Imagine walking into your home, turning on the light switch, and…pop! The light bulb burned out and you were left in the dark. If you are ready, you can use some replacement bulbs to restore the light. Otherwise, maybe you have at least one candle in your drawer somewhere to help light up the space.
This situation is similar to the risks faced by many small businesses during the data backup process. . Business owners already have many things to worry about. Coupled with possible events, such as sudden data loss, it can become overwhelming.
We understand.
But not considering the best data backup can also lead you to choose a cheap backup system, or even none at all. While in some cases, an inexpensive backup system may be sufficient, it is not the case for most small businesses, and it may fail you in multiple ways when you need it most.
Companies should carefully consider their choices when choosing. .It requires a little foresight and a little cynicism. No one wants to think about natural disasters or cyber attacks that affect their business, but not preparing for it is a disaster in itself.
As a business owner, you must ask yourself: “If this happens, what is the answer? What steps are involved? How long will it take to recover? How much productivity will we lose? How much will it cost us?”
Suddenly, the big picture became clear. When you need a backup, you need everything, and it needs to be fast.
But before deciding to use low-cost backup systems, it is important to understand the pitfalls of these systems and what they mean to your business priorities. These deficiencies are critical, because when the system fails, you need to know: “Will I replace the light bulb or will I be kept in the dark?”
1. File synchronization is not a backup.
Use some cheap data backup solutions. The enterprise does not really Back up their data. Instead, they synchronize the files to a separate platform. This means that they do not completely copy key files to another physical space, but have a mirror image of the data.
Deleted the file accidentally? If so, your file synchronization will also delete the file. Are critical files infected or damaged? If so, the affected files will be copied to your file synchronization. However, some free backup systems allow you to save deleted files in the recycle bin for up to 30 days.
The important thing is that a high-quality backup system stores snapshot images of the file system, which you can restore when needed. When you realize that you lost an important file a few weeks ago, you can usually restore the system to a preset point and retrieve the file.
File synchronization should not be your complete backup solution, but it can be a good supplement. If you lose your computer, synchronizing files is great, but it won’t help you in case of file corruption or content editing that you don’t want.
The ideal backup strategy is to add dedicated backup software, let you decide how many file revisions you want to keep, and provide you with a separate path to recover from what you use every day. This allows you to return to the state you want, not just the state allowed by the synchronization tool.
2. Bandwidth is expensive
Suppose a small and medium-sized enterprise stores about 5 terabytes of critical business information in their backups. With inexpensive backup options, companies must upload all this data via an Internet connection.
Users who know their Internet speed usually know their download speed. However, Internet service providers (ISPs) usually don’t advertise upload speeds in advance, for good reasons. High upload speeds are expensive, and advertising these fees does not help ISPs sell them.
Because businesses often have asymmetric Internet speeds, it is difficult to realize how long it will take to simply load 5TB of data into cheap backups. Even with an upload speed of 100 Mb per second, uploading these data takes more than 5 days.
This lack of loading speed is two-way. When a disaster strikes and your business needs to restore backups from the service, you are now confident in how fast the service will load.
Consider all the development, marketing, support, and distribution costs of unlimited dollar backup software. Every month 3. Do you think they have the funds to reinvest in fast upload speeds and fast access to data?
Maybe not.
You may not be able to download data at a rate of 1 or 2 Mb per second, waiting about 8 to 9 months to recover. Serving. This doesn’t sound feasible, does it?
3. Cyber Threats
It is very dangerous to be discovered without a complete backup plan. Although spending more on backups does not guarantee that they will prevent cyber attacks, having appropriately licensed backups will provide more options for your plan.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to backup or network security, so neither will a single, cheap backup.
In addition to Internet or cloud backup, physical offline backup can also be considered. Keeping a completely separate offline backup or so-called “air-gap backup” will prevent any external entity from accessing your backup via the Internet.
4. Limited Recovery Testing
Perhaps the most important aspect of backed up data is knowing that it will be recovered. Testing backups can be time-consuming, and most inexpensive backup programs do not include programmatic restore testing.
If a disaster occurs and your business backups cannot be restored, it will not make sense from the beginning.
Brand reputation is not the deciding factor. Downtime is the only way to derail a business. Data loss can also lead to regulatory and compliance issues and potential litigation. The test verifies that all necessary information has been successfully captured, restored and backed up without damage. If you don’t test the backup first, you won’t be able to understand any potential problems in advance.
Although the automatic recovery test cannot be compared with the manually supervised recovery test, it is an important tool that can greatly limit your risk of data loss. Manual restoration testing may consume countless hours of your technical resources. Unless you plan to monitor the progress of your backups over the weekend, you will want to take advantage of the automation provided in more powerful tools or services.
The following is a list of tasks that should be performed for each backup when following the best practices for verification testing:
1. Scan the backup for viruses before restoring (may take 30 minutes to more than 5 hours)
2. Restoring the backup in an isolated laboratory environment (30- 60 minutes, if the laboratory environment has been built)
3. After restoration, scan the restored backup for viruses (30 minutes to more than 5 hours)
4. Test the integrity of data, applications, databases and operating systems (2 to 10 hours)
5. Report results ( Time will vary)
At best, as long as you follow best practices, automatic verification of backups can save you 3 1/2 hours each time.
The time required to manually verify backups may wipe out the cost savings promised by cheap backups. Since 2006, IT Support Guys has invested more than $1 million in our active monitoring system, including backup monitoring and testing.
Arrange and perform backups through ITSG, you will also have dedicated personnel to monitor your tests, and we will know if there are any problems before you need to back up.
The Bottom Line
Cheap backup systems can be used as collaboration and file sharing services, but they should not be used as a company’s primary backup solution. These options by themselves do not provide the necessary features to protect the enterprise from data loss or cybercriminals, and may cost more in the long run.