Most organizations today, both large and small, rely on their information technology systems for business to the extent that data loss and system failure would be devastating. To alleviate these risks, organizations have invested in data backup systems with the expectation that by simply performing backups, their data will be safe.
Risks associated to system failure and data loss:
While your systems are down, do you know how much money you’re losing?
Do you know how to avoid downtime and data loss?
If your most important systems crashed tomorrow, how would that affect your business?
Unfortunately, as many organizations have painfully learned, improper backup processes have little to no protection over the ability of recovering data in the event of a system failure or other event. The purpose of this blog is to provide you with best practices for mitigating the risks surrounding backup and restoration of data. This will likely interest SMB organizations that typically have fewer IT resources at their disposal and even leaner IT budgets.
Organizations recognize that in order to maintain business continuity, they need to make data and system backups as a safeguard to unforeseen issues or events. These can range from catastrophic events, such as natural disasters, to small scale requirements such as individuals who need to restore a single file due to the original being lost or corrupt.
But what do you need to include in your backup strategy to ensure that:
- What truly needs to be backed up is being backed up
- The frequency of backups meets your business needs
- Sufficient backups are available historically
- Backup jobs/tasks are performing as expected
- There is proper security
- There is sufficient retention
- Capacity is properly monitored
- You can restore the systems and data to the expected state
- Regulatory and legal compliance requirements are being met
In fact, this list can keep going on. The point I would like to emphasize is that you need to step back and review your backup and restore processes to see if they are optimized and your organizations’ most important asset –
your data– is protected.
High Risk Situations
Data Backups Reside Onsite: For many organizations, their data backup resides onsite because the company does not have a remote / secondary location or data center to send it to. The high risk of this practice is quite alarming. The issues are many:
- Power outages, building fire, equipment failure would result in the loss of the backed up data
- Unsecured data remaining onsite can potentially be accessed by unauthorized personnel
Data Backups Residing with an IT Resource: Some organizations entrust their backup disks to an IT Manager who takes the disks home at night. What if he has a car accident and the disks are destroyed, his car is stolen and disks disappear and are accessed by unauthorized people breaching privacy policies, or whatever else your imagination can come up with.
Infrequent Data Backups: Some organizations have limited IT resources and do not manage their backups on a regular schedule. They may have one or two people who are also responsible for user support, business critical responsibilities, etc and data backups fall by the wayside or are incomplete.
Disorganized Backups: This scenario is a true nightmare. Unorganized, non-prioritized data seriously impacts recovery time. Imagine the IT manager is unreachable, on vacation, at a funeral, sick, left the company. No one else knows where to find the backed up data is. What will you do then?
Best Practices
You can address these high risk scenarios and look for secure, economical ways to store your backups, improve how it is stored and its location for fast and efficient recovery of the data if and when required. Here are a few important processes to prioritize:
- Offsite data backups
- Backup Management
- Controls
Finding the Right Storage Partner
One way to address your backups is to outsource them. Look for a service provider that has a storage facility close to your organization and is built to a Tier III standard. And, if it’s important to you, get a guarantee that the data will reside in Canada.
Benefits of a Tier III Data Center Storage Facility
- N+1 power. The building is specifically designed to ensure it will never lose power
- N+1 cooling. Server equipment will not overheat
- Always available, multi-carrier internet access
- N+1 power. The building is specifically designed to ensure it will never lose power
- Always available, multi-carrier internet access
- Highest levels of security, both physical and Network
- Software-Defined Applications and Infrastructure
- Corporate Image. Shows clients and stakeholders that you take the integrity of their information very seriously.
- Privacy. Not bound by US Patriot Act.
Data Recovery
Since the data will reside in an “always on” facility, it will always be accessible. The data backups will be managed by the provider and you will be able to plan RTO’s and RPO’s. Make sure to find a provider who will guarantee regular recovery testing too.
Benefits
- High data integrity
- Peace of mind
- Ability to recover at the push of a button
- Customer control over running your own recovery via a portal access and / or opening a ticket for this to be executed by your provider.
You may have thought that outsourcing your backups would cost you more than you can afford, but you would be surprised if you investigated and compared costs of managing it yourself vs. having a provider handle it for you. And lastly, what is your data worth to your organization? Can you afford to lose it?
Feel free to contact me to discuss your challenges and I will give you the inside track on best practices that would best serve your business needs and budget.
Paul Oh, VP, Technical Services
905.508.8489, ext. 303
