Backups are one of the most important things you can do to keep your company safe. In fact, 93% of companies go bankrupt after a prolonged data loss event! This is such a large issue that can be easily prevented by having a proper backup plan in place. Most companies do not have any sort of backup in place for their critical data, and if they do, it is hardly ever maintained. Just from our experience when talking to business owners we find that 9 times out of 10 nobody is checking on the backups, and there are failures and errors on a daily basis. In a recent meeting we found that a prospective customer’s data had not been backed up for five years!
With today’s changing landscape of technology being an integral part of every business, large or small, there must be a plan in place to restore your business in case of a disaster. Cyber Attacks continue to plague businesses and governments, and they are only increasing daily. If your business does happen to encounter a cyber-attack, there is a 60% chance of going completely out of business afterwards. You may have all the best protections in place, but there is always a chance of being hit with a cyber-attack rendering your business data and systems unavailable. That is why it is so important to have backups in place to restore from.
Restore Methods
When you look at things like ransomware encrypting all data, data being deleted or a disaster happening which can completely wipe out your data, it is particularly important to have backups in place. Our solution for this is to do a full back up to the cloud of your server image. What this means is that a running copy of your server is captured, stored to a file, and sent off to the cloud. In the event of a disaster, we can easily use that server image to start a new server in the cloud, and grant access to your employees to that cloud server. This cloud server will have all of your files, applications, and user profiles running exactly the same way it was when the server was running at your physical location. No matter what happens, you can rest assured that your server including your data, line of business applications and authentication method will still be in place, even in the worst-case scenarios.
Another common scenario is a deleted or lost file. In the event that this happens, whether it be on your local computer, your server, or office 365 environment, this can easily be restored by using a cloud backup solution. A regular support issue that comes into our help desk is one that involves restoring a file that someone deleted on accident. Instead of re-creating that file from scratch that someone forgot to save, or accidentally deleted, we can restore it from the last backup instead.
Disaster Recovery
Part of any good Disaster Recovery (DR) plan is implementing a plan, process, and solution to prepare for a disaster. Many things can qualify as a disaster, but we are specifically talking about events that can disrupt or stop critical business operations for a period of time.
Types of disasters can include:
- Cyber Attack
- Ransomware
- Power outage
- Equipment failure
- Terrorist Attacks
- Industrial Accidents
- Hurricanes
- Tornadoes
- Earthquakes
- Fires
In the event that a disaster occurs such as these, it is necessary to execute the plan to restore data and business services to keep your business running. A solution that a Managed Service Provider (MSP) can help build should be one that allows your data to be restored quickly and your line of business applications restored and operational as quickly as possible. A common scenario would be to restore your servers to the cloud, allow your users to access those servers, and restore all the data to the servers. That way your users can work from anywhere they please, and your systems can continue to operate in the cloud. At Sirius Office Solutions not only have we implemented these types of Disaster Recovery solutions, but we also test to ensure the restore path is functional and have had numerous successful restores after disasters.
Schedule with us now to see how we can help keep your critical data safe and give you peace of mind.
