Even though backups are hardly seen as an exciting activity, the statistics show encouraging signs. In 2008, 35% of computer users admitted to never making any backups. Fast forward to 2022, and the number has fallen to 20%.
Of course, there’s still a lot of room for improvement. There are signs that businesses are beginning to prioritise backups. If anything, they are starting to make backups, business continuity, and disaster recovery a key part of their operational strategies.
Geshan Naicker, IT manager at Itec shares business and consumer-relevant tips on keeping your data safe:
Business tips
For corporate users, it also depends on the maturity of their company when it comes to business continuity and disaster recovery services. However, it is critical to be proactive as responding to disasters can be costly, time-consuming, and decrease productivity.
While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to follow, here are some proactive tips to consider keeping your business ahead of the curve when it comes to backups:
* Define a backup strategy: You must have a clear idea of which data to backup, how often to backup, and where to store backups. Your backup strategy should be aligned with your business requirements and compliance regulations.
* Use automated backup tools: Thanks to the availability of advanced tools companies can now ‘set and forget’ their backups. Auto-saving has become par for the course today.
* Choose the right backup media: Select the appropriate backup media that meets your data retention requirements and storage capacity. Whether it’s on-premises or in the cloud, your backup media should always be secure, reliable, and easily accessible.
* Use encryption: It’s essential to encrypt your backup data to protect it from unauthorised access or theft. Cyber-attacks have become more sophisticated, so you must ensure that your data is adequately protected.
* Test backups regularly: This is probably one of the things many companies forget. Regularly test your backups to ensure that they are reliable and recoverable. In this way, you can quickly identify any issues before they result in data loss.
* Keep multiple copies of backups: Maintain multiple copies of backups in different locations to protect against natural disasters, cyberattacks, or other unforeseen incidents.
* Train employees: The best backup strategy in the world means little if your employees aren’t trained on the proper backup procedures and best practices. You must make them aware of the importance of data backups especially at a time when many of them are working remotely.
If you’re a consumer, and all of us are, then making backups cannot be neglected.
The loss of training videos, event photos, confidential business documents or important apps due to a device failure, theft, or cyberattack is a frustration in itself and once lost, they are gone forever.
With reliable backups, here’s how to ensure that your data is always safe and accessible:
* Use cloud-based backup services: Cloud-based backup services such as Google Drive, iCloud, and Dropbox are convenient options that let you access your data from any device, and from anywhere you have an internet connection.
* Paying for additional storage: Paying for larger space in the cloud is another valuable option. Lots of people ignore the notifications when they out of space for weeks on end and then something happens and they lose their info.
* Enable automatic backups: Many of these cloud-based backup services have automatic backup features. This means your backups are taken care of daily without you having to manually initiate the process.
* Use backup software: Backup software such as Acronis True Image and Carbonite are powerful solutions that let you backup your data to an external hard drive or the cloud. They also have features like data encryption and compression, which can help protect your data and save storage space.
* Use external hard drives: External hard drives are a reliable and affordable option for backing up data. Make sure to use an external hard drive with enough storage capacity to store all your important data and keep it safely stored at a location other than your home.
* Keep your backups up to date: Regularly update your backups to ensure that you have the latest versions of your data. This is especially important if you have important work files or personal documents that you need to access quickly.
It is well worth the time to put basic steps in place to give you data- safe peace of mind.