World Backup Day takes place annually on 31^st March- chosen due to it falling prior to April Fool’s Day and serves as a reminder of the importance of data security.

We challenge the need for this annual event, as backups should already be a part of your daily operations and businesses should always have data security front of mind.

Think of backups like brushing your teeth, a task so embedded in your daily routine that you barely even think about the act itself. Backups should be rooted into your daily operations. The only difference is that this task is carried out automatically and more regularly than twice a day.

Data is vital to any business, regardless of size or sector.

Mind the Gap

Backups should always be stored somewhere else. It is important to keep an “air gap” between your data and your backups, as malware and ransomware can destroy any data on a network it gains access to.  It is also important to remember that with on-premises servers, your data is also at risk from physical hazards, such as fire or flooding – so they need to be kept physically-distanced too.

Don’t forget data in the cloud

It’s a common misconception that data hosted in SaaS products in the cloud is safe – and that’s a dangerous assumption to make. Whilst some cloud service providers are responsible for disaster recovery, they aren’t responsible if your data gets accidentally or maliciously deleted.

Services like Microsoft Office 365 need third party backup solutions to provide full protection for the data held within.

What about data that’s somewhere else?

Data held on PCs and laptops is often overlooked until it is most needed. Consider where your users store their data and whether it is protected.

RPOs and RTOs – what are they?

Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) are two of the most important parameters of any backup & disaster recovery plan.

The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the amount of time it takes to restore systems & data.

The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the amount of backup history that is held, and how regularly they are taken.

Several factors must be considered when calculating RPO, including industry, the cost of data loss, compliance schemes and even weekends or public holidays. If a business has only 3 recovery points and data is lost on a Friday evening, backups will occur on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday – come Monday morning there will be no way for the company to retrieve the data.

What other factors should I consider?

This is where multiple backups come in useful, and the 3-2-1 rule should be adopted.

The 3-2-1 backup rule is an easy-to-remember acronym for a common approach to keeping your data safe in almost any failure scenario. The rule is: keep at least three copies of your data, and store two backup copies on different storage media, with one of them located offsite.

Backups aren’t infallible, so it’s always important to have more than one copy – just in case.

Can we help?

razorblue provides a cloud-based data protection service, ranging from backup/recovery to providing cyber resilience. Specifically, razorblue’s cloud disaster recovery solution ensures workloads on-premises or in the cloud are backed up directly to our own cloud.

Our cloud backup solutions make it impossible to delete or interfere with the copied data, this ensures your backup version is always safe.

You can also restore the backup of your on-premises environment to our private cloud environment, an ideal disaster recovery solution.

We own and operate several datacentres across the UK with varying offline retention and archiving options to suit your needs.

When was the last time you checked in on your backup solution?

Get in touch today to find out more about how we can help with your backup and disaster recovery solution.