In modern businesses data is essential. Important documents, photographs, accounting information, and business processes are stored digitally be it locally on computer hard disks, portable disks or memory sticks or in the cloud on business servers or data storage systems.
Effective Backup Strategy
Onsite Backups: If a server or PC hard disk crashes or fails, it is best to have data backups to hand which are easy to restore from. Onsite backup is normally much faster to restore than cloud backups or offsite tape backups.
Offsite Backups: Should disaster strike your premises, it is likely to also damage any on site backups so it essential to also backup copies held offsite where they can be accessed manually or through the cloud.
Optimized Backup Schedule: Backups must be taken regularly and scheduled over longer periods with daily backups being kept alongside weekly and monthly copies kept for several months. This helps protect against issues which take several weeks to come to light so the effected files can be recovered from much earlier copies.
Backup Testing: Backups should be tested, regularly. A backup which fails makes the backup policy worthless so ensure your staff know how to quickly access and restore backups minimising downtime.