Over the past several years, the acceleration of digital transformation has radically changed how small businesses operate, giving entrepreneurs the tools and information they need to target new markets, take advantage of opportunities in the moment, and deliver convenient experiences that inform and delight. However, opportunity breeds responsibility. Digital transformation makes SMBs more reliant on data than ever, creating new risks around business continuity, privacy, and compliance.
Unfortunately, many businesses fail to prioritize data backup until it’s too late. In fact, a recent survey by Researchscape found that 28% of people lost critical data due to device failure, accidental deletion, or a cyberattack and could not recover it. While this data point highlights consumer behavior, it serves as a warning for SMBs that data loss happens more often than expected. Without a backup strategy in place, recovery may not be possible. Data protection has typically been seen as an enterprise problem, but SMBs are starting to recognize the need for backup and recovery solutions that allow them to recover data quickly and efficiently.
Today (March 31) is World Backup Day, and it’s a good reminder for business owners about the importance of protecting their most precious digital information. It’s a day to think about what is important to your business, what role data plays in meeting business objectives, and how you can safeguard your critical data.
Data Protection Isn’t Just an Enterprise Problem
Data is the lifeblood of businesses of all sizes today, improving targeting and enhancing the customer experience. It streamlines workflows and informs decision-making. Data allows companies to grow fast at an incredible scale and meet customers where they’re at, on their terms, in the most convenient way possible.
Imagine what would happen if your customer database were corrupted or a ransomware attack shut down your customer portal. What if your laptop with all your financial information is stolen just before taxes are due? Or if your cloud service provider (CSP) jacks up its storage pricing, cutting into already thin margins?
Seriously, what would happen if your data just suddenly disappeared and there was no way to get it back or restore normal business operations?
Data protection is so crucial to business continuity that many insurance providers won’t provide coverage to SMBs that aren’t maintaining basic data protection processes.
The Cloud: A Powerful Ally, But Cost Control Is Key
Many businesses already rely on the cloud for data protection, using the seemingly infinite scale of public infrastructure as a massive dump of business information and associated backups. The challenge is that data is growing exponentially both in volume and in complexity. CSPs know this, of course, and are evolving their offerings to meet these demands. A common sales tactic is to provide data migration services that allow SMBs to upload all their data to the cloud for free. Then, when business owners are dependent on cloud storage, they could start to raise prices.
For companies relying on frequent backups, the cloud delivers solutions that help maintain business continuity. By implementing a strategic storage approach—such as a hybrid cloud and local storage approach—businesses can effectively balance cost and performance, making cloud storage a powerful and flexible tool for modern data management.
Using a Layered Approach to Backing Up Your Data
Cloud storage is a critical component of SMB’s backup strategies, but it shouldn’t be the only medium used. SMBs need to implement a layered backup strategy that uses multiple storage types and media to provide efficient data protection at scale. This includes the cloud, of course, but also external hard disk drives (HDDs), storage, and other enterprise-like storage solutions to meet more demanding data protection requirements.
Here are five tips to remember this World Backup Day
1. Follow the 3-2-1 Backup Strategy
The 3-2-1 backup strategy is a resilient approach to data protection for organizations of any size. The strategy is simple: Keep three copies of your data on two different media types and make sure you have at least one copy stored off-site. This includes the original data, a copy stored on a removable hard drive, and a copy uploaded to the cloud. It’s essential that at least one copy is kept on a mobile or portable external drive storage that you can take with you in an emergency. At the same time, backing up your data to a cloud data storage service provider makes it easy to get back up and running after data loss.
2. Align Your Backup Strategy to Business Objectives
There are a hundred ways to skin a cat, so make sure your backup strategy makes sense for your users, IT footprint, and business model. Do you need to back up everything daily, weekly, or monthly? Is that true for all data sets? Storing critical data on highly secure drives may make sense, but perhaps less important information can be moved to less expensive media. Compliance can also dictate backup policies as customer data and personally identifiable information (PII) may need additional safeguards. Perhaps you employ a mobile workforce where everyone works from home, so backing up endpoints is a priority. Think about how technology and data power your business and create backup policies that match those objectives. Doing so can improve resiliency while saving much-needed budget.
3. Ensure Remote Access for Working Anywhere
Storing at least one backup in the cloud or on a network-attached storage (NAS) solution ensures you can access your data from anywhere with an Internet connection. This is incredibly useful when data needs to be recovered after a natural disaster or other event that prevents you from returning to the office. Simply set up a temporary location in a safe area and recover your data to get back up and running as quickly as possible. This is also useful when moving offices or setting up new branches, giving you a template to build out IT infrastructure much faster and more efficiently.
4. Think Incrementally to Better Utilize Storage Space
Not everything needs to be backed up every time, all the time. Some data doesn’t change much, and it doesn’t make sense to continually back up the same version. Called incremental backups, this technology reduces data redundancy and optimizes storage space, making sure you’re not spending an arm and a leg to protect your data. Most SMBs will combine incremental backups with the occasional full backup to improve the reliability of the most recent data.
5. Know What You Have, Where It Is, and How Best to Recover It
All the backups in the world are no help unless the data is actually recoverable. Backups can fail. Data gets corrupted. Cloud accounts are lost or forgotten. Make sure your backup strategy is easy to set up and manage—even by someone with little technical knowledge. A Media Asset Manager (MAM) solution can help keep tabs on how data is organized and recommend the best way to restore your backups. Knowing what you have, where it is stored, and how to restore it makes it easy when stuff hits the fan, and you need to recover operations as quickly as possible. Something as simple as knowing what cords you need for your external drives can go a long way toward easing the stress of a recovery event.
Back Up What You Can’t Give Up
SMBs are increasingly reliant on technology and data, and a robust data protection strategy is now a business-critical capability. World Backup Day is an excellent opportunity for SMBs to take stock of their backup policies across the board. This includes following the 3-2-1 backup strategy, aligning policies to business objectives, ensuring mobility, and understanding your data and the best ways to recover it. Don’t get caught wishing you had paid more attention to backups. Take the necessary steps now to get back up and running as quickly as possible when disaster strikes.
Matthew Bennion is the Director of Product Management at Western Digital.
