March 31st is designated World Backup Day. Several years back a group of people picked this date as a gentle reminder to back up computer data—not just once a year but regularly.
Although this day is lumped in with those “made up holidays” like Improve Your Office Day, the intent is dead-serious: with ransomware, malware and assorted viruses now a constant threat, regular data backups are now even more vital to a company’s security. Gone are the days with the designated person packing up tapes and taking them home on their motorcycle. To assure business continuity, the days of casual backups are over.
Due to the fast pace of business, it is imperative that backups are able to roll back to where everyone was before the stoppage. Today the highest probability for these interruptions is a security intrusion.
A good backup plan has these elements:
- high quality backup software/hardware from a single vendor
- staff skills and availability to monitor, test and quickly restore or use of an outsourced agreement for these functions
- remove “people” from the process to the extent possible
- consider Cloud options to consistently get data offsite
- match your strategy to the business recovery needs
World Backup Day is the perfect time to initiate or review your contingency plans in the event of a disaster. In a world where one million new malware threats are released every day, the potential for an employee to inadvertently install malware that disables your entire network is a tangible threat. The right backup plan will give you peace of mind and get the business up and running quickly.