Every day, your business generates a massive amount of data. Your staff sends and receives emails, produces documents, updates customer records, and stores financial information. This data isn’t just a byproduct of your work; it is the fundamental engine that keeps your organization operating.
But here is the reality: data is fragile. It can be lost in an instant due to a hardware failure, a simple human mistake, or a malicious cyberattack. When that happens, your business doesn't just slow down—it stops.
Understanding the why of backup is easy, but the how is where many businesses trip up. Let’s look at the best practices you should be following to ensure your business can weather any digital storm.
If you only remember one thing from this post, make it the 3-2-1 rule. It is a simple, effective framework that has been the industry standard for years because it works.
In addition, it is now also considered best practice that you keep an immutable (or unchangeable) copy of your backup for a set period of time, which prevents an attacker from tampering with it after the fact or ransomware from locking it down.
The reason for this is simple: redundancy. If a fire or flood hits your office, your local backups are gone. If a cloud provider has a major outage or a security breach, your local copy saves you. By spreading the risk, you ensure that no single event can wipe you out.
When setting up your backup schedule, you need to define two technical (but very important) terms: Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO).
RPO is essentially your data loss tolerance. If your last backup was at midnight and your server dies at 4 p.m., you’ve lost 16 hours of work. For some, that is fine. For others, it is a catastrophe.
RTO is how long it takes to get back up and running. Can you afford to be down for two days while data downloads from the cloud, or do you need to be back online in two hours?
For most modern businesses, we recommend nightly backups at an absolute minimum. However, for critical databases or high-traffic folders, hourly (or even more frequent) snapshots are a much safer bet.
It isn't enough to just have a backup. You have to manage it. A backup that hasn't been verified is just a collection of hope—and hope is not a technical strategy.
Do NOT rely on a human being to remember to swap a drive or click “Start” every Friday. People get busy, they go on vacation, and they forget. Use professional backup software that runs on a schedule and sends an automated report to your IT team every morning.
Your backups contain your most sensitive company secrets. If a bad actor gains access to your backup files, they don't even need to hack your live server to steal your data. Ensure your backups are encrypted both at rest (where they are stored) and in transit (while they are moving to the cloud).
This is where 90 percent of businesses fail. They see a green checkmark on their backup software and assume they are safe. You must perform a test restore at least once a quarter. Pick a random file or folder and try to bring it back. If you can't restore a single PDF, you won't be able to restore your entire server when it counts. We can also trigger a mock disaster where we spin up your backup and allow your company to run off of it for a day, just to ensure everything is there.
Modern ransomware doesn't just encrypt your live files; it actively looks for your backups and deletes them so you are forced to pay the ransom. Immutable backups are files that cannot be changed or deleted for a set period, even by someone with administrative access. It is the ultimate undo button against a cyberattack.
If your business uses Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, you might assume those companies are backing up your data for you. They are not. They provide infrastructure redundancy (making sure their servers stay up), but if a user deletes a folder or a mailbox is hit by a virus, that data can be gone forever after a short retention period. You need a third-party backup solution specifically for your cloud email and documents.
Data backup might feel like just another line item on your expense report, but it is actually an investment in your company's survival.
If you aren't sure if your current backup system would actually work in a crisis, First Column IT can help. Give us a call at (571) 470-5594 for a quick assessment of your current setup.
