The Importance Of Backing Up Your IT Infrastructure: A Complete Guide

The importance of backup

Backing up a company’s data is an essential process to ensure business continuity, protect against human errors, hardware failures, virus attacks, power outages and natural disasters. In this article, we’ll explore the importance of backing up your IT infrastructure, the different backup methods available, and how to choose the best solution for your business.

What is data backup?

Data backup is a process of making copies of scanned data and other business information in case the data is corrupted, deleted or lost. These backup copies can then be used to restore or recover your data for business continuity and disaster recovery.

Why is it important to back up data?

There are several reasons why data backup is important:

Protection against cyberattacks:  With cyberattacks on the rise, it is crucial to have a data backup and recovery solution. Even if your system is compromised or encrypted by ransomware, you can restore your data from your backups without giving in to blackmail from cybercriminals.

Cost Savings:  Losing data can be costly, especially if you have to recreate the lost data from scratch. Additionally, downtime caused by data loss can negatively affect your business’s revenue.

Reduced outages or downtime:  Data loss can significantly disrupt your business operations. With data backups, you can easily restore recent copies of your data, minimizing downtime.

Maintaining customer trust:  Losing customer data can harm your business reputation and the trust your customers place in you. A well-designed backup strategy shows that you take data security seriously.

The Most Common Data Backup Methods

There are several methods of data backup, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The choice of method depends on the specific needs of your business.

Cloud backup

Cloud storage is a great way to create online backups . This service can store files, photos or any other type of data. You can access your backups from any computer or mobile device with an internet connection. You can use cloud storage providers such as Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, Backblaze, iDrive and Microsoft OneDrive.

Backup on physical media

Not all media are suitable for data backup. The best external media are the external hard drive and the NAS (Network Attached Storage). These media offer large storage capacity and are generally more reliable than other storage media.

Risks associated with not saving data

Failing to backup your company’s data can result in numerous risks, including loss of important strategic data, reduced employee productivity, partial or total shutdown of company activity and loss of trust with suppliers. , customers and partners.

How to organize your business data backups?

To efficiently organize your data backups, it is crucial to respect the 3-2-1 rule. This rule consists of ensuring that you always have three copies of your data, which must be as recent as possible and which must be updated regularly. You must also use two different media to back up these copies, and finally keep a global backup of the data on an off-site medium, completely independent of your corporate network.

Backup techniques and media: what are the possibilities?

There are many data backup systems, each with their advantages and disadvantages. Once your data has been correctly mapped and prioritized in order of importance, it is important to define regular update periods for your backups. It is also possible to automate this process, depending on the solution chosen.

Data backups on physical media

Physical media such as external hard drives and NAS servers are popular options for data backup.

Data backup in the cloud

Cloud backup provides a permanently accessible, off-site solution . In addition, you can store and retrieve your data on remote servers, via the internet.

Cloud backup: be careful!

If you decide to back up your data in the cloud, it is important to choose a reliable cloud service provider that meets data security standards and has backup solutions in case of an incident on its own servers.

Backup on physical media and data backup in the cloud: two complementary solutions

It is recommended to combine physical media backups and cloud backups simultaneously. This strategy provides additional security that will allow you to quickly resume your activity with up-to-date data.

Choosing the backup solution: Veeam Backup & Replication

Veeam Backup & Replication is backup software that allows you to automate your backups on all media, whether physical or in the cloud. This software offers a reliable and easy-to-use solution for managing your backups.

The importance of backing up your IT infrastructure for SMEs

Cloud backup is a cost-effective solution for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). It offers enhanced security, data centralization, ease of use and scalable storage capacity.

Also Read : The Way To Intelligent Data Management In The Cloud