Business Backup and Recovery: Am I Really Protected?

Backup and recovery processes are executed to safeguard a business in the event of a disaster, data corruption or deletion leading to a loss of important data. If a natural disaster occurred in your area tomorrow wiping out your systems, can you fully recover and in what amount of time?

Your answer to the above question is critical to your organisational capability and safety. If you can’t answer that question or don’t know what it fully means, then reading on should benefit you greatly. This article covers the various parameters of business backup and recovery and the common misconceptions around it which unfortunately, leaves businesses vulnerable.

Why Backup Your Data?

Being able to recover from a loss of data is useful for any person, however, in a business this is an imperative measure to take and is one some business owners sadly do not take. Time equals money in business and if your systems are down you cannot access your critical data. Furthermore, this may stretch to losing client data which severely inhibits acquisition, retention and more importantly, your bottom line. Losing this data can also smudge your company name subsequently stigmatising it with mistrust which in turn, affects your sustained future competitiveness.

There are also regulatory and governance implications to be aware of; financial year end documents for example are required and if they cannot be provided, may result in further business consequences.

Common Data Backup Misconceptions

Data replication and backup – These can be mistaken for the same thing which is not the case. Data replication doesn’t just copy your data once, it’s the act of continually copying and sending this data to another location for added security. Typically, for rapid fail-over of systems to a disaster recovery centre within the country. Although, data replication cannot recover data from a specific point unlike backup recovery and this is the important difference. Data replication should not be used on its own but rather used in conjunction with data backup for increased security and capability of recovery.

Moved to cloud: That means I’m backed up – This is probably the most common misconception when businesses move some or all their data onto the cloud, they believe their data is now fully secure and backing that data up further isn’t necessary. This is not only wrong, but it is dangerous. Popular services such as Office 365 offer a plethora of benefits but backup by default is not one of them, even if you think it is. Ensuring you are aware of this is significant and other third-party services which offer offsite replication may be required to combat this.

The solution is cloud backup – There are several cloud backup tools out there, some good, some bad. The big misconception here is purchasing a tool, listening to their marketing spiel and then taking it for granted that your backed up and have full recoverability should a disaster occur. This is not always the case and we must stress the importance of initiating disaster recovery tests to guarantee everything works as it should in an acceptable period of time.

The Important Metrics

There are many metrics which can determine backup and recoverability but the most common and most important are RTO and RPO. It is advantageous to have a basic understanding of these metrics even if you are not a technical person as it allows greater comprehension of your organisational situation.

RTO – This stands for ‘Recovery Time Objective’ and is a metric which analyses and benchmarks a specific time goal for your systems to be back online after an outage which would not affect business continuity. Essentially, if you have an RTO of 12 hours, you can operate under normal business functions within this time period. However, if full business recovery hasn’t been established after these 12 hours, then this may cause irreversible damage and lost data may be permanently irretrievable.

RPO – This stands for ‘Recovery Point Objective’ and is the metric which pertains to the units of data which can be lost whilst still maintaining normal business operations. These units of data are calculated in time (minutes, hours and days) and establishes how often to initiate data backups to stay within the ‘safe’ zone.

What if I Don’t Know About Backup and Recovery

Not all business owners or decision makers are technically savvy, terms such as ‘hypervisor technologies’ and ‘SAN storage technologies’ are probably going to confuse your average business owner. When dealing with business-critical systems, guess work isn’t going to cut it and quite frankly, your gambling with your businesses future.

The next steps are your choice and ultimately comes down to whatever suits you and your business the best, reflecting your organisations dependency on IT and budget availability. Hiring internal expertise such as an IT manager may be an appropriate choice however, this can be expensive and may not be required. If you do not choose the internal route, then outsourcing is your go to strategy which brings an abundance of benefits. IT companies out there can offer backup and recovery services as an isolated service or can be part of a managed IT services package. The latter would be recommended if your business is highly dependent on IT as you would receive a fully qualified IT team at your disposal akin to outsourcing your marketing to an agency.

Finishing Up

After this brief discussion you should now take away what business backup and recovery is and how integral it is for competitiveness and continuity. You should be aware of the common misconceptions which may put your business in danger and what to look for when utilising services or tools. If you have any questions, please feel free to post them below.

Andrew Lynch is a marketing assistant in Quadris with a keen interest in IT and its holistic integration into organisational operations. Quadris are best known for delivering personalised premium IT services to businesses within the UK.