What if your data backup systems didn’t work? Could your business survive if you lost access to your data for a week?

In today’s information economy, data (Word docs, spreadsheets, databases, customer lists, etc.) is the heart and soul of your business. The problem: Most organizations never slow down long enough to make sure that they are properly protecting their intellectual property – the livelihood of businesses – until something goes wrong.

Most studies conducted on traditional, accepted, and regularly utilized backup systems prove that they fail anywhere from 30 - 50% of the time! Call me crazy, but that’s hardly a “backup” at all, and those are not odds I would entrust my company’s data with. Are you doing all you should be to make sure your company is 100% protected?

I speak with business owners about their backups on a regular basis. While I am trying to figure out whether or not they are properly protected, I usually hear one, or all, of the following:

- The secretary takes tapes home to protect us in the event of a disaster - no idea what she does with them while they are there.
- We believe we are backing up all of our critical data; we don’t know for sure though.
- We are how many versions behind on our backup software?
- We run full backups across these three tapes…when we remember to change them.
- I think changes the tapes each night
- What do you mean it would take 24-74 hours to bring my business back online if a server died…and what do you mean it will only provide a full backup from 25 days ago?

The uncertainty - or sometimes false confidence - in the business owners’ answers always alarms me. It is imperative to ask questions about your backup and recovery plan before something happens to your business; by then it’s too late.

There are three general areas to consider when evaluating your company’s level of backup preparedness; any solid backup and recovery plan should include the following:

1. Backup: It seems simple, but most plans leave holes in your ability to restore files when needed. We estimate that data on a tape backup is “good” for restore 75% of the time. What happens to the tape when it goes home? Data on a tape can be lost, scrambled, or destroyed easier than one would imagine. The next major problem: Critical directories or databases may not be making it onto the tape in the first place - big problem when it comes to restoring.

2. Business Continuity: We all know time is money. It is crucial to find out how long your backup will actually take to bring your business back online after an emergency. Even with all the proper redundancies built into a server and all the data stored safely on a tape, it may still take up to 72 hours (or even longer) to get you running again. Can your business afford this downtime?

3. Disaster Recovery: I recently spoke with a friend who has had just about every single horrific thing you can imagine happen to his business, including a server room fire, buildings being locked down for security purposes, and having equipment stolen. Yet, his company continues to flourish because he had a good disaster recovery plan in tact. It is up to each individual organization to determine its own tolerance for downtime, but I can safely say that no organization would be “fine” with never recovering its data after a disaster.

Why is this all so important to the average small business owner?

Although the facts I have presented in this article are harsh, my ultimate hope is to prevent your company from enduring a detrimental crisis. Small businesses should not decide to take on their own backup and recovery plans. Not only this a financially poor decision for small businesses, it often ends up posing a tragedy for the company sooner or later, as something is bound to go wrong. Even when tapes are restored, it can require a PHD in the science of backup and data storage to fully understand how to get everything completely back to the way it was.

Don’t let your company get caught in the dark; take proactive measures to ensure you have ALL your backup angles covered. When it comes to backups, people tend to have an “I won’t worry about it too much- what are the chances that will ever happen to me?” mentality. Please, don’t kid yourself; it happens much more frequently than you would think.

Take my advice- recognize the value and importance of a proper data backup plan; the people with the aforementioned mentality are the ones who wind up frantically searching for help once it is too late.

Josh Clifford is the Chief Service Officer at Everon Technology Services, LLC - a leading provider of IT services to small businesses nationwide. If you have any questions regarding this article, please contact [email protected].