A lurking threat for most businesses is a lack of a secure, verified data backup
If disaster strikes, will your business be ready?
It’s quite surprising how many companies are still without a verified and secure data backup or a disaster recovery plan. Your data is the lifeblood of your organization and the loss of it is more than just an inconvenience.
Data backup is defined as – a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event.
The sad reality is, disaster recovery planning and data recovery rarely gets the attention it deserves until there is an immediate loss or threat.
Generally most people think about fires, floods or other disasters in conjunction with data loss. In Winnipeg and Manitoba, localized threats can be easily identified as well: Power outages, tornadoes, floods, accidents, train derailments and various other weather related issues. That said, a far more likely threat is theft of equipment, viruses, or employee negligence. Losing company data can be absolutely disastrous. Quite often stories can be found on local Winnipeg, National TV newscasts or social media about hackers or would-be wrong doers holding company data for ransom or personal data which has been breached.
Lets keep your company out of the limelight. Well, at least that type of negative limelight.
As time passes, we are seeing many insurers requesting information about client data recovery plans and also requests this from their own vendors.
These risks can be mitigated with an effective, secure data backup plan. The ability for full data recovery is key.
I’d like to report that the backup practice of yesteryear has changed, for the most part it hasn’t. The usual workflow for small and medium sized business was backing up data at a frequency of X and a backup device (tape, hard drive, etc) would go off site. Quite often the backup would go home with an employee or manager, a safe deposit box at the bank, or simply go into a drawer and stay on-site. For those less prepared, there was no formal backup process in place whatsoever. There are countless stories of lost information, heartbreak, lost receivables or mission critical data which have resulted in staggering losses. Such as bankruptcy or losing clientele due to severe business interruptions. While many businesses have become more aware of the importance of a disaster recovery plan, many have not taken the proper steps to properly safeguard their company’s data. These antiquated practices still exist in many businesses, quite often when we are assessing a new client its rare that in some form it isn’t the current practice.
There is a better way.
There are several options for securely backing up and protecting data. Firstly, we need to identify which data set to backup. Backup all data or just the mission critical data? Who decides which data is deemed mission critical? What might not be considered mission critical data today, might be vital tomorrow. These answers can be found in a company disaster recovery plan. Having a disaster recovery program in place which is regularly updated, off site and has numerous safeguards in place is the most effective way to protect your small business. Also to ensure data recovery.
So just what do we do with this data? Generally go-to answer in 2024 is to put data backup ‘into the cloud’. Sounds simple and certainly makes sense but do we know exactly where this data will be housed? Out of country or overseas? Is this data encrypted while in transmission and while in storage?
Thankfully we are here to assist our clients to make informed decisions. During our assessment process we identify all company data and develop a plan for data backup and recovery. All our company data is housed in our Canadian data centres (Outside of Winnipeg), is encrypted and has a scheduled transmission plan. These days the cost for secure data backup is relatively inexpensive and many clients view this as a very important form of insurance to safeguard against data loss.
We work with our clients to ensure they are as protected as possible.
In-House VS off-site back up
There are a variety of backup and data recovery options available to our clients. Below are some of the highlights of a scheduled off site on-line back up program VS in house backups.
In-house Backups
- Time-consuming data backup process
- Low security/high risk of breach (hard drives being left in vehicles, etc)
- Slow data recovery. Is proper equipment readily available to restore data?
- Low accessibility to data
- Limited IT support, which may hinder the data recovery time objective
- Requires transportation & storage space (lack of chain of custody tracking)
- High risk of theft, fire, flood or other disaster. Biggest risk is human error.
Winnipeg Online Secure Data Backup and Data Recovery
- Automatic secure data backup; set it and forget it. We select the frequency of data backup.
- More affordable than physical backups or other business secure backup plans
- Data can be recovered remotely, usually within seconds
- With proper credentials, data can be accessed and shared from
anywhere in Winnipeg or around the world, making data recovery simple. - Our Tier 3+, SOC 2 Type II certified and secure data centers keep your business data safely stored and protected against disasters. *All data is housed in Canada.
Secure Backup and Data Recovery is vital to all organizations