Disaster Recovery vs Data Backup

Make sure you understand what questions to ask about your data backup to ensure your business is protected.

Most small businesses have critical business data that needs to be protected. Whether it is customer information, accounting and sales data, POS records or electronic patient information. This data allows you to perform your critical day-to-day business functions and ultimately keep your business running.

So how do you protect your business from a data loss, either from malicious ransomware or a hardware failure? The answer seems pretty simple right, you need a backup.  But, in today's business environment IT is not as simple as you might think, so it is important that you know what questions to ask your IT Provider to make sure your business is protected.

So, the real question is “Does your data backup adequately protect your business from significant downtime or lost revenue?”

It is important to understand that not all data backups are created equal. From “file level” backups like Carbonite to “bare metal” backups that allow a complete system restoration. From onsite backup drives to more complex options with onsite backup devices, to onsite devices with redundant cloud backups. There are a lot of options and the right option for your business depends on how critical your network and business data are to your day-to-day operations. A professional IT Provider can help you decide which backup solution is best for your situation, but don't just rely on their recommendation.  The more you know the better informed your business decisions can be.

An equally important question to ask is how does your IT Provider support your backup to ensure business continuity in the event of a data loss. Backups alone won’t keep your business up and running. You need a proactive IT Provider that monitors your backups for failures, helps to develop a plan in the event of a disaster and performs annual disaster recovery drills to make sure your backups are sufficient to keep your business operating. Putting a backup in place with disaster recovery means keeping your business operating. A backup without disaster recovery is like not having a backup. If your IT Provider isn’t supporting your backup the right way, maybe you need to take a closer look at your IT Provider.