Backup Solutions

What’s in your Data?

For most small businesses, computers hold the keys to everything. We store financial data, customer data, job details, customer and vendor communications, software data, calendars and scheduling data, proprietary business details and more. Yet, most business owners don’t take the very real threat of data loss seriously, thinking they are invincible until disaster strikes.

Backup Solutions for Business

Making sure you have a backup in place is critical for your business. Hardware failure is one of the inevitable downfalls of using technology. If you don’t have a comprehensive backup in place, there can be serious consequences of data loss. According to The University of Texas, businesses that suffer a catastrophic data loss go out of business at a startling rate of 94%. 43% never reopen and 51% close within 2 years.
In 2020 alone, 26% of businesses suffered some form of data loss. The biggest factor is human error, followed by hardware failure. To further compound that issue, 77% of backups have failures when tested.

Causes of Data Loss

• Human Error
• Hardware Failure
• Backup Failure
• Cyber Attack
• Structural Loss or damage

Human error is the most common reason for data loss. Failure to backup data, failure to make sure data is secure and complete, accidentally deleting files, falling for scams, etc. Hardware failure is right up there with it, accounting for 35% of data loss issues. When hardware fails, having a thorough backup can be a lifeline in an otherwise very uncertain time. However, most companies don’t monitor or test their backups and although they feel that their backups are being done, they don’t know for sure until the unthinkable happens.
Furthermore, many businesses are not taking steps to secure their systems, leaving your data open to cyber attacks and corrupted or compromised data.
Another failure point is losing your business structure. Immediately following a fire or flood in your office, you may not be concerned about your data, but if you don’t have redundant backups in place, you are at risk of losing it all. Since no solution is 100% effective 100% of the time, redundancy is key.

The real costs of data loss

Imagine for a minute that you drop your laptop. It won’t boot back up. You take it to your technician who tells you that the hard drive is damaged and unrecoverable without shipping it off to a very expensive clean room data recovery center and it still may not be possible to recover your data. Meanwhile, you have customers calling but none of their information or quotes are available, taxes to pay but none of your financial data is available, products that need to be ordered but you can’t see your quotes or notes on the jobs.
Estimates for data loss and downtime range business to business any vary on business size, but according to Datto, the true cost of data loss can be anywhere from $10,000 per hour lost and up.

How to Prevent Data Loss

Because no solution is perfect, we thoroughly believe that backup redundancy is key to preventing catastrophic data loss. Having a physical backup and a cloud backup that update daily is crucial to making sure that you have a working copy of your data, in the event that you need it. Further, it must be monitored to make sure your backups are actually occurring, functional, and the critical data is selected.