Data is valuable to businesses. It is literally customer information that your business needs for its continuity. Statistics show that 58% of small businesses are not usually prepared for data loss. In other reports, 60% of the companies that lose their data do not survive six months after the incident. It is not in vain that business owners go the extra mile to hire IT services in Atlanta to take care of their data backup needs.
Not only do you need to have a backup strategy to safeguard the continuity of your business, but you also need to employ the best data backup and recovery practices:
Do Backups Regularly
Do not wait until your data piles up for you to do a backup. Make your backup regular. No one can predict when disaster will strike. However, you need to be prepared when it does. A regular backup will not only ensure that all your data is safe at all times but also make the process less tedious and more effective.
Use Remote Storage
If you consult IT services providers in Atlanta, you will be advised not to depend solely on on-site data storage. If anything, you need to employ the 3-2-1 backup rule. It suggests that you should have three copies of data, have two in different storage media and one off-site. This will go a long way in eliminating the single point of failure.
Ensure that Your Backup is Encrypted
Studies show that data is more vulnerable when it is in motion than at rest. If you are looking to store your data in the cloud, it is essential to encrypt it to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks during the backup process. Also, encryption of data wards off manipulation. You will find your data exactly how you left it. Ensure that the providers of backup and disaster recovery in Atlanta you work with encrypt their client’s data.
Test Your Data Backup
You can imagine the disappointment that you can get when you try to do a recovery and realize that it is not available or it has been corrupted. Data is only as good as the last backup. To prevent such incidences, it is important to once in a while test if your backup is still in good shape. With that, you will be able to identify a problem with the backup and fix it before it is too late.
That is not all. Testing your backup also helps you estimate your downtime if disaster strikes. As a result, you will be able to determine how long it will take to do recovery and get back to normal operations and, come up with strategies that will help in mitigating the situation.
Conclusion
Protection of data is essential for all businesses, big and small. For more information on data backup and recovery or other IT services in Atlanta, contact us at MIS Solutions, Inc. today.