When it comes to protecting and managing your data (and your business), it’s important to think in terms of business continuity — not just data backups. It’s true, however, that data backups are a necessary aspect of protecting your business’s data — it’s how and where you back it up that matters.
Understanding Business Continuity Solutions and Downtime
Business continuity solutions take preventative measures to protect your business’s data and functions from downtime (different events that either cause data loss or the inability to perform basic business functions for a certain period of time). With a business continuity plan in place, your business is able to access all data and resume normal business operations as quickly as possible and with the least amount of loss to your data, finances, or reputation.
Learn more about what business continuity is and why it matters in our business continuity blogs.
There are two key ways that business continuity solutions store and protect data: local backups and cloud backups — both of which should be used together to offer the best data recovery support. Alone, these types of backups leave holes in your data protection strategy — here’s why.
Data Backups: Why Local-Only or Cloud-Only Backups are Risky
1. Local-only backups leave your business vulnerable.
Local data backups are great for quick restores; your data is right there with you, so it’s quick and easy to restore data to its original location. However, if something happens to that local drive or server — hardware failure, man-made disasters, natural disasters, theft, and power outages to name a few — you won’t be able to quickly (if ever) reinstall software and data to resume normal business operations. And if you think downtime — even one hour — isn’t that costly to your business, think again. Depending on the size of your business, a single hour of downtime could cost your business hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.
Read more: “The 11 Leading Causes of Downtime.”
2. Cloud-only backups leave your business vulnerable.
When you look at all of the ways local data backups can be lost or destroyed, it’s easy to say, “take everything to the Cloud.” Unfortunately, cloud-only data backups have their own risks, including the inability to control the bandwidth, more difficult and time-consuming restores, and the fact that the Cloud can fail, too.
Better Data Security with Hybrid Cloud Solutions
The answer to better data security practices is a hybrid cloud solution, which uses local and cloud backups at the same time. Here’s how it works:
- Data is first copied and stored on a local device, allowing you to do a fast and easy restore from that device, should something happen.
- Data is also replicated in the Cloud, so if anything happens to the local device, you still have off-site cloud copies of your data — all without having to worry about moving physical copies of your data off-site.
Learn more about hybrid cloud solutions on our blog, “4 Reasons Why a Hybrid Cloud Backup System is a Best IT Practice for SMBs” or by contacting the leading MSP — Integracon.