Losing access to your business’s data – even temporarily – is a nightmare worthy of a horror movie.
The basic function of data backup tools is to create copies of your data and store them in a safe place. If something goes wrong, recovery tools will use these copies to restore your lost files.
So, if your business already uses backup and recovery tools, you would think your data is safe… but this isn’t necessarily true.
A new report shows that some backup tools aren’t as reliable as they should be. In fact, a third of all data losses are caused by backup-related issues. When people try to recover data, they discover it’s been lost, corrupt or was never backed up in the first place.
One of the biggest threats to businesses right now is ransomware. This is a type of malicious software (or "malware") that locks you out of your files unless you pay a ransom to regain access.
The report found that half of businesses using backup tools still ended up paying ransoms to retrieve their files, because it was faster than trying to use their own recovery tools. Even worse? Only a small number of businesses that paid ransoms were able to fully recover their data.
Often, it’s because they haven’t been set up properly. And even when they are, they still need to be verified regularly to make sure they are still backing up your files.
Also, older backup and recovery tools can’t keep up with today’s sophisticated cyber-attacks. Ransomware will target the backup files as well as the production files to make it impossible to recover them. Backup files need to be properly encrypted and separated from the production data. Setting up and maintaining a reliable backup system is straightforward if you have been doing it for 25 years. IT experts (like us) can make sure your tools are running correctly every day. Every single day our backups are verified to ensure your system can be recovered no matter the disaster situation.
We put extra safeguards in place such as continuous data protection (CDP). CDP continuously saves changes to your files, allowing you to go back in time and restore your data as it was just before an attack or loss.
You may think because your files are saved in Microsoft, Google, DropBox or any number of other cloud services your files are safe, and Microsoft is taking care of the backups. This is not the case, and you still need a separate encrypted and secure backup. Whether your files are all in the cloud, on-premises or a combination of the two, backup is critical.
This is something we do for businesses like yours every day. Reach out if you are concerned about your existing backup solution or if you have any questions. Contact us at (319) 535-5350 or [email protected] to setup an appointment.
