Data Backup Best Practice Guide
BACKING UP YOUR DATA
Your first step is to identify your essential data – That is, the information that your business couldn’t function without. Normally this will comprise documents, photos, emails, contacts, and calendars, most of which are kept in just a few common folders on your computer, phone, tablet or network
Don’t keep your back-up on the same device – Whether it’s on a USB stick, on a separate drive or a separate computer, access to data backups should be restricted so that they:
are not accessible by staff
are not permanently connected (either physically or over a local network) to the device holding the original copy
Ransomware (and other malware) can often move to attached storage automatically, which means any such backup could also be infected, leaving you with no backup to recover from. For more resilience, you should consider storing your backups in a different location, so fire or theft won’t result in you losing both copies.
Cloud storage solutions are a cost-effective and efficient way of backing up – You’ve probably already used cloud storage during your everyday work and personal life without even knowing – unless you’re running your own email server, your emails are already stored ‘in the cloud’. Using cloud storage (where a service provider stores your data on their infrastructure) means your data is physically separate from your location. You’ll also benefit from a high level of availability. Most providers offer a limited amount of storage space for free, and larger storage capacity for minimal costs to small businesses. Learn more about cloud storage here.
Make backing up part of your everyday business – We know that backing up is not a very interesting thing to do (and there will always be more important tasks that you feel should take priority), but the majority of network or cloud storage solutions now allow you to make backups automatically. For instance, when new files of a certain type are saved to specified folders. Using automated backups not only saves time, but also ensures that you have the latest version of your files should you need them.
Many off-the-shelf backup solutions are easy to set up, and are affordable considering the business-critical protection they offer. When choosing a solution, you’ll also have to consider how much data you need to back up, and how quickly you need to be able to access the data following any incident.