You’ve probably heard us talk about the importance of backing up data for business owners, managers, and even everyday workers. This month, we’re focusing on incremental backups and why they’re a great choice for small businesses looking to protect their data.
Business can get messy, particularly when variables outside your control are involved, which could spell doom for your organization. We’re talking, of course, about instances where your organization might be under a particularly large threat—instances where your data is at risk, which could jeopardize your future. Thankfully, there are options to mitigate this risk.
Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) are incredibly important elements of any successful business, as without them, you’re just one disaster away from a world-shattering wake-up call. We take a strategic approach to data backup and disaster recovery that considers your daily data backup needs while recognizing its long-term benefits. Let’s discuss how you can ensure that your business can use BDR to survive any potential threat the world throws at it.
World Backup Day, observed on March 31st annually, serves as a designated occasion to underscore the critical importance of regular data backups for ensuring data continuity. Although this day effectively highlights a fundamental best practice, we firmly advocate for a continuous commitment to maintaining and safeguarding backups rather than confining such awareness to a single day.
Data Backup and Disaster Recovery are essential components of any modern business. As businesses become increasingly reliant on digital data, it's essential to have strategies in place to ensure that your data is safe and secure in the event of a disaster. Let’s cover the key components of an effective Disaster Recovery strategy to ensure the safety of your business' data backup. Read on to learn more about Disaster Recovery strategies and how to best protect your business data.
The modern business technology market is filled with exciting innovations, but one area that doesn't quite capture the imagination is data backup. Perhaps backup is not the most thrilling topic, but nevertheless, the growing demand for enhanced data security and redundancy in businesses is driving developers to push the boundaries of the technology, creating more advanced features to meet the growing demand for redundancy. Today, we take a look at three intriguing features of these emerging data backup solutions.
Data is the lifeblood of a business. In the event of unforeseen circumstances such as hardware failure, malware attacks, or human error, having a well-designed backup and data recovery strategy in place becomes paramount. Today, we try and guide you through the process of creating a robust backup and data recovery strategy, ensuring the safety and accessibility of your data.
Multi-factor authentication is great when it works, but when it doesn’t, it can leave you in a pretty difficult situation. After all, what happens when all of a sudden, you cannot access your secondary authentication methods? We’re here to help you bypass this particularly challenging and frustrating scenario.
Data backup protects a business from catastrophic data loss resulting from hardware failures, natural disasters, cybersecurity attacks, system outages, or network disruptions. Backing up data involves replicating it and storing it in different places. Such as the cloud, backup servers, and dedicated backup devices. This way, you can recover your data and information from a previous state and time in case of system outages. However, the efficiency and effectiveness of data backup are reduced drastically when you do not test them regularly and routinely. Data backup and recovery testing is the process of assessing the effectiveness of the systems, procedures, and methods that a company uses to replicate, store, and retrieve data in times of need.
This is pretty self-explanatory. Your business is constantly under threat. You may not realize it because you’ve been fortunate enough not to have any threat be bad enough where your operational and financial data is actively at risk. That may not always be the case, however. Consider how important your data is and think about all the things that could happen where you would have to deal with data loss. Situations that stem from natural disasters, scams and hackers, hardware failure, and human error can all trigger data loss. That’s a lot of variables to cover to keep hoping that nothing will happen.
If you want data redundancy for your business in the information age, you need to get a BDR. Not only is your data backed up locally, it is also pushed to the cloud. Having data on site is great if you need to quickly restore something, or if your server crashes and you need a substitute server, while cloud backup is great for protecting the data in case of a major disaster that knocks out your onsite hardware.
Your business’ backup can be viewed as an insurance policy, but if it isn’t secured, it could be just another piece of a string of errors that takes your business down. In order for your backup to be a reliable contingency, you need to protect it. In order to do that, we suggest using the 3-2-1 rule as a base. That is: three copies of your data, with two being stored and attached to your network, and one saved offsite.
A techy colleague of mine was taking advantage of a rainy weekend to update his internal infrastructure. For the sake of our story, we’ll call him Bobby. Bobby was migrating his entire server over to brand new hardware on a new rack. Without getting too technical, his server contained several virtual servers running in tandem, controlling his overall network, storing his data, and running his line of business applications. In other words, it was critical to his business. If it were to go down, his employees would be nearly crippled.
Data loss can happen a few different ways. Malware can cause irreversible data loss, and ransomware can cause reversible data loss, provided you pony up the ransom to hackers. Your end-users can mistakenly cause data loss by overwriting or deleting data, but a disgruntled employee could do even more damage intentionally. Your data is stored on delicate, mechanical devices that are extremely sensitive to shock and damage. Hard drives don’t last forever and will eventually fail, so if your data is only stored in one place, it’s just a matter of time.
Your company’s data is one of its major assets, and you take quite a bit of effort to protect it. You deploy antivirus, firewalls, intrusion detection, and other security tools designed to mitigate exposure to malware, hackers, and other deplorable situations like:
The minute something gets through your network’s defenses, you are in deep trouble. If disaster hits your business and you don’t have a reliable backup, you could not only lose continuity, you could lose it all. This wouldn’t be so dire if you have a comprehensive business continuity strategy in place. Business continuity plans are just potential solutions to problems that threaten to take the business down.
There are hundreds of different situations that could result in substantial data loss, but irregardless of the situation your business is in, having a strong backup and recovery plan lets you be prepared for any eventuality.
Today, there are a lot of different ways that you can back up your data and applications, but there really is only one that offers onsite and offsite backup, incremental backups, and the ability to recover data on demand. This solution is what we call a BDR. Short for backup and disaster recovery, our backup service allows you to configure the backup solution to fit your company’s demands, while also providing all the high-end redundancy features that any business could need.
If your business is looking to protect its data from the litany of ways it can be corrupted or lost, the BDR is right for you. Call Coleman Technologies today at (604) 513-9428 for more information.
Did you know there are entire websites out there, devoted to providing the default factory passwords for different devices? They aren’t on the Dark Web, either - this is on the visible, indexed Internet. Imagine if I were to come in with some idea of what brand of routers you had… if I had the right default credentials with me, I could easily access your router and wreak havoc in your business.
You need to consider every potential access point into your business and ensure it is properly secured. The same goes for any online accounts associated with your business, like cloud storage. Take the time to make sure that everything is secured with a password that meets best practices, and if memories are an issue, use a reputable password manager to simplify the task for your employees.
This also goes for your physical location. Many access control solutions exist that enable you to keep track of who accesses a certain area, and when, with the added benefit of keeping those without authorization out.
Many people may assume that, once they’ve installed an antivirus/antimalware solution, they are all set. The trouble is, more malware is being developed all the time, and there’s a good chance it is being developed to help the malicious software get past your antivirus. As it happens, the developers of the antivirus are aware of this, and frequently add new threat definitions to the software to make it more effective.
However, all the threat definitions in the world will do diddly-squat if your antivirus solution isn’t updated to include them. This is why it is important to keep an eye on your network’s health and take the time to check that you have the latest definitions included.
Finally, you have the nuclear option against malware… mutually assured destruction, that only you can recover from. That is, as long as you’ve been maintaining a proper backup.
If you should fall victim to a malware infection, completely wiping your devices and quite literally starting from scratch with them is your best hope of getting rid of it. However, in order to keep yourself from crippling your own business while doing so, you need to maintain an ace in the hole. By keeping a backup that passes best practices, you can be sure to have your data if you have to sacrifice your original copy.
Coleman Technologies can help you do all of this, and more. Reach out to us at (604) 513-9428 to learn more.
While not all of your data may be equally valuable, data loss is a bad thing across the board. This is precisely why Coleman Technologies offers comprehensive data backup and disaster recovery solutions.
Backing up your data allows you to sidestep the potential catastrophes that would come with the loss of your most critical information. Here, we’ll review a few situations that could put this data at risk to demonstrate how crucial having a backup really is.
Just about every business on Earth could potentially be impacted by some kind of weather event. Some deal with hurricanes, some deal with high winds and tornadoes, others with earthquakes and floods… you get the picture. Unfortunately, whichever one impacts your business, there isn’t very much you can do in the moment - which is why it is important to prepare now, so you can reopen again after the fact. Many don’t prepare, and therefore, don’t reopen.
Acting proactively and maintaining a backup allows you to more quickly bounce back after disaster has struck, allowing your business a second chance.
Cybersecurity is a huge topic today, as there are many, many threats out there designed to target businesses. Take ransomware, for example: all it takes for you to lose access to your files is for an employee to click on the wrong thing. Not good.
However, using a BDR (in conjunction with a comprehensive business continuity plan) to keep your files safely backed up enables you to quickly restore data from an onsite backup copy of your data, while keeping another copy offsite for redundant protections and simplified migrations. This keeps you safe from a variety of threats, including ransomware and many other forms of malware.
The BDR is supremely useful in that it gives you an on-demand resource to pull your data from, on demand, as it is needed. This is particularly handy if a team is collaborating on a project, and somebody accidentally deletes something absolutely critical to the project. With a backup, your progress won’t be lost to bad luck.
A BDR allows you to breathe a little easier about your files and their security. To find out about adopting one for your business, reach out to Coleman Technologies today. Call (604) 513-9428 to get started.
One basic strategy to sorting out your data is to backup the files that you can’t feasibly replace otherwise. This simple, yet effective approach could easily save your business… but, why go through the effort of sorting through your data at all?
Seeing as your data is one of - if not the - most important resources that your business has, why not just back up all of it?
This endeavor becomes much easier with the Backup and Disaster Recovery appliance that we offer, as it can easily map out and replicate your data stores. Now, it must be said that not every business generates enough vital data to justify a large investment into a data backup. However, as we mentioned above, today’s threat landscape means that what data you do have needs to be protected.
There are several different varieties of data backup for you to consider, keeping in mind what it is you are backing up and when you need those backups to be ready. These backups include:
As you may have gathered, a full backup copies all of your data and configurations and saves them to a single platform, whether that be a NAS (network attached storage) device, a cloud backup, or tape (pro tip: don’t use tape backup).
This has the benefits of offering a comprehensive backup that you need, with quick restoration times for single files or folders. A full restore takes a much longer period of time to complete, and full backups are more expensive due to the greater need of storage space. Any backup strategy will typically start off with a full backup.
This kind of backup keeps track of any changes that are made to data, which allows it to be used for data that is continuously updated. The costs of an incremental backup are quite reasonable, making it a good choice (despite not being totally comprehensive) for a business that generates large amounts of data.
Similarly to incremental backups, a differential backup keeps track of changes that are made between the times that a full backup is run, keeping their backups more up to date.
This kind of backup is best for redundancy, as it creates a mirror image of the system that is being backed up. While these backups are the fastest to restore, they also take up the most storage space.
Depending on your business’ particular needs, a backup can be run weekly, daily, or even as frequently as every 15 minutes.
The 3-2-1 Rule is a simple way to remember what you need to maintain if you want to keep your data protected enough. Here’s how it breaks down:
This strategy makes it so your data is both secure, and convenient to you.
To learn more about data backups and best practices concerning them, reach out to Coleman Technologies at (604) 513-9428.
You may be one of those small or medium-sized business owners that believe that anything labeled “enterprise” is overkill for your business. This may be true in some other cases, but when you start talking about data backup solutions, enterprise is a good thing. To protect your data--and effectively your business--you need a solution that will handle all the data you need to backup while keeping that data available for restore at the drop of a hat. If you don’t have this, any situation that could separate you from your data could seriously negatively affect your business’ ability to deal with adverse situations.
The main problem the BDR immediately solves is the one that is caused when your business depends on its data. If that data somehow gets altered, corrupted, or destroyed, having copies of it will keep your business in the game. A BDR can also keep lengthy periods of downtime to a minimum. Some of the options the modern BDR presents include:
With our experienced staff behind your BDR, you get the strong continuity, efficient restore speed, offsite cloud storage, and the ease of implementation that allows for backups to start almost immediately. To learn how our BDR can help you protect your business reach out today at (604) 513-9428.
Any time your organization isn’t operating under normal circumstances (i.e. any time it’s simply not functioning, or functioning at a loss) can be considered downtime. This takes multiple forms, including employees unable to access critical software or data, the office being shut down due to a power outage, or even technology problems that result in devices not working as intended. Whatever the reason--and data loss disasters are a big one--you can bet that downtime has a considerable impact on both your wallet and your organization’s long-term sustainability.
What a lot of businesses might not understand about data loss is that it equates to lost progress, or work that needs to be done over again. Think about it this way; your organization has to collect all the data again, assuming that there is no way to actually restore it. This is why so many businesses have a data backup and disaster recovery solution, as retracing your steps can be costly, time-consuming, and, quite frankly, a waste of time that could have been avoided with the proper foresight.
In many cases, a data disaster can involve a security breach, where personally identifiable information or sensitive corporate data can be stolen or exposed to danger. When this happens, certain industries that are supposed to adhere to various security thresholds may be subject to fines based on the specific types of data affected. It’s needless to say that this kind of disregard for security compliance can lead to crippling fines and legal repercussions.
In all of the above cases, having a data backup and disaster recovery solution from Coleman Technologies can offset the challenges and difficulties of operating at a loss. To learn more about the solutions we offer, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.
Coleman Technologies has been serving the British Columbia area since 1999, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses. Our experience has allowed us to build and develop the infrastructure needed to keep our prices affordable and our clients up and running.
20178 96 Avenue, C400
Langley, British Columbia V1M 0B2
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