Best Practices for Small Business Backup

Small businesses need to consider how often they back up their data, where and how they store their backups, which recovery methods they use, and how long they retain old backups. While the answers to these questions will depend on the business’s unique needs, there are some general guidelines that every business should follow.

1) Have a Backup Strategy

The best practice for data backup is to create a detailed plan that outlines your company’s specific objectives. This will be included within your business continuity plan (BCP) or disaster recovery plan (DRP). Statistics show that businesses without a disaster recovery plan are far more likely to shutter after a disaster. Despite this, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) says that 1 in 5 companies spend zero time on a DRP.

2) Aim For Business Continuity

Business continuity is having a plan to deal with difficult or unforeseen situations, so your organization can continue to function with as little disruption as possible.  Backup plans protect you from data loss, but a comprehensive business continuity plan keeps your business operating regardless of the obstacle. Don’t rely on lightweight backup solutions that only replicate your data to an external hard drive or a cloud folder. Although Google Backup & Sync and other cloud-based sharing applications are great, they should not be the source of your small business backup (that is not what they are intended for).

When weighing your backup options, stick to the solutions that provide business continuity. Business continuity options are designed to provide more robust recovery options. These options allow your business to continue business operations with minimal interruption.

3) How Long Should You Retain Backups

This is something that will vary by company. However, every company needs to consider how long they should keep backups before they can be permanently discarded. For example, not every backup needs to be kept forever, however, banks and healthcare organizations must keep backups for a certain amount of time. A good backup solution will let you customize the retention of all your backups so that you have multiple copies of recent backups and compressed versions of older backups.

4) Use Remote Storage

Businesses shouldn’t rely solely on on-site backups. If a disaster destroys your on-premises infrastructure, your business won’t be able to recover its files if it doesn’t have another copy of the backups that are stored off-site. Businesses should rely on hybrid backup solutions to keep their data safe. These solutions keep backup copies on-site and, in the cloud, so businesses can recover their files after a disaster strikes.

Computype Managed Services

As a CompuType GotoCompu Managed Service Provider customer, CompuType can design a comprehensive backup solution for your network. We will monitor your backup so that it is one less thing for you to worry about. Our remote backup solutions provide you with an additional layer of security for your peace of mind. Your data is important. Let us help you protect it!