Your business depends on data to operate. Whether its important procedures, how much clients owe you, or what products you owe clients, without your data, your company will have trouble serving clients, making money, or making future data-based decisions. We liken this need to your car keys. Without your car key, you are unable to use your car, no matter how much you paid for it or how badly you need to it go somewhere right now.
We know our data (and our car keys) are important, but how likely are we to actually lose them? Here is quick list of threats to your data we made, but we found them entertaining to apply to car keys as well:
Natural Disasters
Weather
Hurricanes
Storms
Floods
Earthquakes
Theft
Internal
External
Man-made Disasters
Terrorism
Accidents
Equipment Failure
Hard drive failure (where your data is stored)
Server failure
Ransomware (a type of virus that destroys data)
While types of disasters that are likely can vary from area to area, most of these are common place and we hear stories of them happening all the time. To prepare for the inevitable, your business needs a plan to deal with these scenarios.
Let’s start with some basic terminology. A backup is simply a copy of your data. Like keeping a spare car key around, should you lose your key or lock your keys in the car. Just like with your car keys, how much sense does it make it keep your spare car key on the same key ring with your main car key? Not much, because they are close together and can be affected by the same events (dropped in the ocean, or locked in the car, for example). By keeping your two copies of the keys separated by distance they have “geographical” separation. What happens in one area that may affect your main key, won’t affect your spare key, because it is physically somewhere else. We do the same thing to your data with backup. We store your extra copy of the data on a different drive than your original data. We probably have that drive on a separate piece of hardware, on a different network, and preferably in a different state!
It’s important when deciding your backup strategy that you understand your business needs and find a professional to help guide you through the technology options available to best meet those needs. The best providers of IT and backup solution can go a long way to preventing issues in the first place and minimizing the impact when they do occur.
If you have concerns about the current state of your backup, please call us at (718) 650-6100 for a free analysis and consultation.