What is the best IT backup and disaster recovery solution for your business?

August 28th, 2019
What is the best IT backup and disaster recovery solution for your business?

Best IT Backup and Disaster Recovery solution - blog feature image (900x300) (1)

The importance of data backup and disaster recovery

Your business and customer information is at risk every day, no matter how secure you think your systems are. We’ve looked at the rise of cyber crime and why improved security is needed, but you also need to have measures in place to safeguard your data in case it’s lost or corrupted.

Data backup means you have a copy of all of your data which you can use to restore all of your information. Backups should be done regularly to ensure that the most recent data is saved and it should be held securely.

Disaster recovery refers to the procedures you have in place to help you recover information if it’s lost for any reason. It should include business continuity so the most important things keep running until everything is back to normal.

You need to know what your recovery process looks like, share it with your staff and have key contact details available in event of an emergency (preferably stored offline). You also need a process for letting clients know what’s going on.

You may think that data backup on its own is sufficient, but we don’t recommend that as the best option. Think of backup as the first step, and a business continuity plan as reducing the risk of losing money and work. We’ve got a blog that gives further information here.

If you want to have a better idea of what the cost implications of downtime and recovery time might be for your organisation, we have a free calculator to help you work it out, which you can find here.

We recommend using it to evaluate your recovery time objective (RTO - maximum time you can afford to take to resume normal IT service) and recovery point objective (RPO – the maximum amount of data you can afford to lose without impacting upon your business).

What to consider

When choosing the right solution for your business, think about how your data will be backed up. Will you do it onsite, or will you use a third-party storage facility? And are you backing up onto tapes or into the cloud? Remember, the more data you have, the more storage space you’ll need.

You also need to consider the possibility that your data backup might fail. This could be through human error, server failure or hardware and software malfunctions. We’ve got a blog that covers the key things you need to know if the worst happens.

Before you make a decision on the best solution, do some research into what the potential costs are. We’ve put together a post to help you get an understanding around pricing, which includes things like size of your organisation (both number of staff and how many devices) and what kinds of data you want to store.

Best IT Backup and Disaster Recovery solution - quote (900x300)

Speak to your current IT support partner to ask them which solution they recommend to their clients. They should have a good understanding of your business and your requirements, and therefore be able to advise you on the specific functions to look out for when you’re making your choice.

They may also offer a solution of their own, so ask them if they have a managed data backup and disaster recovery option they can add to your current support package. A managed solution means you know that your system is regularly tested and everything is working.

Choosing an IT support company like ATG means that your backup is being managed along with your other systems, and we’re on hand to recover everything as quickly as possible in the event of a disaster. Not only does that get you back to business as usual, it saves you the time and stress of having to find someone to come out and fix things in an emergency.

Our 5Nines solution

The average cost of downtime for a UK business is £123,725 per hour, so it’s not surprising that for companies without a proper system in place, almost half of them (40%) will fail within two years of a breach or data loss.

ATG’s hybrid disaster recovery and business continuity solution is designed to get you back up and running in just a few minutes in the event of a security breach or any data loss. We call it 5Nines, because it ensures minimal disruption to the business, and keeps all of our customers secure and protected 99.999% of the time.

5Nines takes regular snapshots of your data as you update and share documents. This means that you choose which one of the earlier versions you want to restore. Using the snapshots, we then roll back the data to restore everything you created previously. We offer a range of options, depending on your needs and the size of your business, and work closely with you to provide the perfect solution.

Our robust system is secure, and we make sure it’s accessible only by the people who need to view it. We give you peace of mind because you know that we’ve taken over the responsibility of looking after your data and we work hard to prevent backup failure. We also check to ensure that the backup doesn’t have installed but unactivated ransomware.

Everything is backed up in the cloud, and by doing this regularly, system restores can be done in less time, getting you up and running faster, and with minimal data loss and business disruption.

If you have any IT security issues, or questions on data backup and disaster recovery, you can download our FREE business continuity plan template or give us a call. We’re sure to have the answer!