If a disaster hits your business next Monday morning, would you be ready? One of the key components of disaster recovery is an effective backup strategy, according to the experts on IT support West Palm Beach companies rely on. It does take both time and money, but the investment is worth it. Let's look at what it takes to implement a backup strategy for your business.
Two Types of Backup
There are two types of backup used in companies today. Either or both can be used for your backup strategy:
- On-premises backup - Data is copied to a local device such as a second hard drive, a tape drive, or another shared device. On-premises backups can be manual or automated.
- Remote backup - Data gets copied to a remote center at scheduled intervals. You install and configure software on the servers you want to back up. Everything happens automatically.
Developing an Effective, Comprehensive Backup Strategy
Before you know how you are going to do backups, you need to identify what you are backing up first, according to IT support providers in West Palm Beach. Your office servers, desktops, and laptops are obvious targets for backup. Do you have any data stored on mobile devices, on employee's personal computers, or in the cloud? Is your email fully backed up?
Some data is more important than others. Your financial and accounting data must be a top priority, along with customer and vendor lists.
With this information, you can start your written backup strategy. It needs to include the following information:
- What data is being backed up from what device (accounting data from X server, etc.)
- Where data is being backed up to (tape drive, second hard drive, cloud, etc.)
- How often backups are occurring for each set of data (accounting data every hour 24/7, etc.)
- Who or what performs the backups (John performs daily backups at 6PM, etc.)
- Who verifies backups were performed successfully (Jane verifies backups at 8PM, etc.)
Storing your backups is critical. If you take on-premise backups, backups need to be rotated off-site once a week. A backup tape can be kept in a safe deposit box for example.
What strategy will you use if you lose Internet connectivity for more than a few hours? Can you use a local backup?
Ideally, you should test your backup strategy every few months to make sure you can recover data quickly. That way, you can get back up and running ASAP. For more information, contact Nexxen Technologies today. We are the experts on IT support West Palm Beach businesses trust with their backups.