Why your Backup Solutions Might be Failing

You need to protect your businesses data, for your customers as well as yourself. You need to work on a solution for you or there is always a risk that it might fail.

What is a Backup?

A data backup involves taking a copy of all the data that your business has and then storing it securely, then if you are involved in a cyber breach or the information gets corrupted you will be able to restore the data. You need to back up your data regularly so you know the information will be the most up to date.

There are a lot of different ways to back up your data and you can choose where you want to store the information, whether that is at your office or off the premises. If you have a lot of data, then you need more space for storage.

Ways to Back up your Data

Tape backup is the most popular choice as its cheap and scalable, when your data grows, you can add more tapes, they can also be held in your office or offsite. If you get access to the tapes quickly you can also restore the information off them quickly.

Due to the GDPR legislation, tapes might not be the most practical option anymore. This means that the EU citizen has the right to request the personal information that a company holds onto is deleted, and businesses need to respond within a month. If the data is held on a backup tape, then it might take some time to find the correct tape with the individuals’ data on. Tapes can also become corrupt, or if you have recently upgraded your system then you won’t be able to read the tape.

Cloud or online backups are now becoming the most popular choice for any business. this is because its more convenient to store data and quickly restore it.

How Backups Fail

Data backup options are a personal choice, but they need to be appropriate for what your business needs, but you need to be aware that they can fail. Like any other piece of technology, backup solutions are prone to overheating, faults, damage from humans or natural disasters etc…

Software: your backup solution might not be compatible with another system that you are using, especially if your application has been updated.

Hardware: hardware ages which means it becomes less effective and other technology improves meaning your older hardware becomes no longer usable.

Human Error: one of your employees might have incorrectly stored the data, or corrupted it, especially if you use tapes.

Network Failures: your network might go down and this could be for a while. If you have problems with your network, then it might prevent you from accessing your data that has been backed-up.