The Eclipse Guide to Protecting your Business Data

It's estimated that around half of all businesses that suffer a major data loss cease trading within two years.

Our practical guide to the basics of data backup will tell you all you need to know to enable you to protect your most valuable asset.

Backup: The Basics

What are the threats to your data?

Up-to-date financial records, customer contact and account details, correspondence and important internal documentation are all vital to the smooth running of your business, yet this data is constantly vulnerable to a range of threats, including:

• hardware or system failure: hard drives are mechanical devices which can fail, resulting in data loss or damage
• heat or water damage as a result of fire or natural disasters such as flooding
• theft of your PC's or servers
• software corruption
• viruses which can delete or corrupt your data
• user error resulting in data being accidentally deleted or overwritten

The range of threats and the damaging affect of even a small number of lost files, mean that you should make the protection of your business data a priority.

How can you protect your business against the risks?

You can protect your business in two ways: firstly, by reducing the risk of data loss in the first place, and secondly, by putting in place a robust data backup strategy so that if the worst happens you're covered.

Reducing your risks

Data loss will be less likely to occur if you follow these guidelines:

• protect the electrical components of PC's and servers by keeping the areas in which they are used dry and dust-free
• protect against power surges, which can trigger hardware failure, by installing an uninterruptible power supply (UPS)
• ensure installations and repairs to PC's and servers are undertaken by people with the relevant experience and knowledge
• protect your network with a reputable, regularly updated anti-virus package and scan all incoming data, including packaged software, for viruses
• obtain software from reputable sources

A foolproof data backup strategy

When selecting the most suitable data backup solution for your business you need to consider:

• what data you need to back up and how often?
• where it will be stored?
• how quickly and easily it can be restored in the event of data loss?

Backup: Getting Started

The most common ways of backing up business data are summarised below:

External CD / DVD Drives

While CD and DVD drives are inexpensive, they have a relatively limited storage capacity and of course need to be stored off-site to be secure. Backing up to CD or DVD drives is also time consuming and labour intensive, so for this reason is not likely to be the best option as your primary backup method. However, it can be a good way to archive old data (such as financial records) which need to be kept for a fixed period of time, and data backed up on CD or DVD is easily retrievable as no special equipment is required to restore it.

External hard drives

External hard drives are useful for quickly backing-up large of amounts of data on a regular basis, but you need to remember that they are vulnerable to failure and data corruption in the same way as internal hard drives are. While hard disks are usually portable enough to be taken off-site, it's vital to ensure you do this if this is your primary back-up method.

Tape drives

While tape media has long been a popular method of backing up data due to its low cost, high capacity storage and portability, it is not really designed for smaller offices due to the relatively high setup costs and the fact that daily tape backup administration is a time-consuming, manual process.

Online backup

Online backup is a relatively new way of protecting data that has become popular in recent years as more businesses have access to fast broadband connections. Software supplied by your backup provider lets you schedule automated backup of the files you choose via the internet. You pay a monthly fee based on the amount of storage space you require and your data is stored securely at an off-site data centre, able to be restored easily should you need it. It's important that if you choose this option you select an established, reputable supplier - you are entrusting your valuable data to them, after all!

Online versus Offline

Features	Online Backup	Offline Backup
Automatic	Your important data is regularly protected by automatic backups
Remote	Automatically storing your data offsite will protect you from theft and natural disaster
Protection	No need to purchase additional costly devices
Recover	Retrieve and restore backed up files at any time
Risk Free	Our 30-day FREE trial for extra peace of mind

Backup: Checklist

Other aspects of your data backup strategy you should consider are:

Who's responsible for data backup in your business? Overseeing the backup process needs to be part of someone's job.

Does the person responsible have the correct expertise and time to back up your business critical data effectively?

When is your data backed up? You need to establish a back up schedule that suits the needs of your business.

How can you be sure that your backup process works? You should regularly test that files you've backed up can be opened.

Where is your data stored? Is this location different to your normal premises and is it secure?

Is your solution flexible to grow with your business?

Backup: Useful Links

Data backup and recovery advice from Continuitycentral.com
Articles on business continuity and data backup from Newbusiness.co.uk
Business Link's guide to data backup best practice