Why Is It So Important to Back-UP Your Data?

No matter what industry you work in, data probably drives the success of your business.

Data is the most important aspect of your computer. Computer hardware can fail, data can be corrupted, Computer can be a hack and infect Viruses, and Ransomware and computers can be lost, stolen, or destroyed. You may be able to reinstall operating systems and applications, but your original data could be lost forever.

Data backup software can help you protect and restore your data when something goes wrong. IS&T provides two service offerings at no charge to students, faculty, and staff for data backup:

Protecting Business Data: Backup Basics

Simply put, a data backup is just a copy of files from your computer or device. And, as clarified wih the several threats described above, keeping a backup of your important business files and data is essential for several important reasons.

Follower 3 2 1 Copies of Data Backup

• {3} Copies of your data (so no single event will destroy all copies
• {2} Different formats (i.e. disk, tape, cloud, etc.)
• {1} Copy offsite to protect against fire, flood, theft, and other physical disasters.

To give you an idea of available options that can help you implement, let’s take a look at some of the most common methods businesses use to back up data.

Local and Network Backups

One of the easiest ways to create backups of business data is to simply store copies of important files on hard drives, tape drives or other storage devices connected to your systems or network. Copying files to hard drives, USB flash drives, external drives, or other devices attached to individual systems or devices connected via a local or wide area network is an effective way of ensuring backups are available locally when you need them. With any good data recovery plan, keeping local copies of backups is essential. However, due to risks associated with physical disasters, ransomware, theft, and other threats, keeping local backups should never be the only facet of your strategy. In addition to keeping up-to-date local backups of your files and data, you should always store at least one copy offsite as is required (i.e. an offsite backup server or in the cloud.)

Cloud Backups

These days, it seems that wherever you turn, there is talk or news about businesses migrating to the cloud (or running software and systems remotely via the Internet.) And, backup solutions are no exception. In short, cloud backups are secure offsite copies of data that are stored on remote servers and accessed via an Internet connection. Cloud backups are an excellent option for providing additional redundancy and security for businesses that want to ensure their important data is available if and when onsite or physical data disasters strike.

Cloud Backups and Online File Storage Are Not the Same

Many businesses use AWS S3, Glacier, Azure Blobs and other online storage websites to store backup copies of important files. And, while these types of services are okay for storing and sharing a few files, limitations with online storage sites (i.e. limited file versioning, lack of automated backups, limited backup folders, etc.) prevent them from being true cloud backups. A true cloud backup service enables you to create automated backups of complete systems and store as many versions of backups as you need.)