Move your backups to the cloud to save your business money
Manual procedures around backups are a risk to your business data
Hi everyone,
Last month I touched briefly on backups, and this month I’m going to go into a little more detail as to why you should have them for all business-critical services.
I’ll start by telling you a story – this happened last month to a company (they aren’t a customer of ours) who called us for help.
- They had their company files stored on a server onsite
- They also had backups that ran every night
- They even tested those backups
Sounds good so far, right?
However, they had a virus infect the server, which encrypted and then ransomed all their critical business data. Furthermore, the virus then encrypted their backup as well. All their data was completely inaccessible. Their procedure was to swap their backup disks every night and take them offsite for safekeeping. The responsible person let this procedure lapse and had never swapped disks.
The outcome of this was a loss of months of work – it could easily have been years of work.
Backup procedures
It is critical to have a backup system in place, but it is also critical to have a backup procedure in place, and that procedure needs to be followed. ‘IT’ may be responsible for implementing the system and documenting the procedure with feedback from the business, but very often it is a non-IT staff member that is responsible for following the procedure if it has manual steps (i.e. changing a disk or tape). It is critical that the procedure is followed and the responsibility for this lies with the business.
To help with reducing this risk, we recommend businesses back up their data to the cloud. This removes the manual component of switching drives, but it does require a fast and stable business grade internet connection.
Cloud service ≠ Backup
It is also commonly assumed that moving a service to the cloud negates the need for backups and that the service provider will take care of backups as part of their offering. In many cases, this is a false assumption, either no backup systems are provided at all, or the backup systems are very limited and have little use in the real world.
If you have a backup system and procedure implemented by Intuitive IT, it will have all the key components mentioned above. If you have a system (cloud-hosted or otherwise) that is not protected with a backup system and documented procedure, we would highly recommend that you get in touch with us to talk about what options are out there. It is not just peace of mind, it is protecting your business!
Budget for the new financial year
We are also nearing the start of a new financial year and that means it’s budget time! If you need assistance developing your business IT budget, let us know and we can assist you with that.
About the author
Eden has over a decade of experience in the IT industry. Working with numerous organisations from a diverse range of industries; education, finance and renewable energy to name a few.
Prior to joining Intuitive IT Eden worked at a top tier Managed Services provider which gave him valuable experience in a wide array of enterprise level technologies and customer environments.