Is Your Business Data Backed-Up Correctly? Here’s How to Check It’s Not in Danger

Data is one of the most valuable assets a business owns – it is the very essence of what an organisation is.

So what happens if one day it all just disappeared? It can, and does happen, but the thing is, it doesn’t have to end being a disaster for you and your business if your data isn’t backed-up correctly.

3 Ways to Check if Your Business Data is Backed Up Correctly

1. Use the Cloud

Using the Cloud for backing up your data is one of the most cost-effective, efficient ways available. And as mentioned previously, it can expand, and then retract in size, to meet the needs of your business.

How regularly is it backed up?

Is your data backed-up on a daily or weekly basis? Is it a full back up, or just incremental, where it only covers the most recently made changes?

These are important questions to know the answers to, whether you do it in-house, or have an external resource that looks after the backing-up of your data.

Read more: Poor IT will cost a business significantly – here’s how to do it the right way

2. Check it’s actually working!

A lot of businesses are confident in the fact that they back-up their data, but it is a very common occurrence that it isn’t done correctly – which is only discovered after there is a need to access it (usually after a loss).

So it is best that on a regular basis, you are checking that all your data is actually being backed-up completely and without issues.

3. A disaster recovery plan is not enough

Why not? Because a disaster recovery plan is only half of the solution when there is a loss of data.

Consider the example of a natural disaster, there is the team who go in and take care of the immediate risks and provide services to those affected – but after a week or a month, there is the requirement to then get everyone back into ‘business-as-usual’, where life needs to go back to how it was before the disaster.

How long does it take for you to get back to “business-as-usual” after if a disaster strikes?

If your answer is more than a week, then you have a lot of improvements to make.

Keen on further knowledge on how to manage IT in your business? Download: An essential guide to IT for SME business – Risk, Security and Productivity