The Reality

Industry statistics show that:

  • The average company spends between $100,000 and $1,000,000 per year on data disasters
  • Nearly 70% of data loss is the result of human error
  • 60% of companies that lose their data will shut down within 6 months of the loss
  • 140,000 hard drives crash in the U.S. weekly

The impact of a data breach can be enormous. Not only can it be a security threat, but the data can also be held for ransom, corrupted, or lost. Ensuring that you have the proper security solutions – including a backup strategy – in place will help reduce the impact of a recovery in the event of a breach or failure.

Backup Strategy Challenges

Challenges for establishing a solid backup strategy include:

1. Making sure you are staffed properly to manage the backups effectively

2. Testing the backups for data verification/validation

3. Documenting the plan

4. Testing the plan on a regular basis

Purpose of a Backup Strategy 

Backup is more than simply copying data for restore and recovery purposes. Backups are used for the following reasons:

1. Disaster Recovery – to restore production data to an operation state after a disaster

2. Operational – to restore data in the event of a data loss or corruption through routine processing

3. Archival – to preserve transaction records, email, and other data for a regulatory compliance

Questions to Consider

When considering your backup plan, you should ask the following questions:

1. When was the last time you tested a restore of your data?

If the answer is never or months, think about a business scenario that would be impacted if you could not retrieve that data again – it’s gone forever!

2. What is the financial impact of lost data?

Try to calculate what the financial impact would be if you lost your data.

3. Can you recover from a failed system in minutes, or does it take you hours, or even days?

Plan out each duration to understand the impact on your business:

If it takes minutes to restore your data, most likely you are okay

If it takes hours to restore your data, you might need to consider which data to restore first

If it takes days, you should focus on improving your backup strategy

4. How could this effect your credibility?

For example, if you are a CPA firm and retain your client’s data, you could lose your client and reputation if data is lost due to a backup failure.

5. If you have compliance regulations to adhere to, how would you track this for the auditors? Could you be fined?

If an event occurs and you have been stating you are in compliance, the challenge could be proving it.

Want to test your backup strategy? Let us give you a hand.