Arriving at the office and discovering that your IT systems and servers are down is every business owner’s nightmare. Months or even years of data all gone in the blink of an eye. You try to remember – what’s our backup solution? When was it last (or ever) tested?

The bottom line is that IT systems can fail – servers, hard drives, even cloud systems. Or worse, cybercriminals can attack your network, first stealing then encrypting your data (and sometimes your backups).

Then the financial toll starts hitting – every minute of downtime equals potential revenue loss. Plus the cost of recovering systems.

Safeguarding your business assets is not just a recommendation, it’s an absolute necessity. By implementing robust backup strategies, you can reduce the impact on your business from the devastating consequences of data loss, maintaining continuity, resilience, and peace of mind. When it comes to data, it’s not a matter of if disaster strikes, but when, and the best defense is a proactive offense.

Data backup systems are an essential part of your Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity plan. Here are the typical steps for determining the right backup solution for your business.

Step 1 – Complete a Business Impact Analysis. It sounds complicated, but it’s actually quite simple. Make a list of your discrete IT systems (accounting, ERP, Microsoft 365, file shares, and other line of business applications), then ask yourself the question – what is the financial impact if each of these systems is down for 1 hr, 4 hrs, 1 day, or 1 week. Also ask questions about how much downtime you can afford and how much data you can afford to lose. Then document your requirements for a backup solution, including Recovery Time Objective (RTO), Recovery Point Objective (RPO), plus local and cloud retention policies.

Step 2 – Build a Backup solution that meets your business requirements. Now that your business requirements have been identified, you can craft the appropriate solution. You’ll need to make sure you address the RTO and RPO for each system, as well as retention policies. You may need multiple solutions as on-premises server backups is typically separate from cloud backups.

Step 3 – Establish a Testing Schedule. Having a good backup solution in place is all good until you go to restore and find out your backups didn’t occur correctly. Regularly testing your backups is a critical part of the process. Analyze the results of your testing to identify any issues or areas for improvement, and use this feedback to refine your backup procedures.

Step 4 – Rinse & Repeat. Every year start over by updating your Business Impact Analysis. Have there been new systems added that need to be backed up? Have servers or line of business applications been retired or moved to the cloud? Have business requirements changed? Take your updated list of IT systems to be backed up along with your updated business requirements and make needed changes to your backup solution. And keep your testing schedule in place, or even change it if needs have changed.

Want to learn more building the right backup solution? Read our latest Educational Guide on Data Backup & Testing or reach out for a complimentary Backup Audit.