Pop-Quiz: Raise your hand if you can say with certainty that, your business would be up and running, with little to no loss of data if you experienced downtime today? (If you can’t answer yes to this question, now might be a good time to start looking into solutions)
Fact: 96% of all business workstations are not being backed up (Source: Contingency Planning and Strategic Research Corporation)
What is a Holistic Business Backup Solution?
A holistic business backup solution goes beyond just a traditional backup – every now, and then. It involves a full business continuity plan to help keep your business afloat even in the event of a disaster – natural, man-made or technical.
Essentially, the tape backups from last month that are not well tested for usability and recovery will probably not make the mark.
For a holistic backup solution, businesses need to consider the ramifications of data loss. It’s essential to look at both qualitative and quantitative costs of data loss when calculating this cost. Examples of qualitative costs include, brand reputation, lost of trust, and frustrated customers. Quantitative costs could come in the amount of time that employees are unable to perform work tasks, project deadlines that could be missed, among others.
Trending: [Infographic] Traditional Backup is Dead! Is Your Business Protected?
Understanding Your Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
To help you create a comprehensive business continuity and data backup plan you have to consider the cost and consequences of downtime for your business. The costs in downtime can be measured in two fold – how much time you can afford to lose which then becomes the Recovery Time Objective (RTO), and how much data you can afford to lose is measured as the Recovery Point Objective (RPO).
To explain how to come up with these numbers, let’s consider a fictional company called “ABC Retail.” ABC Retail processes customer data every 30 minutes and all employees in the fulfillment center rely on the data from the customer orders placed to pack and ship ABC Retail’s goods. In this example, to avoid the least amount of disruption in business processes, ABC, cannot afford to be down for more than 30 minutes and cannot also afford to lose more than half an hour of data. So that would be the RTO and RPO would be half an hour.
Featured Download: What to Look For In a Backup Solution to Deliver Improved Business Continuity
Key “Must Haves” When Looking for a Backup and Business Continuity Solution
1. Fast, Full Restoration Capabilities.
The essence of a comprehensive business backup and disaster recovery plan is the ability quickly and easily recover and restore any lost data. These capabilities include the ability to restore images and files to a different hardware or bare metal, in case the original hardware is destroyed or damaged beyond repair. For fast restoration, there is the need for instant local and off-site virtualization for storage and restoration.
2. Hybrid Cloud-Based Model
A hybrid cloud-based model when it comes to backup and business continuity allows you to have the best of both worlds – onsite backup and cloud backup. This allows for redundancies and extra data protection should something go wrong with your on-site backup, hardware or even the building where your data is stored. The benefit of being able to store your entire systems locally and off-site goes without saying.
Read Also: How to Protect Your Business from the CryptoLocker Virus
3. Remote Backup Management
At the end of the day, how good is your backup if it’s locked up in a location that you are unable to access when you have an emergency? Or worse, what if that location is destroyed?
Having the ability to manage backups both remotely and from a central or alternate location allows you to prevent a case where you are unable to access your data due to an issue with a singular location. For instance, if there is a branch that’s affected or if your central location is down, your backup solution should give you the option of accessing your data remotely without ever having to physically go to the central location. In cases of corrupt data due to a security breach, or virus infection, having remote backup management could be the key to controlling an otherwise, disruptive situation.
4. Ability to Test Backups Regularly
When it comes to backup, disaster recovery and business continuity the good old adage: “Always be testing” applies. The ability to stay afloat in case of downtime is solely reliant on the viability of your backups. Administrators should be able to easily and regularly test backups to ensure that they do not fail when it’s time to restore the files.
Did you know? 1 in 4 businesses never test their backup (Disaster Recovery Preparedness Benchmark. The State of Global Disaster Recovery Preparedness, Annual Report)