321… Backups
Protect your business and customers with 321 Backups.
You don’t need us to tell you that your data is crucial to your business’s successful and safe running because, without it, you’ll lose your customer contacts, sales opportunities, accounts, product inventories, staff HR and welfare information, and years of hard work.
Not only that, but you also must protect personal data from loss by law under the GDPR. The GDPR requires that data be “processed in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data, including protection against unauthorised or unlawful processing and accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organisational measures”.
Not having a solid backup strategy is like driving your car and gambling with the fuel light on the motorway, so let’s explore why and how to back up your data..
What can cause data loss?
Hackers / Cyber Criminals – They’re in it for the money and could hold you to ransom to sell your data back to you or sell your data on the dark web.
Staff – Untrained or disgruntled staff could delete or destroy data in systems not protected by professional security measures and backups. Untrained staff unwittingly allow in cybercriminals.
Poor Security – poorly configured user accounts, network policies, quick fixes designed to make life easier, unpatched devices and all make your data susceptible to attack or loss.
Hardware Failure – Sometimes hardware breaks and the hard drive in your server or security chip on your laptop may render your data lost.
Anything else… power cuts, flood or fire damage, break-ins.
How do we back up data properly?
There Is no single answer to this question, but we’re here to guide and support you through this process.
In line with best practice and UK government guidance to schools, we implement a 321 approach to backup process.
3 Copies of your key data – There is no hard and fast rule about how you make three copies of your data.
2 different places. Keeping your data in two physical locations is critical to ensuring you’ve always got access to a set of data clean, undamaged backups.
1 being offsite. This ensures that if physical damage or theft occurs on your premises, a fresh data set will be secured elsewhere and form part of your business continuity actions. Encryption helps to protect the data from theft whilst offsite.
What might you need to back up?
Servers: If you have one onsite, servers are core to your computer network and must be backed up using backup software and a simple routine to rotate disks and upload data to a cloud storage platform.
Laptops / Computers: If you’re guilty of storing files and folders locally on your devices, you should consider switching to a cloud solution because this will enable auto-save on your documents and keep copies for you. Sometimes for 90 days.
Tablets / Phones – If you use your phone as a contact book, you’ll need to back it up; it’s easy because both Apple and Google (Android) phones do this for free.
Website – Yes, if you don’t want to pay to have it redeveloped or lose potential new business through downtime. Your provider may be able to help with this service. Often, website hosting providers do not offer backups as a default.
CRM, Accounts and other packages: Often, these systems are cloud-based and offer robust SLAs around backups and data restoration. Sometimes, they don’t. You will need to take regular backups if they’re hosted on a server or device on your premises.
What else can you do to protect your data?
Have you trained your staff to be Cyber Security aware?
Staff awareness is key to data protection. Are they checking and implementing your backup routines? Do you pay a 3rd party to do that for you?
Consider rolling out targeted User Awareness training; watch this short video to find out more. If you like what you see, get in touch: [email protected]
We will fix your backups.
Get in touch for a no-obligation discussion about backups and data protection: [email protected] or Contact Us.
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