Every business should back up their data regularly; after all, your data is your business. Small business owners have plenty of providers to choose from to keep their data safe and secure, and it’ important to choose the right service. Losing or having data compromised can not only create a nightmare, it can cost days and thousands of dollars to recover, resulting in a major revenue loss. According to a report by the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry and PricewaterhouseCoopers, 70% of small businesses that have a major data loss go out of business within a year.
Backups have two distinct purposes. The primary purpose is to recover data after its loss, whether it’s by data deletion or corruption. The secondary purpose of backups is to recover data from an earlier time, according to a user-defined data retention policy. Since a backup system contains at least one copy of all data worth saving, the data storage requirements can be significant. Organizing this storage space and managing the backup process can be a complicated undertaking.
So at the end of the day, business data is one of your most valuable assets. So whichever backup option you use, be sure to continuously review what data needs to be protected. Set up automatic backups and monitor them to ensure they aren’t failing. Lastly, keep an eye on your backup space consumption and have a plan in place to upgrade when the time comes.