Managing a small business can often be overwhelming. You are mostly left to yourself to handle your IT with limited time and fewer resources for support. If you are a small business owner in Tempe, one of the troubles you can face is hardware failure and the resultant data loss.
A recent survey among SMBs reveals that 38% of IT downtime can be attributed to hardware failures, while 36% were due to human errors, and 30% due to natural calamities.
This makes data backup and disaster recovery services by an IT consulting company a necessity. It ensures that your business can continue working even after a disaster.
Data today is the new oil! No business can afford to compromise its need for data availability at any point in time. For example, a trading business facing a ransomware attack or a hospital with a power outage cannot possibly run without access to business-critical data, even for a few minutes.
In short, every small business must invest in data backup and disaster recovery services.
But the good news is that the new generation of IT-managed services cater to backup and disaster recovery for businesses of every size! In the unforeseen event of a natural disaster or human-made disruption, these professionals ensure you get access to your critical data, thereby assuring business continuity.
What Happens If You Fail To Invest In Backup and Disaster Recovery?
- Your business ends up suffering from costly downtime.
When your business systems are down, you bleed money. Even a simple outage can prove expensive for your organization. It is estimated that a small business can lose $20,000 for every hour of downtime. And this is the minimum amount.
Add this to the fact that one downtime incident can take up to 200 minutes for a small business to handle. Further, unexpected downtimes can severely impact your customer retention and business reputation. In a survey conducted by Infrascale, at least 37% of C-level executives of SMBs confirm that they have lost customers due to business disruption from downtimes.
These numbers just go on to illustrate an important fact. By investing in a specialist IT consulting company, you can reduce the impact of these downtimes and maintain business continuity which is vital for any thriving business.
- You are prone to cyber-attacks.
As SMBs become more integrated with technology and more employees store and access data, the company is more prone to cyberattacks. According to a recent report published in The Guardian, nearly 46% of SMBs have been the targets of some kind of ransomware attack in the past year.
Further, with the ongoing pandemic forcing employees to work from home, your company data is exposed to several home networks that might be easy targets for hackers and cybercriminals. Your workforce may also remain ignorant of the best ways to avoid such incidents. When you don’t have the protective shield of strong data backup and disaster recovery practices, these attacks can virtually destroy the very foundation of your business.
- You lack a plan B.
As a modern business, you would be used to creating, storing, and sharing volumes of data every day. As a result, there are myriad ways it can be lost, corrupted, or stolen ranging from a human error to hardware failure. With no data backup and disaster recovery procedure in place, you lack a plan B – a plan that can deal with compromised or lost data.
What are the best practices for data backup and recovery?
In the 21st century, data runs a business. It means the demand for data security is high. As more and more small businesses rely on high volumes of digital data, backup solutions are becoming increasingly crucial, along with a disaster recovery strategy. These practices include several factors:
- Securing data from malicious attacks and human mistakes
- Remedy for any situation that leads to data loss or corruption
- Having a solution for a quick recovery and business continuity, should a disaster strike
Despite the adverse impact of business downtimes, around 27% of the B2C participants in an Infrascale Survey have confirmed that their business is totally unprepared for an unforeseen downtime.
Therefore, the first step towards a good disaster recovery strategy is to ensure failsafe procedures to secure business-critical data. With that in mind, we now dive into the best practices a business in Tempe should follow.
Data Backup and Security – Best Practices Advised By IT Consulting Company
- Have a well-documented plan.
Create a procedure with written rules on how your team must deal with business data security. The plan will give you a step-by-step guide in your hour of need, plus keep everyone accountable. This makes your data more secure. Ensure that you maintain detailed logs of data backup, and these are checked periodically.
- Place sensitive data on priority.
Know what types of data you collect and store. Categorize it in order of sensitivity. Understand the types of data backed up and what steps are being taken to keep it protected. Also, be aware of all employees who have access to such data and have adequate user authentication protocols to prevent unauthorized access.
- Never ignore a planned data backup.
Data security cannot be a random affair. Once a backup is planned, stick to the schedule and do not postpone it. It is not a negotiable business responsibility because disasters can’t be predicted.
- Do periodic checks of backup.
As important as it is to back up your data, it is equally important to validate if the backups are effective. This ensures that you are backing up accurate data, and when disaster recovery procedures are implemented, you will have access to updated information, and not old, useless data. So, examine the backed-up data frequently.
- The backup must be in another location.
A data backup is effective only when it is in another location. Offsite servers are the best option because they are protected if a disaster strikes your main site. It allows you to recover data and get the core functionality of your business running again.
Pick the Right Partner for Data Backup and Disaster Recovery.
Data backup and disaster recovery is a major responsibility. When you do it on your own, it may seem complicated and time-consuming. This is why it’s essential to partner with experts on the job who can help you tide over these data management challenges.
We are one of Tempe’s leading IT consulting companies, offering comprehensive data backup and disaster recovery services. We help you keep your data secure at all times so that you can focus on running your business. And if a catastrophe happens, we ensure our disaster recovery procedures kick in to maintain your business continuity.
Regardless of your company’s size, our solutions are cost-effective and imbibe proven disaster recovery practices that can always keep your business up and running.
Get in touch with CMIT Solutions today, and allow us to empower you with effective backup and disaster recovery solutions.
