Your company’s electronic data is an important business asset. Protect it by making backups. Backups are copies of vital information that is stored on at least one other storage device besides the one that generated it.

Who Needs Backups?

Every business should have duplicate copies of critical business data. Critical business data includes:

• Client databases
• Email servers
• Accounting data
• Personnel records
• Legal records
• HR files

How Should Your Store Your Data?

Once you have decided to create backups, you need to decide whether to make them onsite or offsite. Each option has advantages and disadvantages that you should consider.

Onsite storage – all of your critical business records will be backed up to a storage device such as tape drive, hard drive, or DVD through a program such as Symantec’s BackupExec which is installed on a server.

Advantages

• Your company would have immediate access to data.
• When you need it, you can rapidly restore data from a backup.

Disadvantages

• Media must be rotated regularly.
• It is difficult remember to rotate media.
• Media should be moved offsite for long term.

Offsite storage – all of your important data will be stored securely offsite in a protected data center. This is good for companies that are physically located in regions that might be impacted by natural disasters. Iron Mountain Digital and VaultLogix are reliable offsite backup providers.

Advantages

• Data is stored in a secure offsite location.
• Data backup is fully automated on a convenient schedule that won’t impact your business.
• Most offsite backup solutions will ship media overnight to your business if your company needs to do a complete server restoration.

Disadvantages

• Data restoration times can be impacted by the size of the files needed and by the available bandwidth of your internet service provider.
• Offsite storage can be expensive.

Which Solution is Best for Your Business?

Take the time to consider your company’s data needs before choosing which storage method is best. Onsite backups are often suitable for companies that have immense files to backup because online backups could take too long complete. Offsite backups are good choice for companies that have a large number of small documents that are frequently modified. Some small businesses would benefit from adopting both backup methods.

To learn more about the best data backup solution for your company, contact All Covered.

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