Use It, Don’t Lose It: Keeping Your Business Data Safe

Some things are meant to go together. Coffee and laptops isn’t one of them. Spilling a drink on a keyboard is just one of many ways small business owners lose vital business data. Other hazards include hardware and software failure, viruses, accidentally deleting a file, fire and theft. Yet more than one in three local businesses do not have an offsite backup strategy to protect their data. From a recent survey by back-up giants Acronis.

“To loose your work can be devastating , demoralising and simply unnecessary.

Protecting your data is easily done and there are a number of different options out there that would be right for your company. Affordable, effective backup solutions that can help small to medium businesses minimise the impact of data loss, whether working from home or in the office.

One of our clients recently lost 3 working days due to what should have been a simple update. They hadn’t done anything wrong but something in the update failed and corrupted the operating system. If the data had been backed up recently it would have been easy to restore files. Regardless of all of this the most important thing is to take action.”  explains Graham.

Asses your back up karma quota!

Give yourself 1 point for knowing any of the following:

1. Who in your company, backs up the data?

2. If you lost a file – would you know who to call?

3. Do you know if you have off-site back-ups?

How did you fare?

 

Here’s our step by step guide to getting you backed up!

Step 1. Find out who is responsible in the company for backing up data (you would be surprised to find out how often even an IT department in a company doesn’t cover this essential service) Don’t assume a thing! Everyone may be assuming its YOU! Put someone in charge if you don’t have an IT Department or IT Manager to get the ball rolling.

Step 2. Put a system in place. Make sure your backup will protect all your important data – not just your business documents and files, but critical applications and your email too.  Look for a solution that backs up the complete machine along with files and folders.

You can use a mix of solutions we recommend:

– Invest in a good external hard drive (recommend changing every 6 months) Store it away from your laptop so you can be sure to retrieve if it gets lost or stolen, good of day-to-day recovery.

– Store you data to the cloud. (usually involves a small monthly fee) Simple online storage that can be recovered back to any location when needed. However there are size limitations and could ultimately be more costly the more data you need to store.

– Managed Cloud service – where all your data runs from the cloud, and is backed up in the cloud. This is scalable and flexible to your business with a monthly fee reflecting this.

Step3. Manage the system

– Verify : When backing there is an option called “verify” which after your back up is complete it will check there are no corruptions

–Set Auto – After the 1st initial back up, you can set up regular auto back-ups that will save and store the data incrementally as you add to it. Incremental backups save disk space by only storing what has been changed or added since your previous backup

–Clean it up! Deleting all unnecessary information first your back up will run a lot quicker – empty the Recycle Bin and delete temporary files if you don’t want them any more.

–Store physical backups carefully, getting outdated – make sure your physical backups, such as external hard drives, USBs and DVDs, are stored properly away from heat, sun, moisture and electro-magnetic fields that can damage them.  Don’t store them with your laptop – if it is stolen, the thief might take your backups too.

–Backup before you install  ANY new programs, updates or drivers, taking a full backup of the system makes sense. If anything goes wrong, you can overcome any problems by rolling back to the full backup.

Step 4. Check the system often!

Back up regularly

 

Nuage Technology are expert at providing a Cloud based back-up service for your data that is managed and automatic. We can also help advise on what back-up solutions are right for your business.