significance over the years, backup technology has barely begun to evolve. From tape, to hard drive and now cloud – which is really just tape in many cases – the target and management has changed, yet it is still fundamentally based on periodic snapshots of information.

“But in our ‘always-on’ business landscape, and especially in times of crisis like we are currently experiencing, can an organisation still be truly protected with an antiquated backup strategy?

“The short answer is – it can’t. Data should be protected continuously, ensuring that every change, update and added piece of data is always available. This gives the reassurance that all data is protected up to a moment before anything disrupts it. If your organisation doesn’t have a solid strategy and supporting tactical plan in place, now is the time to implement one.”

“There are two major reasons why we should take backups seriously,” emphasises Steve Cochran, Chief Technology Officer, ConnectWise. “Hardware failure and human error. Systems are not foolproof and every piece of hardware will fail eventually, so it’s not a question of if, but rather when, these failures will happen. If you haven’t kept up with your backups, you’ll get caught unprepared. There’s also a factor of human error where you might accidentally delete a file or photo. We put our entire lives on our computers and mobile devices, but we also make mistakes, and not having a backup system in place is almost silly at this point. While you need to dedicate some time to set up automatic backups, you don’t have to keep up with them – they simply run in the background.

“Hardware failures and human errors happen on a global scale, so backups should be an important consideration for any business, large or small. When you back up your data, your business is better prepared to handle any situation, whether human error, natural disaster or global crisis. With backups in place, you’re proactive, which means your data is safe and you’re prepared to address problems immediately, which minimises the impact on your customers.”

How backup benefits us all

Backing up data might seem like a hassle, but there are many reasons why taking this action is a benefit to businesses. Tom Cotton, Agile Workspace Technical Director at Six Degrees comments on how it helps you stay in control of your own data:

“If your organisation is transitioning workloads to public cloud, you may well have concerns around losing control of your data. These aren’t unfounded – SaaS providers take backups to ensure the integrity of their services, but they will not take responsibility for data loss that results from accidental deletion, malware or operational errors. This year’s World Backup Day is an opportunity for organisations to consider how they protect data stored in public cloud environments. I recommend partnering with a trusted data protection provider to hand control of your mission-critical data back to your organisation.”

Sascha Giese, Head Geek at SolarWinds also reveals how backups keep public sector data in particular safe from harm:

“From medical records to national defence information, the public sector is responsible for keeping all its data safe and untouchable from unauthorised users. Particularly now that organisations are more likely to use a combination of on-premises and cloud, IT teams need to be confident that all the data across all storage locations is backed up if there’s any unscheduled downtime.

“The risks of creating a backup manually without an automated solution are too great for the public sector to consider, and therefore organisations should––if they haven’t already––look to implement a cost-effective backup solution to not only manage all of this complex and sensitive data, but reduce time spent by IT teams keeping backups up to date. Though adopting a backup solution means additional cost in the short-term, having this safety blanket in place will reassure millions of citizens their data is as safe as it can be.”

Making backup work for you

Getting backups right is crucial, and so Steve Nice, Chief Security Technologist at Node4 shares his tips on how to get them up and running efficiently.

“No matter what size or sector a company operates in, backup and disaster recovery solutions provide continuity to organisations and should be seen as essential components of any business’ IT plans. When planning backups, organisations need to consider:

– Operational impact - Carefully map out your backup windows to ensure there is no performance degradation for your systems and applications

– Location - Consider whether your backups are going to be stored locally or off-site. You will need to determine what is the best option for your business and take into consideration factors like bandwidth availability and thus the time taken to transmit the backup data, to meet your backup window targets.

– RPO & RTO - To successfully build your strategy based on your desired Recovery Point & Recovery Time Objectives you’ll need to consider multiple factors, including the media you’re writing to, the backup location and the backup window available.”

“Data is very quickly taking over the world,” reinforces Krishna Subramanian, COO at Komprise. “Whether you have the latest wearable technology or you only use the internet for shopping, every movement and every click is producing data, and all of this is being collected, moved, analysed and stored by businesses. For many, it is now impossible to run without data. Because of this, knowing that this data is stored securely is crucial, and having a full backup of it is even more so.

“But so much of the data that businesses work with now is unstructured – from photos and videos to spreadsheets and documents, unstructured data presents more of a challenge when it comes to backup. It can be time-consuming as well as complex, with businesses often struggling with millions of files that are all completely different and constantly increasing in number. To make backing up this data simpler and quicker, consider implementing a data management solution that helps to sort through and offload cold data that is not changing from your backups. Since 75% of the data in most businesses is cold and does not need regular backups, by offloading cold data and backing up just the 25%, backups become a breeze.”

This World Backup Day, don’t just think about getting backups set up – make it a priority. It might take time before you will be glad that you have a backup, but you can guarantee, you won’t ever wish you didn’t.