Many businesses operating in today’s digital world share from a very common problem — they lack proper backups.
Companies large and small suffer from a false sense of security, either because they think the backups they have are plenty to protect their valuable data, or they have no protection whatsoever and assume it simply won’t happen to them. Wrong.
If your business is unsure of its backup capabilities, now is the time to perform an audit of your backup procedures that adequately assesses the validity of your backups. To get the ball rolling on this important audit, ask yourself these very important questions:
- How often do you audit your backups?
Whether it’s daily, weekly or monthly — make sure you follow a strict audit schedule and monitor your backup logs. This will give you peace of mind, knowing that your information is always in good shape, as well as give you a paper trail for compliance purposes.
- Are you adding new technology to your backup plan?
Whenever you add something new into your technology stack make sure you’re adding it to your backup plan and including it in your backup audit.
- Do you routinely check your backups, ensuring they are stored properly?
Similar to conducting audits, it’s crucial that you routinely check on your backups and ensure they are stored properly. Often, business’s put backups on the same storage array as the production environments. In the event of a failure, you can lose both.
- Do you have internal retention policies?
Make sure you’re storing your information in a safe place, most likely an archiver, according to any industry-specific compliance rules and regulations. If your business uses image-based backups, be aware that retention is key. Long gone are the days of tape backups. Most people don’t backup properly, and that can absolutely cripple a business.
If you need help with your backups, call North Shore Data Services. Our IT experts are skilled in implementing backup plans for our customers. Contact us today by calling 978-988-0201 or by opening a ticket with our help desk at www.ns-data.com.
