Top Backup Blunders

Whilst most businesses understand they should protect their data, many don’t, or they do it badly. Here are some of the common mistakes made by small businesses that keep backup professionals like me awake at night.

No automation: - I’m sure I must audibly sigh when customers assure me they remember to backup to CD, tape or hard disk manually every week.....or so...... Inevitably I discover this hardly ever gets done. Often businesses are amazed to find out how much data they've lost since their last full backup.

No checks: - It’s all well and good hoping your backups are working for that day when you really, really, need them, but how often do you check your data is even on the backup media? I hate having to break it to a customer that the age ravaged tape they’ve handed me is unreadable.

No physical security: - Many businesses are very hot on who can access what; customer services can’t access accounts data, accounts can’t access Director info etc. Then they backup the lot to a tape or hard disk and give it to the lowest rank in the company to take home for safekeeping! Either that or they’re left in the office to be burnt or stolen along with the server being protected!

No encryption: - You no doubt realise you have a responsibility to protect your customer data from theft. Most businesses I come across have no encryption on their backups which are frequently left in their employees' houses and cars. Once data is sent to backup all file and folder protection is stripped leaving them readable to anyone without encryption.

Not enough tapes: - This is one of my favourite false economies; buy just 1 or 2 tapes and keep using them every night. Not only does this wear out the tapes quickly but usually involves overwriting the previous backups giving just a 2 day rollback. It often takes several days before critical data loss is noticed. So the backup has been overwritten before you know it’s needed. Oh dear!

RING A BELL? HERE’S THE ANSWER!