What is Disaster Recovery, and Why Are Data Backups So Important?

Hacking and data interception are, unfortunately, growing more and more sophisticated. Cyber attacks occur, on average, every 39 seconds. What’s more, it is SMEs who are some of the most common targets for such attacks. Any good business continuity plan should have some form of strategy in place to protect data. Whether it’s financial details, private customer information or otherwise, disaster recovery has become a crucial facet of all responsible corporate operations.

What is Disaster Recovery?

Think about some of the worst-case scenarios that your business could face from day-to-day. You could experience a complete systems blackout, and lose months and months of important work. A data leak could cause your information to be wiped, or fall into the wrong hands. What’s more, a sinister attack could erase your important data or could result in some of the information you keep being held to ransom.

The fact of the matter is, disaster recovery makes sure you are always ready to fight back against the worst-possible case scenarios. That means, even if data does go missing, or even permanently erased, you can bounce back within a matter of minutes. You owe it to your reputation, as well as your customers, clients and staff, to make sure you have a recovery plan in place. Otherwise, you may be required to start your operation all over again from scratch.

Backing Up Your Data

Backing up your data means doing more than simply saving your files twice. It means being smart about how you store your data backups. You need to have a strategy or plan in place which can allow for your data to be easily restored at short notice. By short notice, we mean with immediate effect. But what’s wrong with just storing your data on-site, on one or two hard drives?

There is plenty wrong with this approach. A good disaster recovery plan will ensure that the data you save for the future is completely encrypted. That means, with the help of a recovery or IT professional, your information can be placed under complete lockdown, impossible for would-be intruders to access. Therefore, even if your primary data is compromised, your secondary and tertiary backups won’t be.

On-Site or Off-Site Recovery?

There are arguments for storing data backups on-site and off-site. There is a common misconception that storing your data on-site means you have instant access to your data at all times, complete control over your data and that this is the most secure solution. Storing them off-site, via the cloud, however, puts a third party in charge of your data and you may not know the whereabouts or security of it. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Cloud hosted platforms remove the risk of your physical data corrupting due to reasons such as ageing hardware or the possibility of losing your data in a disaster scenario such as a fire or flooding. All reputable Cloud providers replicate your data across datacentres to provide an added layer of security and reduce the risk of downtime due to hardware failure.

We recommend an approach whereby you store data backups both on-site and off-site. Access to the cloud can be easy and instantaneous through various apps and devices. However, you should also feel free to have access to your own data on-site, too. There are clear benefits to both backup storage methods, though a blend of the two generally never goes amiss.

Here at AAG IT Services we will be happy to propose data backup strategies to you, tailored to your specific needs as well as your budgets. Therefore, you can always be assured that you are signing up for a disaster recovery plan which directly benefits you, your team and your clients.

Think About Reputation

We always advise people to think carefully about how much they are willing to risk when it comes to not using disaster recovery plans. Not having some form of disaster recovery strategy in place means you are open to various attacks, any of which could happen without you realising it. You may have a secure and efficient IT infrastructure up and running already. However, it makes basic common sense to ensure that you are backed up in the unlikely event something goes wrong.

You cannot bury your head in the sand when it comes to data interception or loss. There are statistics that clearly show that businesses are under threat of malicious attacks and data wiping than ever before. Up to 30% of UK businesses don’t have a plan in place for disaster recovery. This is a shocking statistic – particularly as data backup strategies and disaster recovery plans are cost-effective and easy to set up. There is absolutely no risk in getting started. However, there is an incredible risk in continuing to trade without protection.

If your business loses data or suffers an attack that results in data loss or stealth, you’re going to need to rebuild your brand. What if this was sensitive customer information? What if this was financial records or work you had already completed going back years? You need to have a solid, reliable disaster recovery plan in place which will jump into action should you ever need it.

Why Backup with AAG?

AAG is a brand that is synonymous with IT security. We’ve worked closely with businesses of all shapes and sizes over the years to enhance and improve security standards. By default, we encourage enterprises to set up recovery plans which can be remotely triggered. We make sure to carefully and closely understand your business’ journey. We can also run a complete audit of your existing IT strategy. We will be more than happy to make affordable, practical recommendations for safer, more efficient operations moving forward.

We want all our clients to have the freedom to run their businesses without having to worry about security threats. Therefore, we offer a seamless, flexible and affordable service. We can be your on-call allies for all IT concerns, and what’s more, we will run our operations wholly in the background. Therefore, you will always be free to continue running your business while we protect it in real-time.

Need help setting up data backups? Unsure of the worth of disaster recovery? Get in touch with our team and let’s discuss things further. Email us via web form, or call us on 0114 303 0249 to get started.