Month: January 2020

Data Backup & RecoveryWhat steps have you taken to protect your data?

In both personal and professional life, there are many different “backups” that can bail you out of trouble.

Some great examples are the spare tyre in your trunk or the spare batteries in the bottom draw. It’s crucial to ensure that your anchors have redundancies, if one part comes to nought the other parts will secure you.

So, how are you backing up your data?

With data, backup can guarantee the survival of your business. Now, let us list the top five reasons why businesses must have a suitable data backup solution in 2020.

#1 – Effortless Recovery

No one is perfect.

Some people will make mistakes occasionally, others quite often. Virus-infected emails are opened each day and crucial information is often deleted by mistake. These failings should not trouble you if you keep a backup of your system.

With backed up data, it is easy to restore the latest backup of your system before the virus infection occurred. Also, you can recover a document from a prior time to when it was deleted.

Remember, it is straightforward to guard against minor problems while still having the advantage of being ready for major issues.

But without backup, minor issues became major headaches.

#2 – Audits, Taxes, and Archives

A lot of organisations are required to maintain their organisational records for lengthy periods by various regulations or for tax reasons.

This makes it easy to go back a few years and refresh your memory if necessary, explains the tax experts at Robinson Accounting. They explain “it can be reckless to place all the faith in your computers and assume they are sufficient as they have kept data from the past few years. In many cases, maintaining one single copy of your information is playing with fire. The peace of mind of knowing you are tax compliant is truly priceless.”

Ensuring that you backup critical business information at an offsite location can save you a lot if something happens to the local data. Remember, regulatory and tax authorities will not listen to your claims of a data disaster. To them this is an excuse, they will deem you non-compliant and you may be forced to pay costly fines.

#3 – Competitive Edge

Backups can lead to businesses establishing an advantage over their competition.

In case an unforeseen disaster happens, the first business to restart its operations will attract the customers of those businesses that have not yet resumed operations. Failure to have a plan means that your business is doomed.

Proper planning guarantees that your business will continue running and be open to customers from firms that were closed by the data disaster.

#4 – Costly Downtime

A 2007 study by the University of Texas indicated that 43% of firms that experience a major data loss, cease operating.

A majority of these businesses end up shutting their operations completely within a two-year time frame from their data calamity. Moreover, major data loss situations aren’t always the cause of a disaster.

Human actions can wreck a business by overlooking important procedures or committing silly mistakes. Mother nature is not responsible for all data mishaps.

Ensuring that you frequently back up your data and implementing a robust backup and disaster recovery strategy can minimise the risk of these threats. Your business can be one of the few that emerges from a data disaster unscathed.

#5 – Doing Work Twice

‘Do it right the first time’ is the primary rule of work.

If you experience a minor data issue and you lack backups, you may get back certain information but you are not certain of the precise data you recover. In any case, you’ll be overwhelmed by the work that will have to be done to restore system settings, recreate documents and spreadsheets that have been worked on for months by employees or you.

Anxiety counsellor Glen Munt notes that this can have a flow on effect on mental health. He explains “doing the same work twice isn’t just a hit to your productivity, it can also generate feelings of anxiety and reduce confidence. This can create spirals where work continues to suffer, even after the work has been completed.”

To make matters worse, a large data loss can necessitate designing and creating all the business systems, documents and data from scratch which is an insurmountable challenge for many companies.

Are you looking to protect your data and safeguard your future? Contact the team at Benchmark IT Services for a FREE quote.
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Written by: James Hunter