Why You Need To Backup Regularly? – The importance of data

As big data analytics become increasingly crucial for businesses, managing an avalanche of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data in databases has become more of a challenge. According to Oracle, by 2020 most enterprises expect 50 times data growth.

According to other survey by BackBlaze, the percentage of users who back up their data has increased steadily from 65% in 2008 to 76% in 2018. However, a major chunk i.e. 43% users still rely on yearly backups. The time gap between the yearly backups is significant which makes the backups obsolete. As a result, the yearly backups often fail to restore all required files after data loss. What’s worrying is that 24% of users don’t even think about creating a backup. And the number of users who back up daily is a mere 6%.

(Did you know: The average cost of a lost file per individual is estimated to be $141—as per Varonis)

Therefore, having a data backup is the best practice in the event of data loss due to unexpected server failures, hacking or breaches, or in the case of disasters like fire or flood. And it needs to be conducted regularly so that the data should be easily recovered with minimal downtime.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Disaster Recovery (DR) is the process, policies and procedures related to preparing for recovery or/and continuation of the technology infrastructure which are vital to an organization after a disaster. Data backup, on the other hand, is simply an on-going scheduled process (automation) of backing up your data.

The first step of DR planning is to ensure the survival of your data; and the basis for most data protection strategies is a backup, a recurring copy of data stored on another on-site system.

Types of backup:

Tape Backup: Some say the Tape is fading away. But, if you’ve already made an investment a few years back in tape technology, and if it is still working for you, it is still very relevant.

Traditional DR model was based on tape backup, with secondary backup tapes stored offsite. But this model can incur significant downtime, as tapes must be retrieved before data and applications can be restored. So when it comes to a failover-type scenario where you can’t have any downtime or you need things restored instantly, tapes are not the best answer to supporting that type of technology.

Cloud Backup: So what happens when there is a site-wide outage or disaster event such as a fire or flood which could jeopardize all the onsite equipment and your IT environment? In that case, having a copy of data offsite or on cloud can save you from permanent data loss.

With cloud based backup, data is taken from the local backup and sent to an offsite data center that meets industry compliance standards in terms of both security and privacy. A reliable internet connection is essential for cloud backup. One of the reasons that companies outsource their data backups to cloud data backup service providers is to offload the burden of monitoring, maintaining and supporting the infrastructure.

With a cloud-based disaster recovery service, businesses can provide continuity for their operational service regardless of where they are delivered from,perform tactical failover to secondary services in the event of a hardware or software failure in some (or all) of their IT systems and migrate workloads to cope with unplanned demand or growth.

And there is no doubt, whatever your investment is in a DR plan, it’s going to be a lot cheaper than the cost to recover after a disaster without having one and most important that you can save business from sensitive and crucial data.