Why a Cloud Backup Is a Necessary Part of Your Business Continuity

Modern businesses generate a lot of data, some of which they couldn’t really function without. This makes the prospect of data loss especially dangerous, making a data backup imperative. Today, cloud computing is seen as the premiere option in terms of data redundancy and availability. Today, we’ll look at why you want to consider storing your backed-up data in the cloud.

Data Backup

Any business in operation today should have some kind of backup. While we don’t recommend them keeping a spare hard drive or tape-based backup of your data is better than nothing. Preferably, you would elect to maintain a more comprehensive option, like a full Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution to help eliminate the risks that could impact your data. With a best practices compliant BDR in place, your backup would ensure that you would have an extra copy of your data to restore from should something go terribly wrong.

In fact, your data is so important, we recommend that you maintain multiple copies of your backup… just to be extra safe. We suggest following what is called the 3-2-1 Rule - where you keep three copies of your data, with at least two saved on different storage mediums, and one stored offsite.

Cloud Backup

We have already addressed the need for a cloud-hosted backup, but we should address its benefits more specifically. Cloud backups were once intended for individuals to back up their own critical data, but as the importance of keeping secure data backups has become more apparent, options have been made available for businesses of all sizes. By entering into a business relationship with a cloud backup vendor, you retain control over your data, even if something were to happen to your local storage infrastructure, thanks to the off-site, remote access nature of cloud-based solutions. Furthermore, in addition to the quick restore times that a cloud backup offers, this kind of system helps to support additional work benefits, such as the capability to access files remotely and easily collaborate on them with your team.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Of all of the services that we recommend to businesses here at Washington Works, our BDR is probably the most important to implement. The survivability statistics for businesses that lose their data in some form of disaster, and find their operations suspended for a time, aren’t great. However, with a BDR implemented, a business has a much better chance of survival. By incrementally replicating your computing environment as often as every quarter of an hour, you can be confident that most everything - even your settings - are preserved. Since the BDR is partially a network-attached device, it can take the place of your server if needed and allows for easy and convenient data restoration if necessary. Since the BDR also sends a copy of your data to the cloud, your data is redundantly preserved in an offsite data center under the watchful eye of professional technicians.

Why is this so important? Simple - keeping multiple backups on site is all well and good, until a disaster strikes your place of business and destroys them all. It gives you an up-to-date copy of your business’ data to quickly restore from. 

To learn more about data backup and how to go about implementing it, give Washington Works a call at 301-571-5040.