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Understanding Why Data Backup and Recovery Is Critical for Your Business

If you want to keep your brand reputation intact, avoid unplanned downtime, run your business smoothly during natural disasters, and enjoy peace of mind, a well-planned data backup and recovery strategy is a must.

All businesses, whether small or big, rely on data. From accounting and billing to lead generation and marketing, data can help companies increase their productivity, expand their reach, and explore new revenue streams. The flipside, however, is that you have to keep data safe at all costs.

Unfortunately, there is no way to predict when a potential data breach will strike your business or whether your current cybersecurity measures are good enough to protect your network and data. That’s why regular data backup and a well-planned recovery process should be at the heart of your IT support and management strategy.

Here are six reasons why you need to focus on data backup and recovery as a business owner.

1. Data Breaches Are Costly

When your business suffers a data breach, it often results in unplanned downtime. This can severely impact your business as you will be unable to bring in new leads or provide services to your existing customers for a while.

In addition to this, you will also need to spend considerable money and time in restoring your systems and applications, as identifying compromised data or applications is a tedious and time-consuming task. The global average cost of a data breach in 2019 was a staggering $3.92 million, which was a 1.5% increase from 2018.

Given these high costs, most businesses often don’t have the resources to get back on their feet after a data breach. Also, cybercriminals frequently use ransomware to extort money in exchange for stolen data. In 2020, financial motivation was behind 86% of the data breaches, where cybercriminals aimed to exploit money from businesses.

As a result, small and medium-sized companies may face a complete financial ruin following a data breach. However, data backup and recovery might help you get back on your feet quickly.

2. Data Breaches Happen despite Best Security Measures

As awareness about cybersecurity increases, businesses are taking proactive security measures to protect their data. However, despite the best precautions, data breaches do happen as cybercriminals are also inventing new ways to find security vulnerabilities. It is no surprise that a staggering 70% of breaches were caused by outsiders in 2020.

However, when a data breach occurs, a well-designed data backup and recovery plan can help you bounce back quickly. A managed IT service provider can help you set up data backup and recovery measures that meet your business requirements.

3. Human Error Is More Common Than You Think

One of the easiest ways to prevent a potential data breach is to educate your employees about cybersecurity best practices. However, despite frequent and in-depth training, your employees are still likely to make mistakes. These seemingly trivial mistakes can lead to a potential security breach or corrupt your data forever.

For example, accidentally deleting a critical set of data or entering incorrect data can bring down all or part of your network system. On the other hand, using weak passwords or accessing malicious sites from office devices can lead to a potential data breach. You need regular backup and a recovery process to mitigate the losses.

4. Natural Disasters Can Happen Anytime

Not just cybercriminals or human errors, natural disasters are also an impending threat that can result in data loss. Most cloud computing companies use remote locations to set up their data centers. If natural disasters such as floods, fires, heatwaves, and deep freezes take place in the area where your data center is, it can wreak havoc on your business.

It may be impossible to get your valuable data back if the only copy gets destroyed in a natural disaster. Having more than one backup, however, may help you retrieve most of your data. You might also be able to resume your operations in a few days after the natural disaster.

5. Your Brand Reputation Is at Risk

Most businesses collect personal information like emails, contact numbers, addresses, and credit card details from their customers. When a data breach happens, cybercriminals often steal and sell this sensitive information on the dark web. It can lead to more serious crimes like identity fraud.

So, when a data breach takes place, your brand reputation will take a deep dive. It will also affect your profitability for a long time. According to Interactions Marketing survey, when shoppers know that their retailer has experienced a security breach, 12% stop shopping at that retailer, while 36% do so less frequently.

However, the survey also found that 22% of shoppers would return to the retailer if they fixed the issue and shared that information. In other words, if you set up measures like data backup and recovery with the help of an experienced managed IT service provider, you may be able to get back some of your customers over time.

6. Tech Failure Is Unavoidable

In this tech-driven era, no business can function without technology. However, this blessing can sometimes turn into a curse, especially when it fails without any warning. Even a small software glitch can bring your entire organization to a standstill or result in data loss.

From multinationals to small businesses, technology failure continues to affect every business, resulting in damage worth billions of dollars internationally. In February, 2020, tech issues hit London’s Heathrow airport, disrupting more than 100 flights and leaving many passengers stranded. Millions of TSB customers were also locked out of their bank accounts when a software upgrade led to a system outage in April, 2018.

Once again, with scheduled data backup and recovery, your company can get back to normal quickly after a tech failure. Depending on the situation, your IT consultant may be able to roll back your system to its previous version until the glitch gets fixed. Make sure to talk to your IT consultancy partner about how data backup and recovery can help you overcome a tech glitch.

Conclusion

As you can see, if you want to keep your brand reputation intact, avoid unplanned downtime, run your business smoothly during natural disasters, and enjoy peace of mind, a well-planned data backup and recovery strategy is a must. Think of it as an insurance plan to protect your business. If you haven’t already thought about it, talk to a managed IT service provider today to know your options. So, when do you plan to put data backup and recovery in place for your business? Tell us in the comments section.

Written By

Tyler Miller is Managing Partner at TechPulse, a premier Managed IT Service provider with over 40 years of experience in providing dedicated IT services, on-call, 24/7. At TechPulse, we analyze clients' needs, and design IT strategies that are reliable, efficient, and within budget. We are on a mission to ensure clients take advantage of the best available technology to streamline their operations, protect their data, and communicate effectively.

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